Oracle Zero Data Loss Recovery Appliance - Finger pointing data in binary code on a computer screen with word data loss

5 Compelling Reasons for the Oracle Zero Data Loss Recovery Appliance

Reliable recovery is a non-negotiable requirement. And for mission-critical operations, data loss is inexcusable. As you consider your backup options, you will encounter the Oracle Zero Data Loss Recovery Appliance, Oracle’s enterprise-class backup solution. Here are 5 compelling reasons it should be at the top of your shortlist.

1. Optimised for Oracle databases

Built by Oracle for Oracle, the Appliance offers deep integration with the Oracle database for enhanced backup options. According to Oracle, the device performs 50x faster than traditional backup solutions when using incremental backups and can deliver sub-second recovery point objectives thanks to its real-time redo transport which sends data directly from DB server memory. Virtual full backup technology accelerates recovery time by as much as 800%.

2. Ultra-high performance

Your Oracle databases continue to grow exponentially and the Zero Data Loss Recovery Appliance has been designed with this fact in mind. Capacity starts at 2PB and easily scales beyond 282PB. Each appliance delivers 35TB backup and recovery throughput per hour, scaling up to 630TB in a six-rack configuration. This unprecedented capacity allows businesses to capture 6PB of database backups every hour.

3. Powerful management functions

The Zero Data Loss Recovery Appliance integrates neatly with other Oracle management tools to help simplify administration. Advanced automation features can reduce database administrator workloads by as much as 80%. The tight integration between database, software and hardware reduces resource requirements, causing TCO to fall by over 30% when compared to solutions from other vendors.

4. Built-in security

Immutable, incremental forever backups are encrypted and compressed as standard, protecting data against loss, corruption, theft or misuse. The Appliance also checks all incoming and replicated backups for Oracle block correctness; any deviations or errors are immediately quarantined for further analysis, helping to stop the spread of ransomware. Backups are further protected by the Exadata architecture which has been tested and hardened to reduce attack surfaces and cybersecurity risk.

5. Reduced costs

The Zero Data Loss Recovery Appliance creates savings across several domains. Consolidating enterprise-wide database protection while using database-aware compression and deduplication eliminates inefficient, standalone solutions and shrinks storage requirements by up to 40%. Automated admin tasks reduce workloads by 80%. And incremental forever backups lower networking overheads and operational costs.

As such, Oracle estimates the Appliance achieves a 62% lower total cost of ownership than rival systems. And that is before you consider the value of a system that offers zero data loss protection.

Ready to learn more about the Oracle Zero Data Loss Recovery Appliance? Contact the WTL team the WTL team today to discuss how this solution could revolutionise your backup and disaster recovery strategy.

 

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Three things your Solaris service provider must offer

How do you know if a potential Solaris service provider is right for you? Here are three things your ideal partner must provide.

Solaris System Administration

Day-to-day Solaris activities can be resource intensive, taking your engineers away from the strategic projects that will help your business grow. With a Solaris system administration service, you will be able to outsource many of these common tasks to a suitably qualified partner.

Your service provider should take care of activities like server administration, network management, dynamic tracing (DTrace) and debugging to troubleshoot problems in real-time. They should also be available to assist in an emergency, helping you to initiate your disaster recovery plan to accelerate your response and limit the impact on your IT services.

Effective administration should also be proactive, auditing and hardening security for instance. Similarly, planning software installation and storage allocations will ensure you have the resources required to meet demand now and in the future. Your partner’s expertise will help you better understand and plan budgets and resources to deliver the greatest return on investment and control costs.

Solaris Performance-Tuning

As a mission-critical platform, you need to be sure that your Solaris environment is fully optimised for performance and security. Using their experience and knowledge, your partner should be able to suggest potential improvements – and implement them too.

Potential opportunities for performance-tuning include network optimisation, Solaris virtualised performance and Sun clustering. In addition to optimising Solaris itself, your partner should also be able to assist with secondary factors, like network protocols and VLAN configuration to accelerate information flow.

Solaris System Patching

Although essential, installing patches and updates always present a risk to your system. Your ideal Solaris service partner will not only apply Oracle best-practice but will also provide the necessary skills and resources to assist with the full project lifecycle.

Your partner should assist with pre-patch planning, and risk analysis as well as assisting with the actual upgrade patching process. They will also advise about potential knock-on effects to other applications and services that may occur following Solaris update – and how to mitigate them.

In this way you can be sure that every patch is applied as smoothly as possible to reduce disruption and create secondary issues.

Conclusion

As you can see, your ideal partner must be deeply experienced with skills that cover every aspect of Solaris administration and support. Here at WTL we offer all these Solaris capabilities – and much more.

To discover how we can help your business get the most from your Solaris environment, please give us a call.

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Why migrate to Oracle Autonomous Database on Exadata Cloud@Customer?

As you plan the next stage of your data strategy, the issue of database hosting and architecture will become increasingly important. But with so many available options, how do you know which to choose?

Here are five great reasons why Oracle Autonomous Database running on Exadata Cloud@Customer should make your shortlist.

1. Ultimate control

One of the persistent concerns about cloud-based systems is sovereignty. Where is your data being held? Are those provisions compliant with GDPR and other data protection regulations?

Exadata Cloud@Customer offers all the elasticity and availability of the cloud – but everything is hosted in your on-premise data centre. In this way you retain complete control of your data at all times, instantly solving your sovereignty challenges without losing the benefits of cloud operations.

2. Increase performance and scale

Autonomous Database allows you to consolidate your existing Oracle databases into the on-premise cloud. Based in your local data centre, your latency-sensitive applications respond more quickly because they are not subject to the network traffic factors that affect cloud-hosted operations.

Oracle Autonomous Database running on Exadata Cloud@Customer offers exceptional performance too. The service scales automatically based on active database operations ensuring you always have enough resources available for ultra-fast response. The platform can be configured in four high-performance shapes offering up to 400 OCPUs and 479 TB databases, capable of supporting up to 12 million SQL Read IOPS and 300 GB/s SQL throughput. Which should be enough for even the most demanding enterprise operations.

3. Reduce IT complexity

IT sprawl is a significant concern in the cloud era, so any effort to consolidate and centralise resources is to be welcomed. Oracle Autonomous Database can be used to replace your existing Oracle databases, pulling both data and resources into a single cloud for simplified management.

The Autonomous Database also includes a collection of tools to automate configuration, indexing and tuning as well as threat detection and patching. These features reduce admin overheads and the risk of human error causing operational problems. Importantly, Oracle provides full management of the underlying Exadata Cloud@Customer platform.

4. Enable innovation

Because Exadata Cloud@Customer uses machine learning and automation to automate key activities, developers are freed to focus on other tasks. These machine learning functions can even be applied to building ML models – up to 10x faster.

Exadata accelerates multiple database models, APIs, and microservices. So your developers don’t need to be experts in integrating and tuning multiple single-purpose databases. The less time and resources spent on the environment, the more you can invest in innovation.

5. Improve operational efficiency

It may sit inside your firewall but the Cloud@Customer services acts like ‘the cloud’ in every sense – including being fully managed by Oracle. The pay-per-database model and automatic scaling functionality have been shown to reduce database management tasks by as much as 80%.

The use of autonomy and automation reduces manual management overheads. And you avoid common issues like database duplication and security fragmentation, which are common to traditional stand-alone deployments.

Oracle Autonomous Database and Exadata Cloud@Customer are designed to help your business realise more value from its data. Through the use of machine learning, autonomy and automation, coupled with per-use resource billing, your business acquires a platform that accelerates digital transformation programs and maximises your IT budget.

To learn more about Oracle Autonomous Database and Exadata Cloud@Customer, please give the WTL team a call.

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Why choose Solaris managed services from WTL?

IT managed services provide a way for your business to stretch its IT budget and ensure your systems deliver maximum benefits. When you partner with WTL for Solaris and Linux-managed service you can expect the following five benefits:

1. Increased operational efficiency

By optimising your Oracle Solaris/Linux systems for performance, WTL immediately helps you realise the maximum available benefits from your systems. Our experts work to ensure you can achieve more from existing investments, reducing TCO and improving ROI. And as systems perform better, so do your processes and people.

2. Reduced operating costs

Under-optimised systems create bottlenecks and delays that reduce efficiency and increase costs. WTL’s optimisation experts not only ensure your Oracle software has been optimised for efficiency, we will also help to reduce the amount of resources required to ‘keep the lights on’.

3. Enterprise-level support and services

Oracle and Linux skills are in high demand, creating a shortage of experienced engineers for your team. Worse still, supply and demand is pushing salaries ever upwards. With managed services from WTL, hiring skilled Linux / Solaris engineers is our problem; but we make sure you always have access to the right people, skills and experience you need to keep systems up and running.

4. Minimised downtime

Because of the importance of IT, uptime SLAs are typically measured to ‘five nines’ (99.999%). Downtime is expensive and to be avoided at all costs – but how can you meet your obligations when your IT team is already stretched to the limit? By optimising your systems, WTL can help to address many of the issues that cause system failures in advance. And our helpdesk team is available round the clock to help you quickly recover Oracle servers after unexpected failures or disasters.

5. Improved strategic focus

Although vital, keeping the lights on is a significant drain on available resources and budget – Gartner once estimated that as much as 80% of IT budgets are spent on maintaining existing infrastructure and assets. WTL managed services can help reduce some of that burden by taking over many routine maintenance and administration tasks. This then frees your internal team to focus on the strategic projects that will help your business achieve its strategic goals.

Contact us to learn more

WTL tailors managed services to your needs, ensuring you have the correct coverage to help your business meet its digital transformation goals. We work alongside your stakeholders to implement a plan that maximises value from your Oracle Solaris / Linux systems – and which will help carry your organisation forwards.

To learn more about Linux / Solaris managed services from WTL, please give us a call .

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Is Oracle Cloud Infrastructure Ready for Use in Your Multi-cloud Strategy?

As digital transformation efforts accelerate, most businesses have realised that there is no one-size-fits-all cloud platform and are adopting a multi-cloud strategy.  Despite vendor claims, none of the major providers (AWS, Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud) offers the complete package.

To leverage the most appropriate and effective technologies (and maximise potential savings), organisations must adopt a multi-cloud strategy. The ability to ‘cherry pick’ the most appropriate functions and features allows for the construction of a platform optimised to the specific needs of the organisation.

So why should Oracle Cloud make your shortlist of potential partners? Here are three great reasons:

1. Oracle Cloud is designed for mission-critical workloads

For digital transformation to be truly effective, your business must be able to ‘cloudify’ its mission-critical operations. By offering bare metal servers, Oracle Cloud makes it extremely easy to lift and shift legacy applications and workloads into a hosted platform – but that’s only part of the story.

In recognition of the multi-cloud reality, Oracle has negotiated an alliance with Microsoft. This vendor partnership simplifies the process of deploying mission-critical workloads across the multi-cloud, enabling the construction of best-of-breed applications and services.

2. Oracle operates an ‘open’ cloud

Vendor lock-in is a common complaint about cloud vendors. Extricating data, or even moving it between clouds comes at an additional cost, often quite significant, as a way to discourage customers from changing service – or even building a multi-cloud operation.

Oracle acknowledges and supports the reality of the multi-cloud by encouraging openness. There are no charges for offboarding for example – if a customer wants to leave the platform entirely, they are free to do so without additional cost. This will help the 52% of businesses who report that an inability to move workloads between clouds has created barriers to achieving their strategic goals.

Oracle also applies open standards like Kubernetes and Kafka, helping to further reduce technology and vendor lock-in. In this way, customers are enabled to build the applications and services their business needs, without compromise.

3. Oracle Cloud simplifies hybrid operations

Having realised the benefits of on-demand scalability and resourcing in the cloud, many businesses are now seeking to replicate the same elastic capabilities in their on-prem data centres. This is in addition to demands for more generalised hybrid cloud operations.

Again, Oracle is ahead of the game, introducing technologies like Oracle Cloud@Customer which allows users to spread database operations between on-prem and the Oracle Cloud. Similarly, Dedicated Region provides all of Oracle’s public cloud services natively in the local data centre, available on a consumption-based billing model – just like the cloud.

Oracle Cloud effectively blurs the boundaries between cloud and local services to deliver a consistent, robust, scalable and future-ready platform for digital transformation. And that’s before you consider the back-office engineering required to deliver 99.99% uptime and a 4-minute monthly maintenance routine for maximum reliability.

To learn more about how Oracle Cloud Infrastructure fits into your multi-cloud future, please get in touch .