Responding to the Cloud Challenges

Cloud architectures and virtualization solutions have become highly sophisticated and complex to implement. They require a skill set that no single administrator has had to master in traditional data centers: system hardware, operating systems, network administration, storage management, applications. Without expertise in every single one of those domains, an administrator cannot take full advantage of the features and benefits of virtualization technology. This often leads to poor implementations with sub-optimal performance and reliability, which impairs the flexibility of a business.

Aside from the risks created by technical complexity and lack of expertise, companies also suffer from an inability to deploy new infrastructure quickly enough to suit their business needs. The administration involved in the deployment of new systems, and the time and effort to configure these systems, can amount to weeks. Provisioning new applications into flexible virtualized environments, in a fraction of the time required for physical deployments, generates substantial financial benefits.

Fast Deployment of Converged Infrastructure

Oracle Private Cloud Appliance is an offering that industry analysts refer to as a Converged Infrastructure Appliance: an infrastructure solution in the form of a hardware appliance that comes from the factory pre-configured. It enables the operation of the entire system as a single unit, not a series of individual servers, network hardware and storage providers. Installation, configuration, high availability, expansion and upgrading are automated and orchestrated to an optimal degree. Within a few hours after power-on, the appliance is ready to create virtual servers. Virtual servers are commonly deployed from Oracle VM templates (individual pre-configured VMs) and assemblies (interconnected groups of pre-configured VMs).

Modular Implementation of a Complete Stack

With Oracle Private Cloud Appliance (PCA), Oracle offers a unique full stack of hardware, software, virtualization technology and rapid application deployment through assemblies. All this is packaged in a single modular and extensible product. The minimum configuration consists of a base rack with infrastructure components, a pair of management nodes, and two compute nodes. This configuration can be extended by one compute node at a time. All rack units, whether populated or not, are pre-cabled and pre-configured at the factory in order to facilitate the installation of expansion compute nodes on-site at a later time.

Ease of Use

The primary value proposition of Oracle PCA is the integration of components and resources for the purpose of ease of use and rapid deployment. It should be considered a general purpose solution in the sense that it supports the widest variety of operating systems, including Windows, and any application they might host. Customers can attach their existing storage or provide storage solutions from Oracle or third parties.