Oracle White Paper, September The SPARC Difference Reduce Risks, Cut Costs, Power Innovation

Transcription

1 Oracle White Paper, September 2013 The SPARC Difference Reduce Risks, Cut Costs, Power Innovation

2 CONTENTS Executive Summary 3 Unlock Your Organization s Potential 5 Reliable, Scalable, Secure 7 More Performance, More Capacity, Lower TCO 9 Helping Businesses Accelerate Innovation for More Than 25 Years 12 2

3 EXECUTIVE SUMMARY MAKE YOUR IT A FORCE FOR CHANGE Despite current economic factors, IT investment continues to be fueled by the need for better and more agile IT capabilities to support an enterprise s business strategy, as well as to keep up with the rapidly changing demands of the always-on user. However, budgets are squeezed and executives are under pressure to reduce capital expenditure and streamline administrative costs. A key strategy is to consolidate and refresh existing IT infrastructures. This is where Oracle SPARC technology can add real value and enable you to change the shape of your IT budget, dramatically transforming IT into a force for change and innovation. THE BUSINESS VALUE OF SPARC Reduce Business Risk SPARC technology can help you manage risk in a way no other solution can. If you are upgrading legacy SPARC systems to newer SPARC systems, there is no (or limited) migration to perform, so minimal downtime. And with the binary compatibility, which means that applications running on earlier generations of Oracle Solaris servers will also work on the latest Oracle Solaris environment, and product familiarity, there is no additional burden or training for IT personnel. Plus, with integrated cross-stack security and superior RAS, SPARC delivers highest availability for complete peace of mind. Spend Less Keeping the Lights On Refreshing or consolidating onto fewer, more efficient servers can be achieved within days in a typical enterprise data center SPARC offers the lowest TCO through rapid deployment, no-cost software tools, and simplified management and support, typically delivering savings of up to 20 percent, freeing budget to support innovation. Simply Lift, Shift, and Use You can simply move from legacy SPARC to new SPARC systems, as every Oracle application runs on SPARC. The combination of SPARC server and Oracle Solaris supports 11,000 ISV applications, providing unmatched flexibility and investment protection by running both legacy and new applications within the same system ensuring you gain maximum long-term value from your investments. Engineered for the Cloud as Well as the Data Center Oracle brings the reliability, security, and scalability of the #1 UNIX operating system to the cloud. Oracle Solaris 11 is the first operating system that allows customers to build large-scale, enterprise-class infrastructure clouds on SPARC servers. ORACLE S SPARC TECHNOLOGY In a study conducted by IDC in July 2012, Oracle was found to have helped its customers initiate data-center technology refreshes that provided a three-year ROI of 267 percent and a payback in less than 13 months while delivering the following annual benefits (per 100 users): Consolidated and virtualized compute and storage assets, saving US$34,953 Reduced service downtime by 99 percent, boosting user productivity by US$38,013 Optimized IT staff productivity by US$10,108 Enhanced operations profitability by US$8,392 3

4 IDC: Time for Change: Optimizing Data Center Infrastructure with Technology Refresh. Sponsored by: Oracle, Randy Perry, Susan G. Middleton, July 2012 Oracle Solaris is Oracle s UNIX operating system and cloud, for mission-critical enterprise operations, and one of the few viable non-linux UNIX variants on the market. Since acquiring Oracle Solaris and the SPARC technology, Oracle has refined the T-Series servers, moving from SPARC T3 to SPARC T5 designs. It has also committed to a five-year SPARC technology roadmap and launched a new version of the Oracle Solaris operating system to drive better performance and total cost of ownership. as we push new releases of SPARC, we think we re going to have the highest-performing silicon in the computer industry. Mark Hurd, Oracle President, June 2012 Oracle s SPARC servers running Oracle Solaris are engineered to provide an unequaled range of benefits, including: Extreme performance: Oracle s SPARC servers continue to set world records for dozens of performance benchmarks, consistently beating alternative systems. Mission-critical availability: Near-zero downtime, Oracle Solaris binary compatibility over 10 years, and simplified systems management provide unmatched reliability and availability at the lowest total cost of ownership. Unmatched security: Oracle s SPARC servers feature on-chip cryptographic acceleration and the advanced security capabilities of Oracle Solaris. No-cost virtualization: With virtualization capabilities built into every server and the Oracle Solaris operating system at no additional cost, creating an efficient, flexible data center has never been easier or more affordable. Total integration: Oracle s unique ability to integrate and optimize across the IT stack offers breakthrough levels of performance, efficiency, and scalability. Plus, with our technical roadmap, Oracle SPARC and Oracle Solaris will continue to deliver strong integration with Oracle s software to optimize IT for the most demanding workloads. Technical superiority: Oracle SPARC technology has been developed over 25 years to manage complex computing environments and, since acquiring Oracle Solaris and SPARC, Oracle has made significant innovations the systems functionality and efficiency are unequaled. We selected Oracle s SPARC T5 servers running Oracle Solaris 11 to support our SAP R3 deployment, based on expected higher performance and scalability. The solution enables us to handle additional workloads and improve response times with virtually no changes to our SAP architecture. We used Pillar Axiom Quality of Service and worked with Oracle Advanced Customer Support Services to ensure outstanding availability and reliability for our banking operations without overprovisioning our internal resources. Thomas Beneke, SAP System Technology Manager, Bank für Sozialwirtschaft AG 4

5 UNLOCK YOUR ENTERPRISE S POTENTIAL Create the Freedom to Innovate Every business is under pressure to innovate to compete. And every year CIOs are asked to take on the latest buzzword technology and make it priority number one while budgets are continually cut. How does IT find the budget and resources to support innovation? The only way forward is to change current operations as a way to find the funds needed to fuel innovation. Transformation may sound scary and full of risks but, with the proven solutions and products from Oracle, we can help you transform and deliver a new level of operation faster than you thought possible. With Oracle s SPARC technology you can simply migrate off your aging servers. Guaranteed binary compatibility, protects your legacy investments while powering business innovation by offering the best UNIX platform for Oracle applications. SPARC technology keeps implementation times down and accelerates your time to value by reducing time to market. Helping You Power Innovation in Three Ways 1. Simplifying IT Vertically integrated systems and optimized solutions enable faster deployments, complete stack management capabilities, and minimized system outages. 2. Increasing performance and flexibility Systems and software engineered for maximum performance drive up end user productivity levels by delivering faster application response times and better overall application service availability. 3. Reducing risk Moving from an existing SPARC environment dramatically lowers risk as your applications will just run. Also, with Oracle s integrated, optimized technology stack, the risk of incompatibilities is virtually eliminated. Plus, combined with integrated cross-stack security, highest RAS, and predictable deployments with pretested solutions, your enterprise s exposure to business risk is significantly reduced. The Power of Oracle Applications on Oracle Systems With Oracle software and hardware working together, management gets easier. Performance and availability go up. Costs come down and time to deployment decreases drastically. Oracle recently completed a large ERP system migration in eight weeks with 12 people. Oracle products are engineered, tested, packaged, certified, deployed, supported, and upgraded together to provide something that no other vendor can offer: complete integration and optimization across the entire technology stack from applications to disk. Oracle s Integrated Hardware and Software in the Real World Oracle believes in running Oracle applications on Oracle systems, and one example illustrates just how strong this belief is. When Oracle acquired Sun, the company needed to integrate Sun s IT systems and nearly 30,000 Sun employees into Oracle s IT systems as quickly as possible. Oracle needed to rapidly scale the data center to support the vastly increased demands for core business applications, as well as integrate IT resources from the acquisition. We needed to take Oracle s existing infrastructure and add 150 percent capacity to it to support the additional 30,000 employees, says Chris Armes, Vice President of Engineering at Oracle. 5

6 And we didn t have a lot of time. By consolidating our existing SPARC infrastructure from four Sun servers to two SPARC Enterprise M-Series servers running Oracle Solaris, we were able to realize more than US$50,000 in yearly savings on facilities costs alone. At the same time, overall performance increased two times for mission-critical processes, and disaster-recovery time was cut by 95 percent. It was a huge migration, but we did it all in less than eight weeks with only 12 people, says Armes. And the reason we could do it in eight weeks is because the whole stack, from the CPUs up to the applications, is engineered to work together. SPARC Accelerates Project Lifecycles Scoping Technical Design Solution Build Solution Test Product Readiness Staged Rollout Training Change Management Post-Implementation Review & Tuning Accelerate Projects with SPARC Accelerate Time to Value All behind-the-scenes testing, provisioning, and tuning at the factory comes out of Oracle s research and development budget instead of your IT budget, shrinking your project lead times and also removing the need for you to undertake costly and time-consuming application testing, delivering outstanding value for your investment. Capabilities That Power Innovation With Oracle s SPARC server family, organizations across the world are reducing data-center costs and complexity, streamlining IT management, maximizing system utilization and delivering the high performance that enables continuous service innovation. Oracle Solaris 11 is the best UNIX operating system to run Oracle applications, deploy mission-critical cloud infrastructure, and protect customer investments the Oracle Solaris engineering team has worked closely with the Oracle Database engineering team to deliver unique value that customers can only get from an Oracle solution. John Fowler, Executive Vice President, Systems, Oracle 6

7 RELIABLE, SCALABLE, SECURE Dramatically Reduce Business Risk Across The Enterprise With budgets squeezed more than ever, IT is under pressure to support the business and do more with less in the data center. In an attempt to meet the demands of the business, there is a temptation to purchase commodity technology. However, compromised technology means higher risk as it not only costs more to run, but needs to be replaced more frequently, further increasing the risk of business disruption. Keeping downtime to an absolute minimum is critical for any enterprise. However, the complexity of existing infrastructures prevents many from changing their technology, compromising business flexibility and performance. This risk is minimized with Oracle s SPARC servers, which can simplify your infrastructure and provide highest levels of application availability, rapid fault recovery, and an ability to scale seamlessly without impacting mission-critical applications accelerating implementation times. SPARC Technology Does Not Fail Oracle Solaris is the centerpiece on which Oracle delivers integrated hardware and software solutions that are reliable, scalable, and secure. Customers have been deploying SPARC technology for 25 years, and today thousands of customers worldwide depend on SPARC technology. This is typically for one reason: SPARC technology doesn t fail. SPARC servers offer the capabilities you need to manage risk in a way no other vendor can match. Besides mission-critical reliability, SPARC technology also offers an exceptionally secure environment, including on-chip encryption capabilities, a robust cryptographic framework, the Oracle Solaris Trusted Extensions feature, and virtualization capabilities. Oracle s SPARC servers deliver best-in-class reliability by allowing you to Reduce downtime with hot-swappable components. Simplify administration with remote-management tools. Prevent faults before they occur with predictive self-healing capabilities. Built and Tested by Oracle, So It Works for You Oracle products are built together and tested together at the factory, delivering ever greater reliability across the entire technology stack, from applications to disk, so you gain products that simply work cutting your resolution and testing times. SPARC and Oracle Solaris Roadmap Delivered T4 +1x Throughput +5x Thread Strength In Test M-Series +6x Throughput +1.5x Thread Strength In Test T-Series +2.5x Throughput +1.2x Thread Strength In the Lab M-Series +2x Throughput >1x Thread Strength M-Series +2x Throughput +1.5x Thread Strength T-Series +2x Throughput +1.5x Thread Strength Oracle Application Accelerators Database Query Compression Encryption Cluster Interconnect Application Data Protection Oracle Solaris 11 Oracle Solaris 10 U10 Oracle Solaris 11 Update Oracle Solaris 10 Update Oracle Solaris 11 Update Oracle Solaris 10 Oracle Solaris 11 Update Oracle Solaris 10 Oracle Solaris 11 Update Oracle Solaris 10 This roadmap is constantly being updated please see latest roadmap here: oracle.com/us/products/servers-storage/servers/sparc-enterprise/public-sparc-roadmap pdf 7

8 Guaranteed Application Binary Compatibility Since 2000 Oracle Solaris is designed and tested to protect your software investments. The Oracle Solaris Binary Application Guarantee reflects Oracle s confidence in the compatibility of applications from one release of Oracle Solaris to the next and is designed to make requalification a thing of the past. This enables you to purchase new systems or upgrade the OS on older systems and continue to run your existing applications. Simply Move Not Migrate Avoid the risk and cost of a lengthy migration by simply moving from legacy SPARC to newer SPARC, as Oracle provides unmatched flexibility and investment protection by supporting both legacy and new applications within the same system ensuring you gain maximum long-term value from your investments. Plus, with the SPARC technology roadmap, you are safe in the knowledge that Oracle can support you today and tomorrow. With Oracle s commitment to its SPARC technology roadmap, thousands of customers worldwide know they can rely on Oracle s SPARC servers and the Oracle Solaris operating system to help them meet their strategic goals now and in the future. No other vendor offers such assurance. 8

9 MORE PERFORMANCE, MORE CAPACITY, LOWER TCO Achieve More, Spend Less The pressure is on to deliver more performance at a lower cost, more capacity with fewer resources, and more business value with legacy systems. Aging and hard-to-manage infrastructures can make it tough to deliver what your business demands but new SPARC servers allow you to perform more transactions and gain even higher ratios of consolidation of existing systems than ever before. Savings to the bottom line are delivered up front, with massive reductions in maintenance costs and reduced spending on power, space, and cooling. Spend Less keeping the Lights On Many customers believe that x86 is the low-cost solution to their IT challenges. While individual x86-based systems are extremely cost-effective, this isn t necessarily the case when building out an entire infrastructure. Improvements in the raw performance of the SPARC-based systems as well as the billions of dollars invested in R&D over the last 25 years to provide unmatched scale, RAS, and manageability mean that SPARC is more cost-effective for large-scale deployments and virtualized environments such as cloud computing and server consolidation. With SPARC technology, system utilization is increased, which means fewer physical systems are needed to run the same workloads. This results in less maintenance, less management, and fewer procurement hassles. By deploying fewer servers, system administrators dedicate less of their time to ongoing maintenance. This frees up resources for innovation and contributes back to the business unit in terms of creating new software, increasing integration, and being more responsive to business needs. Plus, having fewer systems means fewer systems to power and cool, resulting in lower utility costs. Reported Three-Year Costs of Industry-Standard and UNIX Environments per 100 Users Three-year costs per 100 users (in thousands of $) Industry- Standard UNIX Industry- UNIX Standard Power and Cool Maintain Manage Acquire UNIX environments report higher acquisition costs in year zero but lower total costs data center management, administration, and infrastructure over a three-year window. 1 One-time acquisition costs occur in year zero. 2 Average costs are for a three-year period. Cost information was collected over a series of engagements measuring overall data center costs. The term industry-standard refers to x86 server platforms. Source: IDC Business Value Research, 2011 Up to 80 percent of IT budget is commonly spent just sustaining current operations, and of this, more than 50 percent is spent on integration rather than technology. Oracle IT stacked with SPARC and Oracle Solaris can help reverse this statistic for your enterprise. 9

10 Complete Scalability and Built-In, No-Cost Virtualization In this age of data growth, you need systems that can support your enterprise now, and scale to meet its needs in the future. By offering seamless scalability within a single server family and an operating system, as well as tight integration with industry-leading business applications and middleware, SPARC technology is ready to satisfy the needs of your business today and tomorrow. When it comes to virtualization, Oracle lets you maximize the consolidation of applications onto a more cost-effective, scalable, and agile infrastructure while increasing flexibility. With Oracle VM Server for SPARC and Oracle Solaris Zones, you can create virtual server environments that can run a wide range of operating systems and take advantage of the latest platform advancements without changing applications and whilst protecting investments. In addition, Oracle VM Server for SPARC and Oracle Enterprise Manager Ops Center are offered at no additional cost with a hardware support contract on SPARC servers. Similar technologies from other vendors cost US$100,000 or more annually and add complexity to operations, as they are not always completely integrated into hardware stacks. Total Investment Protection Oracle Solaris binary compatibility guaranteed Runs most third-party applications (11,000-plus) Generations of processor compatibility Vertical integration with Oracle software Lower TCO Built-in no-cost security Built-in no-cost virtualization Built-in no-cost system management Reduced power consumption Reduced maintenance The Hidden Cost Factor When it comes to a server solution, among the most significant factors that affect total cost of ownership are the hidden costs such as hardware upgrades over time, unanticipated downtime (planned or unplanned), staffing costs, and additional services required to optimize the solution in real-world environments. Oracle SPARC technology minimizes these costs as it removes the need for additional services because SPARC technology is built and tested to work at the factory freeing up IT funds to be utilized elsewhere. Engineering out the Complexity for You Ever-increasing compliance regulations place ever-increasing pressure on enterprises and IT in particular. This is why Oracle engineers compliance into its technology, removing the complexities for enterprises in highly regulated sectors, enabling you to leverage Oracle s R&D investment rather than investing time and resources developing your own solutions. 10

11 Avoid a Costly Migration By choosing Oracle as your partner, you can significantly reduce costs by taking advantage of the pre-integration Oracle carries out as part of product development, as well as Oracle Solaris binary compatibility. This preserves your previous investments in custom applications and in older ISV applications that are still in use. So if you re running on SPARC, you can simply move to the latest servers, without the need to rewrite or recompile code, avoiding a costly migration. Plus, because you can consolidate quickly, the business can start reaping the rewards fast, achieving greater value sooner. You can use the savings from decreased integration costs and more flexible systems to take strategic advantage of innovations in areas like mobile, social media, and big data. Oracle Financing Making IT Affordable Accelerate your time to value with Oracle Financing and Oracle Leasing. Both offer some of the easiest and most affordable ways to deploy the Oracle SPARC and Oracle Solaris technology you need, when you need them. Why Oracle Financing? Enhance investment returns by mapping payments to benefits. Optimize IT budgets with flexible payment structures. Acquire the technology you need now and scale as needs change. 11

12 HELPING BUSINESSES ACCELERATE INNOVATION FOR MORE THAN 25 YEARS Oracle: Leading a Renaissance in Technology For 25 years, SPARC technology has delivered innovative capabilities that continue to set it apart, helping enterprises transform their existing infrastructure to one that supports and accelerates business innovation. No other vendor can demonstrate its commitment with an assured journey like Oracle has had for SPARC technology. SPARC Servers: The Best Platform for Oracle Database New innovations built into the processor level can be taken advantage of by Oracle Solaris to improve the operation of Oracle Database. The new database performance benchmarks demonstrate to the industry the leadership position of SPARC T5 servers. Oracle s SPARC T5 systems now have the ability to shut down and start up databases eight times faster than previously possible, and there is no downtime for resizing the system global area (SGA). What s more, all these performance benefits can be delivered while the system is fully encrypting data for secure operation. Oracle Solaris 11.1, introduces improvements in the scheduling of key database threads and transactions, and Oracle Solaris can now assign these to be executed faster using the critical thread technology in the SPARC T5 processor. Further optimizations have also been made to the memory management subsystem and the cryptographic framework. All these improvements are designed to enable database administrators to see higher levels of performance and reduce the quantity of assets required to operate typical database loads. SPARC Servers: The Best Platform for Oracle Middleware and Java Oracle also delivers superior performance and value for middleware and Java applications. New features have been added to optimize how Java transactions are handled, including advancements in Oracle Java Mission Control, which profiles Java runtime environments to better manage and monitor multiple Java Virtual Machine (JVM) instances and eliminate memory leaks that can impact performance. Out-of-the-box large page support has been introduced for up to 2 GB sizes, and new instructions have been added into SPARC T5 systems to remove some common Java performance bottlenecks. Oracle Solaris 11.1 is now able to store local Java objects in memory and decrease the latency required to access storage systems off the server. Additionally, Oracle Solaris 11.1 integrates the Dynamic Tracing feature probes to help administrators quickly and non-disruptively identify any performance issues. With the host of features added to SPARC T5 and Oracle Solaris 11.1, system administrators can deliver better performance to users and avoid the scalability challenges of running multiple JVMs. 12

13 What sets Oracle Solaris/SPARC apart? Innovative capabilities differentiating SPARC/Oracle Solaris for 25 years Manageability TCO Investment Protection Enterprise MGR/Ops Center Integrated Oracle Solaris OS Dynamic Reconfiguration No-Charge OS, Virtualization, Cloud, Systems Management SPARC Oracle Solaris Binary Compatibility Built-in Encryptions Per Core at No Extra Cost Oracle Solaris Compatibility Guarantee Most Third-Party Applications (11,000+) Optimized Solutions Customer-Ready Systems Unique Large-Scale Memory Energy-Efficient Designs Hardware Integrated Virtualization Layer Mix-and-Match Processors Generations of Processor Compatibility Long System Life Why Risk Moving Away from SPARC? With Oracle s SPARC Technology You can achieve better financial benefits, fl exibility, and time to market. You can move from SPARC to SPARC simply, quickly, and far more cost-effectively than migrating to another technology. You get the industry s lowest TCO, as well as excellent functionality and service levels. Oracle s published fi ve-year roadmap for application performance, cloud computing, and integrated business solutions is unmatched, and demonstrates Oracle s commitment to advancing SPARC technology. You gain access to a complete suite of business solutions that no other vendor offers. Reasons to Keep Your SPARC Technology 1. Performance: Best price/performance compared to IBM P7 and x86/vmware 2. Investment Protection: Avoid complex migrations and get pretested patch releases of Oracle software 3. Superior Virtualization: Improve utilization and performance for mission-critical systems 4. Security: No-cost, integrated software and hardware features 5. RAS: SPARC systems have the highest uptime and lowest downtime 6. Scalability: The most scalable server and OS, with up to 64 CPUs, 16 cores/cpu, and 8 threads/core 7. TCO: Achieve more business value at a lower cost with Oracle integration and optimizations 8. Five Year Roadmap: Oracle has a detailed public roadmap outlining an exciting future for its SPARC systems 9. Oracle Solaris: Get all the benefits of running the industry s leading enterprise OS ready for the cloud 13

14 Why Oracle? Powered by Oracle SPARC technology, you can significantly lower operational costs and reduce risk, while gaining the extreme performance and flexibility your enterprise needs to drive innovation across the business. Plus, with a robust roadmap, Oracle assures the highest levels of investment protection through 100 percent Oracle Solaris application binary compatibility, proven by hundreds of thousands of deployments over more than 20 years. SPARC servers deliver world-record performance for a wide range of enterprise applications Unparalleled mission-critical reliability at a fraction of mainframe costs On-chip encryption and Oracle security framework for performance and compliance Complete integration with Oracle Database, business applications, and middleware software End-to-end system and cloud management with standard APIs to support add-on third-party components Oracle Optimized Solutions Improved system utilization with comprehensive, no-cost virtualization capabilities built in Single point of contact for the entire technology stack When Oracle Software Runs on Oracle Hardware, Things Only Get Better Oracle customers and industry experts agree, with superior integration and optimization of the entire stack, Oracle systems are making more things possible in the data center both for today and for years to come, creating the ideal environment for your changing business initiatives. Swisscom hosts one of the largest banking infrastructures in Switzerland and has a big demand for fast and reliable systems. Within the context of a Proof of Concept, we were able to test the SPARC T5 server together with Oracle Enterprise Database 11g Release 2. The results convinced us the SPARC T5 proved to be about 2x faster than our current environment, running on SPARC Enterprise M8000. Particularly its power to handle heavy load was really astonishing. Together with our customer, we decided to migrate the current platform to SPARC T5 systems. Besides the performance boost, our customer can benefit from an improved price/performance ratio. Stefan Mühlebach, Chief Engineer, Finnova Core-Systems, Swisscom. 14

15 Oracle White Paper September 2013 Oracle Corporation World Headquarters 500 Oracle Parkway Redwood Shores, CA U.S.A. Worldwide Inquiries: Phone: Fax: oracle.com Copyright 2013, Oracle and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. This document is provided for information purposes only and the contents hereof are subject to change without notice. This document is not warranted to be error-free, nor subject to any other warranties or conditions, whether expressed orally or implied in law, including implied warranties and conditions of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose. We specifically disclaim any liability with respect to this document and no contractual obligations are formed either directly or indirectly by this document. This document may not be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, for any purpose, without our prior written permission. Oracle and Java are registered trademarks of Oracle and/or its affiliates. Other names may be trademarks of their respective owners. All SPARC trademarks are used under license and are trademarks or registered trademarks of SPARC International. UNIX is a registered trademark of The Open Group. 0912