Engineered Systems: An Overview of Business Value

Transcription

1 An Oracle White Paper October 2012 Engineered Systems: An Overview of Business Value

2 Table of Contents Compute Systems... 1 Evolution of the Datacenter... 2 Wave 1: Rack Mounted Servers... 2 Wave 2: Blade Servers... 2 Wave 3: Purpose Built Servers... 2 Purpose Built Server Value... 3 Management... 3 Flexibility... 4 System Design... 5 Self-Service/Cloud... 6 Technical Innovation... 6 Conclusion... 8

3 Compute Systems The history and evolution of datacenters in the modern client-server world has followed several trends. Those trends have been for increased compute density, increased modularity increased utilization, less custom development and ease of use. Broadly speaking, those trends lead to a lower total cost of ownership (TCO) and a re-deployment of valuable IT resources on more business focused and revenue generating activities. These trends continue today in the data center compute space with the next level of innovation that focuses on simplified systems design where software and hardware are engineered together. This model can be seen in the Apple ecosystem and in the datacenters of Google and Facebook. Purpose built machines that optimize for workload types and address key bottlenecks in system performance are the next wave of datacenter computing. The leading vendor in this next wave is Oracle. An entire product line called Engineered Systems is devoted to the optimization and TCO demands of the computing future. 1

4 Evolution of the Datacenter Exploring datacenter history can help properly frame where the datacenter computing market is going and the drivers that continue to push computing forward. The trends remain remarkably consistent even as technology advances with better, faster and more affordable solutions. Wave 1: Rack Mounted Servers The first client-server data centers in the 1980 s were really just networked stand alone PC s. This trend lasted a very short time and computer manufactures quickly came up with rack mounted servers. The model of client-server and of consolidated compute services was attractive against the very high costs of mainframe and mini-computer domains. It allowed modularity and more flexibility to meet business needs. Additionally, rack mounted servers came in standard unit sizes (rack units), were expandable and contained the sprawl associated with stand alone machines. Wave 2: Blade Servers The next wave of the datacenter compute environment started in the early 2000 s and was in response to low server utilization, data center floor space costs and the relative non-interrelatedness of rack mounted servers. Blade servers are highly compact, share common form factors and are interchangeable in rack-mounted enclosures. In combination with virtualization these general purpose systems provided a leap in compute density, flexibility and service integration. Workloads could be dynamically moved from one compute node to another, tools were developed to manage the environment and server utilization rates went up. This wave also saw the maturation of Storage Area Networks (SAN) and defined tiering to address varying performance needs among applications. As a result of these advances TCO was lowered. Wave 3: Purpose Built Servers In 2008, Oracle introduced the Exadata database machine. This is considered the first widely accepted purpose built server and is the next wave of data center compute design. A purpose built server is one that is designed for specific kinds of workloads and uses two primary avenues to create business value. The first vector is the systems design. If for example, you required a lot of Input/Output (I/O) capacity that is common with database workloads you would design a system that balanced those needs against other system requirements. System design also includes other hardware components such as storage and networking. The second vector is software. By integrating software and hardware together it is possible to optimize workloads at an overall lower cost with higher performance levels. General purpose systems such as rack mount servers and blade servers lack both hardware and software optimizations. They also tend to be hard to manage with many different configurations, operating systems, firmware versions, virtualization capabilities and administration consoles. Appliance devices such as Intrusion Prevention Systems (IPS), Secure Socket Layer (SSL) accelerators or firewall devices lack vertical expandability and flexibility. Appliances are easy to manage with limited choice and limited options. The middle ground is a purpose built server that captures the best of both approaches.

5 Purpose Built Server Value Three main aspects of purpose built systems that lead to enterprise value are management capabilities, flexibility and system design. Management In most IT environments, the operational and support costs are the primary cost drivers 1. The upfront costs of hardware and software are often the most affordable part of the TCO equation and are the easiest to quantify. Yet, most organizations underappreciate that fact. When solution proposals are evaluated it is easy to focus on the bottom line numbers without considering either implementation effort (design, cabling, installing, configuring) or staffing time required to maintain the systems (administration, management, change). Figure 1 IT Cost Allocation Oracle Enterprise Manager 12c One of the keys to any modern compute environment and cost containment is a robust tool set to manage hardware and software resources. Oracle Enterprise Manager 12c allows full stack control from the hardware level (storage, compute, network) through the software level (firmware, OS, virtualization, application) to the service level (cloud: self-service, on-demand, elastic). No other platform has an integrated top to bottom management solution. The vast majority of current data center deployments will have a tool for each of the following from separate vendors: storage, network, compute, OS, virtualization, application and service aspects. The IT resources required to manage, implement, integrate and keep up to date all of these diverse tools and gather a cohesive view of the compute environment is a tremendous staff and cost burden in terms of time, training, error rate, availability and serviceability. With Oracle Enterprise Manager 12c it is done with a single tool where responsibilities are provisioned according to an organizations business practices. With Engineered Systems it is provided at no cost. Train once, execute everywhere. Virtualization Virtualization has been a significant and valuable tool for driving down IT costs over the last decade. It is now considered a mature space with most organizations taking advantage of those capabilities. Enterprise manager 12c includes the ability to manage virtualization features found in Engineered Systems. Again, it is provided at no cost. Why pay for virtualization when it comes for free? Supportability Supportability is a measure of the ease with which an environment can be managed/maintained and includes many aspects. Updating and maintaining software (firmware, OS, applications) is one of the 1 Credit Suisse, Philip Winslow, Dr. Exalove: How I Learned to Stop Worrying (about Sun) and Love Exalogic Too, Equity Research, Oct

6 most complex, risky, and undesirable IT tasks. Because Engineered Systems are modular and configured at the factory they can be maintained like an appliance even though they aren t. Updates to the entire software stack can be done at once without having to figure out different software version conflicts and taking months to get through an update stack. Rolling maintenance updates provide business critical continuity and frees management to focus on business objectives rather than IT. Engineered Systems come with Oracle Platinum Support which entitles the customer to a quarterly patch update that Oracle will apply for the customer. Platinum Support also offers a 5 minute response time. No other vendor can match this level of service or integration. Flexibility From a hardware perspective flexibility describes a systems ability to re-allocate resources within the existing system and the ability to grow both vertically and horizontally. Appliances have zero vertical scalability and general purpose blade systems are challenged growing vertically at scale as well. Engineered Systems can easily scale both ways. Speed to deployment The second largest pie slice in an IT lifecycle is implementation cost. This includes considerable time designing the system components to work together. From the SAN, to the compute, to the network at a high level to the Fiber Channel (FC) Small Form Pluggable (SFP s) connector manufacturers, Flash memory footprint and fan specifications at the low level. And on the software side, firmware versions, OS versions, software update strategies overlaid with Management Interface Bus (MIB) attributes in a Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP) monitoring integration and you quickly end up with an alphabet soup of standards, version conflicts and potential maintenance headaches during the design phase. Once you ve got everything designed you need to actually set it all up. First there is un-boxing of equipment, validation of the Bill of Materials (BOM), racking of the servers and cabling everything together. The next step is configuration where all the gear is configured with environment specific variables. This is where the most issues are encountered. And finally, testing to ensure all the stuff that was designed actually works as planned. It s a long process. With Engineered Systems, the implementation time is measured in days, not months. This is achieved by pre-integrating hardware and software requiring only final configurations for network and environments once on site. All systems are assembled in a factory in Oregon and run through a battery of automated tests before ever being shipped. An initial customer requirements spreadsheet is collected before testing commences and the systems are tested as if they were at the customer site. The time to market and staff cost savings this approach delivers is truly unmatched in the server market. Modular components Like blade systems, Oracle uses standardized modular components across most of its Engineered Systems line. The Zettabyte File System (ZFS) storage appliance components, compute nodes and InfiniBand switches are standard. To increase capacity vertically these components are duplicated within the rack. Expandable

7 Blade servers are characterized by their ability to be swapped in and out of chassis in a rack. They are modular, upgradable and generally provide a growth path if an enclosure is not fully populated. Oracle has taken a similar approach yet simplified and at the same time extended the concept. Most Engineered Systems come in standard rack sizes ranging from 1/8 th of a rack, to a ¼ to a ½ or full rack configuration for vertical expansion. To scale horizontally, up to 8 racks can be connected via InfiniBand to create very large, highly available clusters of compute resources that are fault tolerant and create a grid compute fabric. Upgradable As time progress newer and better versions of server infrastructure is released to the market. Much like blade enclosures Oracle protects the value of the customer s investment in Engineered Systems. Newer hardware versions of compute, storage and network infrastructure are compatible with older versions and can be co-hosted in the same rack. System Design System design is the secret sauce of Engineered Systems. It is where software meets hardware to deliver the supportability, manageability, serviceability, availability and market leading value that purpose built machines deliver. In general, there are three types of server constraints found depending on the type of workload and optimizing for each constraint leads to a purpose built machine. Oracle has a product offering for each workload constraint and additional purpose built machines to fit specific industry needs. Input/Output Input/Output constraints describe data flowing in and out of a server. Database, data warehouse, operational data stores, backups/recoveries and snap shoting are all examples where high data flows are required either on a sustained basis or an intermittent basis. General purpose systems are optimized for no specific workload type so they may over provision compute, memory or other resources relative to I/O. In addition, general purpose systems have not incorporated system design innovations such as Flash Cache, Hybrid Columnar Compression (HCC) or intelligent storage into their designs. Combining those features with a 40 Gb InfiniBand network pipe leads to performance gains that are a minimum 50x of any competing system. Value is self evident. Compute The compute nodes in a system are where program logic is executed. The most compute intensive tasks tend to be on the middle tier of a typical 3 tier model. Common workloads would include those that run on an application server like Service Oriented Architecture (SOA), human resource applications or Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems. The key word for these workloads is application. Oracle has designed ExaLogic as a middle tier solution to address the specific needs of these types of workloads. Memory Memory is a constraint to almost all applications but for some applications it is a critical bottle neck. Memory intensive workloads are those that require extremely fast processing of data and are usually found in decision and business intelligence systems. The data sets tend to be very large and the need for quick answers is measured in minutes, not days. High Availability

8 While not a hardware constraint, high availability (HA) is a requirement for any enterprise hardware deployment. Engineered Systems are built for HA. Multiple compute nodes are built in, storage is double or triple mirrored, networks, power and fans are redundant. Engineered Systems are truly systems that are designed and engineered to work together. Self-Service/Cloud The next wave of computing is characterized by cloud features. The National Institutes of Standards and Technology at the United States Department of Commerce 2 defines cloud computing as: Cloud computing is a model for enabling ubiquitous, convenient, on-demand network access to a shared pool of configurable computing resources (e.g., networks, servers, storage, applications, and services) that can be rapidly provisioned and released with minimal management effort or service provider interaction. Furthermore, the essential characteristics are described as: On-demand self-service Broad network access Resource pooling Rapid elasticity Measured service Oracle s Exadata and Exalogic Engineered Systems have service models that meet and exceed these criteria for service provisioning. Technical Innovation Some key technology advancements have made possible the leap forward in purpose built machines. These innovations have produced the most advanced and peformant systems available in the market today. Intelligent Storage Enabling advanced system performance required taking a look at the whole system and how things are put together from front to back. In a traditional client-server model, the server side is typically broken up into 3 tiers. Those three tiers are the web tier, middle tier and data tier. Data is not stored in the data tier but rather in a Storage Area Network away from those tiers and accessed over a local area network running at 8 Gb. For many applications, this design has become a bottle neck and limits the performance of system design. Oracle has re-engineered this model by co-locating the storage with the compute nodes and connecting them with 40 Gb InfiniBand connections. Not only is the connection faster but InfiniBand also runs a different protocol that is faster than TCP/IP. Traditional SAN environments are relatively dumb. But, by re-imagining how these pieces are configured and by moving processing power into the storage area, less data needs to be sent back out 2 Peter Mell, Timothy Grance. The NIST Definition of Cloud Computing, Special Publication , The National Institute of Standards and Technology, US Department of Commerce, September 2011.

9 over the wire to the compute nodes. This is especially important for I/O intensive workloads and consequently leads to lower licensing costs because fewer processors are required to be licensed where the database or data warehouse applications reside. A number of other advancements have been made in the storage management area. These include I/O resource prioritization and Automatic Storage Management. The latter of these technologies automates many traditional storage tasks, ensures data protection and ensures data integrity. Smart Scan Smart scan is a database specific technology that allows some of the database intelligence to be moved to the storage device. In traditional server-san architectures a database query is received by the database server which fetches the entire dataset from SAN which is then further refined on the database server. With smart scan, row filtering, column filtering and some joins are executed on the storage device. The end result is that a 1 TB dataset moved over I/O could now be as small as 2 MB. These are truly dramatic performance optimizations. Additional smart scan technologies are storage indexing which further reduces I/O requirements and data mining model scoring which reduces database server CPU and I/O. Other lower level smart scan technologies advance the reduction in database server CPU, memory and I/O. These are especially beneficial for table creation and back-up performance. Hybrid Columnar Compression (HCC) Hybrid Columnar Compression is a breakthrough market leading storage compression technology. Data stored with HCC is compressed on average 10x smaller than without compression. This translates into less storage requirements, faster database queries and tremendous cost savings. As the name implies, this storage compression technology uses both row and column compression together to achieve such dramatic compression rates. Data does not need to be decompressed for queries to be performed and it is only decompressed in memory when the data subset of the query has been identified. Smart Flash Cache Included with each storage server on Engineered Systems is Flash Cache. This is a technology that is faster than physical spinning disks but slower than Random Access Memory (RAM) and can lead to dramatic performance improvements. Smart Flash Cache allows a 10x improvement in blended read/writes over physical disks and in most cases active data is never accessed from physical disk. Network Engineered Systems use Inifiniband as the network to connect storage and compute components and to scale vertically and horizontally. InfiniBand is an open and standard technology used by several technology vendors. It has a very low compute overhead as well as the industry s lowest latency and highest throughput. These characteristics make it a requirement for application scalability and virtualization in cloud based computing models. Traditional connectivity options include fiber channel and Ethernet that run at 8 Gb and 10 Gb respectively. InfiniBand provides a single connection architecture that runs at 40 Gb. In addition, InfiniBand functionality is provided directly in hardware and does not consume CPU cycles that could be used for compute activities. One of the key features of InfiniBand is the Remote Direct Memory Access (RDMA) feature. When used with Sockets Direct Protocol (SDP) this allows direct memory access for Java and C++ workloads without the overhead of a TCP/IP stack. That translates into 4x greater throughput and 6x greater latency reduction over network designs used today. With InfiniBand networking you are getting an entire computing fabric within a single rack. Many other features serve to increase performance, lower latency and reduce the cost of the overall system design.

10 Conclusion The world is changing. The next wave of computing infrastructure is more integrated than ever, more simple, more flexible and easier to manage. The technical innovations and cost savings that accrue from purpose built infrastructure are self evident. Oracle is the only company that is providing the level of service, manageability and supportability that delivers the business value required for tomorrow's datacenter infrastructure. Engineered Systems designed for virtualization give you the best business decision and IT solution in single, manageable package.

11 Engineered Systems: An Overview of Business Value October 2012 Author: M. Brian Lee Oracle Corporation World Headquarters 500 Oracle Parkway Redwood Shores, CA U.S.A. Worldwide Inquiries: Phone: Fax: Copyright 2012, 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. Intel and Intel Xeon are trademarks or registered trademarks of Intel Corporation. All SPARC trademarks are used under license and are trademarks or registered trademarks of SPARC International, Inc. AMD, Opteron, the AMD logo, and the AMD Opteron logo are trademarks or registered trademarks of Advanced Micro Devices. UNIX is a registered trademark of The Open Group oracle.com