HP Extended Cluster for RAC Continuous availability with the flexibility of virtualization

Executive summary
The concept of optimized resource utilization has moved to the forefront of every IT organization’s
agenda. The maturation of the clustering market has forced hardware vendors to differentiate their
products to gain a competitive edge. Consequently, these vendors have begun to offer some variant
of virtualization as the latest trend in high-availability capabilities.
Traditionally, every IT manager was confronted with the dilemma of having to balance risk and cost.
Reducing risk in an IT environment necessarily came at high costs; conversely, lowering one’s costs
engendered substantial risks. The prevailing model for risk reduction focuses on the duplication of
critical computing components, the elimination of single points of failure, and the potential use of a
secondary facility to continue operations in the event of a catastrophic loss of a primary data center.
Although this approach demonstrates diligence toward risk management, it also comes at the expense
of duplicative and underutilized resources. HP Extended Cluster for RAC (Real Application Clusters)
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now addresses part of this utilization shortfall by taking advantage of the advancement in
virtualization technologies. HP is regarded as the industry leader for virtualization and is continually
raising the bar on optimized resource utilization.
The HP product line encompasses both high-availability and disaster-tolerant solutions. Coupled with
its powerful virtualization capabilities, HP is the only vendor offering products that seamlessly
integrate the three concepts of high availability, disaster tolerance, and virtualization. To illustrate this
compelling value proposition, this white paper will examine the HP solution for Oracle® RAC.
HP Extended Cluster for RAC combines the high-availability product, HP Serviceguard Extension for
RAC (SGeRAC) and the disaster-tolerant solution, HP Extended Campus Cluster. Moreover, when
integrated with BEA WebLogic Server and virtualization tools, the net result is a compelling solution
that specifically addresses risk reduction and capitalizes on IT investment in any environment that uses
an Oracle9i RAC database.
HP Extended Cluster for RAC enables a single Oracle database to be shared across two data centers,
up to a distance of 100 km. Because the two sites are functioning as a single virtual entity, all
resources can be utilized at all times. The ability to meld distributed IT components into a
homogeneous resource pool is made possible by the HP Virtual Server Environment (VSE) portfolio of
solutions.
Virtualization enables full resource utilization within an enterprise while still maintaining previous
levels of availability and data protection. Because data is replicated and synchronized between data
centers, the entire computing environment is said to function as a single virtual entity. A distance of
100 km between the data centers, for instance, will not preclude an administrator from managing the
application and data as if it were a traditional RAC application located in a single data center. Thus,
whether an IT environment is located in one data center or across two or more, HP solutions are
designed to protect mission-critical applications against hardware and software failures, planned or
unplanned.
With the VSE, HP has created a unique solution that provides unrivaled levels of risk management
and return on IT investment, and it has simultaneously enhanced an enterprise’s ability to rapidly
accommodate and capitalize on volatile business conditions.
By extending a RAC solution over distance with more efficient use of resources, HP has demonstrated
that global virtualization has arrived.
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Oracle RAC technology allows multiple instances of an application to access a single logical database across multiple servers, with all nodes
able to concurrently execute transactions against the same database.
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