Chapter 3 Concept and Architecture of Oracle Private Cloud at Customer

This chapter describes conceptual principles of the Oracle Private Cloud at Customer offering, and the architecture around which the system is built. The core system is an Oracle Private Cloud Appliance, which exists in two versions with significantly different physical network architecture. The system with Ethernet fabric is described here. For an equivalent description of the InfiniBand-based system, refer to Section 3.6, “Architecture of Oracle Private Cloud at Customer with InfiniBand Fabric”.

For years, Oracle Private Cloud Appliance has been combining cloud simplicity, agility and elasticity with deployment inside customer data centers, in order to run Oracle and non-Oracle workloads. Oracle Private Cloud at Customer extends the capabilities of the Oracle Private Cloud Appliance, by adding Oracle ZFS Storage Appliance ZS7-2 with up to 16 disk shelves, and Oracle Advanced Support Gateway. The gateway enables the most important factor in your subscription: complete management by Oracle of the entire infrastructure, deployed inside your own data center.

A web-based self-service management interface, Oracle Enterprise Manager 13c, gives the customer interactive access to service administration functions. Because the Oracle Private Cloud at Customer environment is hosted inside your data center, no firewall is implemented to govern client access. However, you are free to implement additional firewalls within your network if desired.

Figure 3.1 shows a high-level view of the Oracle Private Cloud at Customer architecture in a single diagram. From a technical perspective, the architecture is identical to Oracle Private Cloud Appliance X8-2, but it offers a lower maximum number of compute nodes, and adds optional storage capacity extension for the built-in Oracle ZFS Storage Appliance ZS7-2.

Figure 3.1 Oracle Private Cloud at Customer Architecture at a Glance

Oracle monitors and manages the Oracle Private Cloud at Customer infrastructure components, including the physical compute node hardware, network switches, power distribution units (PDUs), Oracle Integrated Lights Out Manager interfaces (ILOMs), and the storage. These operations are performed remotely by Oracle using the Oracle Advanced Support Gateway, which may be located inside your network DMZ.