Protect valuable applications and data based on Oracle Database at a fraction of the cost of Oracle RAC
Highlights
- Fast fail-over of a single-instance Oracle Database offers high availability, improved automation, and significant cost savings.
- Proven Red Hat® Enterprise Linux® enables improved scalability, availability, reliability, security, and manageability for Oracle Database environments.
- Veritas Storage Foundation™ Cluster File System High Availability includes simultaneously shared storage and application data, as well as Veritas Cluster Server for automated application fail-over.
Introduction
Modern business-critical applications demand availability and uptime—a requirement with direct implications for underlying databases, operating systems, and storage management systems. Organizations that depend on these vital applications often require the ability to fail-over or migrate
databases rapidly from one Red Hat® Enterprise Linux® server to another with minimal downtime, and with minimal impact to mult-tier applications accessing the backend database. To serve this need, highly-available Oracle Database Management Systems (DBMS) are a frequent requirement,
and solutions such as Oracle Real Application Clusters (Oracle RAC) have emerged to provide high availability that can essentially eliminate local outages associated with a database instance failure.
For applications with the highest uptime requirements, Oracle RAC offers a clustered multi-instance parallel application approach that enables an Oracle Database to remain on-line in the event of a failed database server within the cluster. Oracle RAC is ideal where database outages of any duration
simply cannot be tolerated, and application hang time must be kept to an absolute minimum. Symantec Storage Foundation™ for Oracle RAC combined with Red Hat Enterprise Linux can provide a highly effective solution for environments requiring Oracle RAC. While Oracle RAC offers the highest level of availability for the Oracle Database, it also has a high cost.
At the same time, many applications simply don’t require the fastest possible fail-over, or can’t justify the added cost and complexity of deploying Oracle RAC. Many deployments are more cost sensitive, and for some applications, a few seconds of downtime are acceptable. In these situations, fast failover of a single-instance Oracle Database provides a compelling alternative solution that provides fast fail-over while avoiding the considerable complexity, cost, and application tuning required by Oracle RAC (Figure 1). No matter what the fail-over method (single-instance Oracle Database or Oracle RAC) it is important to note that database clients will have similar reconnect times for both solutions, and in-flight transactions are lost in both fail-over scenarios.
Figure 1. Fast single-instance Oracle Database fail-over is substantially simpler and less expensive than Oracle RAC.
Simultaneously shared storage and application data is essential for rapid fail-over, and standard clustering solutions that lack simultaneously shared storage can require excessive fail-over times due to the need to fail-over underlying storage and application data. In contrast, fast fail-over for a singleinstance Oracle Database can typically be provided in a few seconds, dramatically lowering fail-over times when compared to standard clustering solutions, and radically reducing costs and complexity when compared to a full-blown Oracle RAC configuration. Tested and validated by both Symantec
and Red Hat, the combination of Veritas Storage Foundation™ Cluster File System High Availability and Red Hat Enterprise Linux offers a compelling solution. As described in this paper, Veritas software offers simultaneously shared storage and application data along with important automation,
while Red Hat enterprise Linux provides the scalability, availability, reliability, security, and manageability that enterprise organizations need for their Oracle deployments.
This is an excerpt. Download the complete free white paper to learn how Symantec and Red Hat together offer fast fail-over of single-instance Oracle Databases, that provides a compelling alternative solution for fast fail-over, while avoiding the considerable complexity, cost, and application tuning required by Oracle RAC. (registration required).