These are required reads IMHO.

Ntirety VMware Must Read List

Anyone who has been reading my Blog, can see greater and greater emphasis on VMware with each passing article. As they say I have "drank the VMware Koolaide".

VMware is the industry leading Virtualization software and for very good reason. There a reason Oracle Corporation is afraid of VMware. When Oracle is pushing Oracle Exadata, Oracle RAC or Oracle's flavor of Virtualization VMware is offering a viable alternative. In most instances in my opinion a more cost effective and comprehensive alternative. 

Before I go any farther, let me be clear. I have been working with Oracle since Version 3.0. They have built an awesome database. They have amassed the most comprehensive suite of applications to run against it in the world. As a technologist, I admire a lot about Oracle Corporation. That does not mean they are the right answer for every situation. Lets think about Oracle Exadata. It was initially built on HP hardware. Now that Oracle has acquired Sun Microsystems, HP is company non-gratis. 

Lets review the Oracle Exadata, you would use Oracle hardware, Oracle database manager and in the perfect Oracle world an application that Oracle owns. When you look at the spec of the entry-level Exadata box, it is one big hunkering piece of hardware. At its lowest entry point It would cost a lot of money. If you took any mission critical application and put it on a big expensive piece of hardware, it would run faster. What you have done is bought a NASAR racecar. If all you have to do is run a race that would be a great solution. Yet much of your IT departments time is consumed with the day to day realities of dealing with maintaining a Mission critical application so it can meet the demand of the business. 

The Alternative VMware solution would deal with the issues of manageability of the environment. Instead of having physical server, where the unused resource cannot be reclaimed, when a particular mission critical process needed additional horsepower you would be able allocate the additional resource to it.  By stream lining the manageability of the environment, your staff would have additional cycles left over to look at the root cause of a particular mission critical environments performance issues.  Couple that with the fact you will save dollars as you consolidated your environments onto a VMware virtualized platform.  As they say I have drank the VMware Kool-aid.

As I embark down the path of better understanding Virtualization. Here are a list of must read books….

VMware Must Read Books - The Basics

Mastering VMware vSphere 4  by Scott Lowe - good fundamentals book, vSphere 5 version will be out in Oct 2011

VMware vSphere 4.1 HA and DRS Technical deepdive (Volume 1)  - need to know fundamentals first but this is the bible on HA and DRS. (required once someone understands fundamentals)

VMware vSphere Design by Forbes Guthrie, Scott Lowe and Maish Saidel-Keesing  (a required read)

VMware Books - Advance Reading

VMware vSphere 5 Clustering Technical Deepdive (Volume 2) by Frank Denneman and Duncan Epping

 Do You Know Any Good Books That Are Missing ?

If you know of additional books that you feel should be added to my list, please let me know. 

Michael Corey

Founder & CEO, Ntirety

www.ntirety.com 

My Personal Twitter Account: Michael_Corey

Ntirety Corporate Twitter Account: Ntirety

Database Administration As A Service@ is a registered trademark of Ntirety, Inc.

Everyone loves a good cat fight lets face it. Oracle announcement of the new Database Machine was met with mixed reviews. Oracle announced it as “The World’s Fastest Database Machine”. Companies like  www.netezza.com have a very different opinion.  Lets not forget my freinds at  www.dataupia.com.

Kevin Closson at Oracle is the expert on the topic of the Oracle Database Machine. Well EMC has it’s own concerns over the Oracle Exedata Machine. Chuck Hollis VP – Global Marketing CTO EMC Corporation is in a Catfight with Kevin Closson at Oracle. I for one am enjoying the banter between the two. I am finding it very educational  Judge for yourself…

I Annoy Kevin Closson at Oracle

What's This All About?

Well, it's about Oracle getting into the storage business, for one thing.  And perhaps a continual problem they've been having with DW performance: losing market share to more specialized players.

Rather than focusing solely on software, they've got the route of offering a pre-configured behemoth from HP running (according to Kevin) a customized version of Oracle you can't run anywhere else, making like-for-like comparisons somewhat difficult.

In his last post, it's pretty obvious that -- based on his condescending and somewhat nasty tone -- that I got under his skin a bit.  I've usually found that the vitriol in a response is in direct correlation to the sensitivity of the issue I've raised.

So it must have been a very sensitive issue indeed.

Rather than back off, I now (somewhat strangely) feel compelled to bore in a bit, and explore this in more depth. 

Come, join me on a an interesting journey here ...

So, Let's Dig In

My first general argument was -- what does this particular hardware bring to the picture, other than a cosy marketing relationship?

From a purely hardware perspective, we've got "storage nodes" (ostensibly generic HP x64 server kit with a $449 P400 RAID controller) running in a 12 SAS disks to 1 server ratio.  The disk is mirrored, no support of any space-saving RAID options -- strange, for such a large machine.

The "storage nodes" are interconnected to "database nodes" via Infiniband, and I questioned (based on our work in this environment) whether this was actually a bottleneck being addressed, or whether it was a bit of marketing flash in a world where multiple 1Gb ethernet ports seem to do as well.

Kevin seemed to take issue with my characterization of the storage subsystem as JBOD, and not "smart".  He's right about that, technically speaking that would make it a DAS (direct attached storage) configuration, as opposed to SAN, NAS or other topologies.

However, I don't think too many storage people would look at a $449 SAS RAID controller with 512MB of RAM and an "optional battery backup unit for cache" as excessively "smart".

Kevin seemed to agree (it's not clear, though) that the Infiniband didn't bring much to the party.  We'll leave that one open for now, pending further clarification by Kevin.

And, with regards to disk hardware, he didn't try to justify the RAID 1 on either performance or availability grounds (debatable, though), but did seem to state that I had a certain lack of imagination as to what might be possible in the future. 

Being a storage guy, I know that the real issue isn't the disk, it's being able to get to your data if one of the "storage nodes" fails.  And since this type of architecture doesn't know how to share storage, you're forced with putting all of your data in two places, in case one node fails.  Unlikely that we'll see something more space efficient in the forseeable future.

And Then There's The Open Software Question

Not "open" in the sense of open source code et. al., but open in the sense of "I can run this software on any reasonable choice of server and storage". 

Kevin is pretty clear that this particular version of Oracle is available in one place and one place only -- the hardware that Oracle sells.

Now, we could debate the pros and cons of this (as I'm sure will be debated in the future), but it's a clear departure from past Oracle "runs on anything" strategy. 

And you just have to ask yourself the question -- why is this?

I'm guessing that all Oracle sees is a version of Linux.  Probably not Oracle's version, since I understand that HP has its own versions that it prefers, but I could be incorrect on this.  It doesn't see the "smart" RAID controller.  It doesn't see the Infiniband, that's abstracted as well.

So it appears to be a "business choice", rather than a technical requirement.

From a purely customer perspective, it makes it hard to see how much value comes from the hardware, and how much comes from the software.  We'll never see side-by-side comparisons of this particular software running on potentially faster/cheaper/better servers and storage, will we?

Alternative Approaches To Scale-Out

Scaling out a DW environment horizontally is nothing really new, not even for Oracle environments.  Indeed, EMC and Oracle (along with Dell) have done scale-outs with moderate-sized arrays (not big honkin' ones as Kevin suggests), moderate processors and standard-grade 1Gb ethernet connections.

We get pretty good cost-effective DW performance this way, not only with Oracle, but with DATAllegro, Vertica, SQLserver, UDB and a bunch of others.  And, taking this approach, there are great answers for things like backup, business continuity, security, storage management and every other joy that comes along with having dozens of terabytes of important data in a DW/BI environment.

From what we can tell about Oracle's standard pricing (exclusive of the steep discounts they're currently offering to get people to try this stuff), it looks like a very, very expensive solution by comparison.  [Warning: the power that these machines consume is not free ... if I get a moment, I'll get someone to run a power usage comparison.  I'm guessing it'll be eye-opening, given what they're doing on the hardware architecture]

If it ran faster than other alternatives, at least we'd have a basis for comparison. 

But we're not going to get that anytime soon, are we?

And, An Apology, Sort Of

Thoughout his post, Kevin takes me to task for not researching white papers, his previous posts, etc.  and thus came to some incorrect conclusions, particularly in regards to the nature of the software that Oracle is promoting as part of this bundle.

Sorry, Kevin, I could have done a bit more homework in this regard -- thanks for clarifying.

This Should Be Interesting

To read the rest of the article.....

For now we all have a ring side seat as Kevin and Chuck go at it. 

Posted by Michael Corey, Founder & CEO

www.ntirety.com

A number of annoucements have come over the wire today. They all talk about Microsoft SQL Server add-on code-named Kilimanjaro that is due to be released in 2010. Annoucement after annoucement kept coming out. I was planning on ignoring it. I thought to myself, SQL Server 2008 just came out this year. Why are we hearing about Kilimanjaoro. It reminded me of when IBM would launch a press release on a fututre product and the world would stop and wait till the IBM version came out.

Then it struck me yes, I want to hear about  Microsoft SQL Server Kilimanjaoro now. With Databases growing 3-5 times there size every 3 years. I need to know Microsoft SQL Server will be able to handle  hundreds of terabytes or even a petabyte of data in the next few years. I need to know It will have that capabilty, becase every day I look at my SQL Server databases and they keep getting bigger and bigger. 

So with that in mind let me share with you the information week article. Since it talks about  Microsoft's first data warehouse appliance, code-named Madison. Given the Oracle Exadata annoucment its only fitting we talk about the Microsoft data warehouse appliance. 

Microsoft Reveals Plans For 'Kilimanjaro' SQL Server

 In my life I have learned there are always two sides to every story. Why am I not surprised that vendors like www.netezza.com  have a very different opinion of the new Oracle Database Machine Exadata. On September 29, 2008  Internetnews published such an article in their web site.I miss the days of computerworld, when they were a paid publication and would take everyone on.

Oracle's Rivals Dismiss Hardware Foray

Where the beef? is the operative phrase

By Richard Adhikar

Oracle's competition is rejoicing over the company's announcement of the HP Oracle Database Machine, unveiled with much fanfare at Oracle OpenWorld 2008 in San Francisco earlier this week.

In announcing the product, Oracle (NASDAQ: ORCL) CEO LarryEllison told a packed hall that the rapid proliferation of data hasforced his company to go beyond software for a way to move data offdisks into the database server fast enough to cope.

He positioned it against offerings from Netezza(NYSE: NZ), which he said uses B-Tree, "which is old, I learned when Iwas in college," and from Teradata (NYSE: TDC). Both Netezza andTeradata, however, contend their products are superior to the HP (NYSE:HPQ) Oracle Database Machine.

"Our largest machine has 860 processors, so when we talk aboutmassively parallel, it's considerably more massive than Oracle's," TimYoung, vice president of marketing at Netezza, told InternetNews.com. Netezza offers an applianceconsisting of an SQL database stored on the disk rather than on theserver, and up to 860 snippet processing units, each consisting of afield programmable gate array (FPGA) and an IBM (NYSE: IBM) PowerPCchip running Linux.

"Whilst Larry says nasty things about us, the level of interest inNetezza since his keynote has skyrocketed," Young added. "On Wednesdaymorning most people on the planet had never heard of Netezza and onThursday morning thousands of people had heard of us." 

To read the entire article......

Posted by Michael Corey

www.ntirety.com

For those of you who could not attend Oracle open world and see the launch first hand. ZDnet on their site, has a great video clip.

I have debated to myself if I should comment on this or not. This is not the first time that Larry Ellison has gone down this path of where Oracle/Larry has invested in a company that builds hardware. What I like about this approach, he is partnering with a company HP that makes hardware.I think this approach will increase the likelyhood of this succeeding. The combination of HP and Oracle is a pretty compelling story.

This approach makes a lot more sense to me, than trying to do it from scratch.  God knows with database growing 3-5 times their size every 3 years. With the application explosion we have seen the success of companies like Netezza. www.netezza.com There is a clear market for this.

Lets not forget my friend’s Foster Hinshaw, President and CEO at Dataupia. www.dataupia.com  When I was building the Ntirety Database Administration Appliance, I met with  Foster for some advice. I was able to look under the covers at Dataupia and was blown away what they had built. I highly reccommend looking at Dataupia products suite. Meeting with Foster, helped Ntirety greatly with the building of our own database appliance.  Ntirety's Database Adminustrators use this specialized appliance to manage our clients Oracle and Microsoft SQL Server databases with.The Ntirety database appliance wakes up every few seconds and asks each database inour care, are you ok. Looking for situations we know could lead to a Database failure and proactively dealing with them. Doing it all with a very low foot print in the clients database environment.

The Ntirety Database Appliance, the specialized hardware has provided Ntirety a competitive advantage over all out competitors who also provide database administration service remotely. Ntirety has had an 8 year track record of near perfect client retention and satisfaction. Let me say that again, Ntirety has had an 8 year track record of near perfect client satisfaction and retention. The Ntirety database appliance has helped Ntirety gain efficiencies in how our database administrators do their jobs that has enabled Ntirety to keep prices competitive and still be 100% North American staffed.  So I get it. I think specialized hardware makes sense especially for databases.

I saw a blog entry I thought did an excellent job of commenting on Oracle new machine.

What is the Oracle Database Machine and Is It Needed?

Posted on September 25th, 2008 by Robin Bloor in IT Trends

You may have stumbled on the news that Oracle is now in the hardware business or to be more precise, it is in the database engine business - and by database engine I’m talking about hardware specifically built for running big database applications - and in respect of big databases applications, I mean big data warehouses.

On Wednesday Oracle CEO, Larry Ellison, unveiled the company’s Exadata Storage Server and a Database Machine - shown in the adjacent illustration, with the words Extreme Performance written down the side in red. The hardware is made by HP and you can think of this machine as being an implementation of the Oracle 11g database implemented over Oracle RAC with a complete Oracle software stack, plus Oracle Enterprise Linux.

From a software perspective much of this is familiar territory. The smart part is that the hardware has been designed for lightning query performance. Oracle claims that the HP Oracle Database Machine will run queries 10x faster or more. You can think of the whole configuration as having two parts; up to 8 HP Database Servers running Oracle 11g connected to 14 Exadata Storage Servers. The Exadata Storage Servers marry Intel multi-core processors with blocks of memory to specific disk resources, so that query processing for each disk happens “over the disk”. That’s where the performance comes from.

Does The World Need This?

It’s a logical question to ask. Database engines have been tried before (remember Britton Lee), but the only one that saw much success was Teradata. Other ideas like ICL’s CAFS (Content Addressable File Store) delivered the performance. But performance is never the problem with devices like this, it’s whether the overall architecture has longevity.

The fact that this is Oracle makes a big difference of course. The database giant has a right to try to move the industry along a different path - and I’m sure that this machine will see some quick adoption. On the HP side of the equation some commentators may wonder whether there isnt a product clash here, with HP also offering its excellent Neoview - based on the Tandem architecture. But first of all, HP is simply providing the iron, it is not selling the database machine. Secondly, Neoview performs best when dealing with mixed workloads whereas the Database Engine specifically targets multi-terabyte data warehouses. It is not a head-to-head clash although they will doubtless meet in the market place.

To read the entire article by Robin Bloor....

  What is the Oracle Database Machine and is it Needed

Only time will tell. For now, Oracle has once again entered the hardware business. This time with HP. Only time will tell.

Posted by Michael Corey

www.ntirety.com