By Don Sullivan,
Product Line Marketing Manager
Business Critical Applications, VMware
Over the past decade, a vast sector of Oracle professionals and customers have come to understand that when they run Oracle Applications and database software on the platform of virtualized software known as vSphere, both the experience and results are profoundly improved. Certain notions have quickly evolved into well-known principles. These include the idea that all vSphere capabilities are complementary to all Oracle features, as well as the familiar refrain of “No Application Left Behind” which refers to the fact that when using modern versions of vSphere every application in existence becomes a candidate for virtualized infrastructure. Project Capstone solidified this claim by taking massively loaded database applications to heretofore unseen levels of performance by using an HP Superdome-X with IBM Flash array technology.
As VMware technology evolved from vSphere and ESXi to the full Software-Defined Data Center (SDDC), which includes NSX and VSAN, the fundamental proposition remained the same. That is, the unambiguous point that running Oracle on the SDDC made Oracle better in every respect. As the decade enters its final two years, the historic Oracle on vSphere proposition is approaching its crescendo architecture as the theme of the Hybrid Cloud dominates today’s technological banter. The VMware Cloud is a technological promise that is now “vRealized” (pun intended). By using the total SDDC image, referred to as the “vCloud Foundation Image,” and placing that image on bare metal public cloud hardware, VMware has achieved the essence of that Hybrid Cloud promise.
The VMware Cloud on AWS is the VMware full-SDDC stack running on AWS EC2 Bare Metal hardware (https://aws.amazon.com/vmware/). Operating Oracle on the VMware Cloud on AWS is the natural progression of the implementation of Oracle on VMware Technologies. Capabilities that a few years ago would have been relegated to the annals of science fiction such as Cross-Cloud (or intra Hybrid Cloud) are now reality. For example, vMotion can be used to transition Oracle workloads running on-premises to a public cloud resource. With this, considerations such as scaling Oracle workloads becomes a trivial operation. Oracle Real Application Clusters (RAC) can be implemented in the VMware Cloud on AWS as well as Data Guard. Downtime for the automated hardware and platform maintenance is eliminated. Features such as DRS Host-Affinity and VMware Cloud clusters that are smaller than four nodes will be standard options in the near-future.
The future has arrived early with the VMware Cloud on AWS, but the value proposition of running Oracle workloads on VMware technologies both survived the test of time and continues to thrive in modern Hybrid Cloud architectures.
Those interested in learning more about Oracle on the VMware Cloud on AWS can find more information here: https://learn.vmc.vmware.com/oracle.