12c displaces large amounts of EMC Fast VP for RAC functionality
Wednesday, October 3, 2012 at 08:48AM Exadata already has been displacing use of EMC VMAX in some accounts. With Oracle's committments, although many features have lagged, having a true 2nd source for storage to run mission-critical apps on is just too critical not to support. I think some of the technology has finally caught up to the strategic benefits.
Before 12c, there were important advtanges VMAX could offer vs. relying only on Exadata storage. Those seem to be going away.
Here are the key advantages EMC has previously laid out:
- Performance Tuning by allocating resources by policy
- Better utilization and performance by hot/warm/cold auto-tiering
- Simplified Management - virtual provisioning
- Better Flexibility through pooled storage
- Single pane of glass management
Source: http://www.emc.com/collateral/hardware/white-papers/h8123-oracle-rac-symmetrix-fast-vp-vsphere-wp.pdf
12c has obliterated all of these advantages.
Performance tuning at the plug-in/container level exposes another level of granularity - or two - and allows for cross-system dependencies to be modeled.
The tiering policies in VMAX have never been that accurate - it's an overlay on another tiering strategy inside of Oracle already. Extending ILM will be simpler to manage and should save a lot of space.
Single Pane management - It never really was single pane - DBA's still lived in Enterprise Manager. Now DBA's can have more insight into the storage.
I think the real question for Oracle customers is whether they can stomach some of the ZFS pain, particulary those that were saved by EMC in the last decade after being burned by Sun. Some of the hosting options will make that a little more palatable to pilot but some of my contacts say, yes, they are willing to give Oracle another chance.