Fujitsu SPARC servers

5 Reasons to consolidate your Solaris workloads on Fujitsu SPARC

There are two certainties in computing. First, the volume of data you hold will continue to grow exponentially. Second, your business will need to put that data to work to increase efficiency, develop new products and services, better serve your customers and strengthen profits.

For Solaris workloads, this will require new levels of scalability and flexibility, reliability and manageability and high performance. And this is where Fujitsu SPARC M10 and M12 servers can assist.

Features like the SPARC XII processor, Software on Chip architecture and a modular design will help businesses achieve more. But more than simply replacing existing hardware, M10 and M12 servers also offer opportunities to consolidate your Solaris workloads – but why would you want to?

1. Reduce running costs

Put simply, fewer machines means lower running costs. More efficient processor architecture means you can achieve more – and reduce power and cooling requirements. A smaller IT estate is also simpler to manage, requiring less intervention and support, freeing your engineers to focus on other strategic projects – or to reduce headcount if appropriate.

2. Reduce licensing costs

Every server requires a license of some kind – usually several – for OS, software and various client access rights. It makes sense that fewer servers, require fewer licenses, incurring fewer costs. Even if your new Fujitsu SPARC servers require additional per-core licensing, fewer physical machines are still easier to manage. This will make it far easier to ensure you have the correct level of coverage and avoid over/underspend – and to avoid fines for non-compliance.

3. Maximise ROI

Reducing operating, management and licensing costs all help to lower the total cost of ownership of consolidated Fujitsu SPARC servers. Which leaves plenty of potential to maximise return on investment moving forwards.

4. Maximise resource use

Consolidating servers encourages architecture design that maximises the use of available resources – and ROI. Carefully balancing workloads delivers superior performance and avoids unnecessary upgrades by using what you already have available in your Fujitsu SPARC servers – Oracle Solaris Zones are designed specifically for this purpose.

5. Simplify upgrade planning

Fujitsu M12 and M10 servers are specifically designed to be modular. As your Solaris data estate and processing needs grow, you can connect more SPARC servers to add additional capacity quickly and easily. This ‘building block’ approach to infrastructure offers a clear upgrade path for the future. And because the technology is already familiar, there’s no need to retrain – your engineers and developers will be able to hit the ground running.

Shrink to grow

Consolidating Solaris workloads with Fujitsu SPARC servers allows you to shrink your Solaris data centre footprint and grow your computing capabilities. We’ve outlined five good reasons to consider Fujitsu M12 and 10 servers here – but others may apply to your business – drop us a line to find out more.

Oracle Servers Return on Investment

Five Compelling Reasons to Consider Oracle Servers

In the age of virtual computing, hardware has become increasingly commoditised. Abstracting operations from the underlying hardware has helped businesses to reduce their hardware spend significantly.

Given that Oracle hardware is often perceived as as more expensive, why should your business consider increasing spend? Here are five reasons to look beyond the headline purchase price:

1. Optimised for Oracle software

Oracle software is built on Oracle hardware for Oracle hardware. Every application, particularly Java and Oracle Database, perform better on Oracle servers for this very reason.

It’s not just raw speed either. Oracle x86 servers offer improved uptime for Oracle applications too. You can consolidate, secure and scale mission-critical on Oracle servers.

2. Integrated, end-to-end security

IT security is now a strategic priority, placing the IT manager under increased pressure to ensure systems are properly defended against breaches. Running Oracle on Oracle allows you to control the entire tech stack, reducing the overlaps between technologies that offer hackers the best chances of breaking in

Oracle servers feature built-in encryption, application memory protection, Silicon Secured Memory (SPARC servers) and trusted boot capability to prevent undetected intrusions.

3. Complete solutions

Oracle software on Oracle hardware functions as a cohesive whole – everything you need to run mission-critical workloads is included in a single integrated stack. This simplifies management and helps to reduce your management overheads.

Built-in layered virtualisation capabilities are available at no extra cost, allowing you to achieve greater operational flexibility. There are no hidden costs or additional investment required for third party add-ons to perform activities that are included with Oracle as standard.

4. Maximum availability

Availability is critical for the data-driven business; Oracle servers are designed with this in mind. Redundant components and physical partitioning ensure that systems keep running in the event of a local failure for instance.

Oracle servers are also supplied with comprehensive real-time monitoring and fault management allowing your DevOps team to identify issues before they take your systems offline. And as you would expect from enterprise-class hardware, critical components can be hot-swapped with zero downtime when required.

5. Lower total cost of ownership

All of these factors combine to help reduce the total cost of ownership, easily justifying the initial outlay to purchase Oracle servers. Because the operating system and virtualisation technologies are included as standard, your business is already ahead.

Because Oracle virtualisation technologies have an unusually low-performance overhead, you can consolidate more workloads on each server. Similarly, Oracle operating systems (Solaris or Linux) are not only included ‘free’, but they have been optimised for maximum performance on the underlying hardware.

For any business running Oracle applications, Oracle servers are a no-brainer. The five advantages outlined here will quickly outweigh any headline cost-saving from purchasing commodity hardware. Over the longer term, low-cost hardware may actually cost more because of the missed opportunity of running Oracle on Oracle.

To learn more about running Oracle Database on Oracle hardware and the many advantages it offers your business, please get in touch.

Oracle spare servers for enterprise infrastructure and data centres in Birmingham

Why Oracle SPARC?

Choosing server technology is an important part of any businesses’ technology strategy and there are many factors affecting the decision. IT leaders should factor in the business platforms it should be running, will they be frontline applications or backup files, will it be cloud based or on premises, does it need to consolidate an existing server estate, what is the best technology the budget will allow?

What platforms will it be running?

For customers who are looking for server technology to run Oracle database and applications, Oracle SPARC servers are fully optimised for Oracle databases and applications and will deliver the best performance and security available. Oracle SPARC’s reporting and analytics capabilities are incredibly fast and inbuilt virtualisation features secure data and improve application performance. Whilst SPARC is optimised for Oracle applications, it is non-proprietary, enabling transformational performance and efficiency gains for most enterprise applications, at an affordable price point.

Cloud or on-premises?

Most businesses today are using the cloud, the Flexera State of the Cloud Report for 2019 found that 94% of businesses surveyed used cloud services, with 91% using public cloud, 72% using private cloud and 69% using at least one public and one private.

For organisations that are considering migrating services to the cloud, or extending onsite data centres to the cloud, even if it is not an immediate plan, servers that have been designed with cloud services in mind will have greater longevity. By taking a cloud-first approach to technology infrastructure development, Oracle has built its cloud solutions using the same SPARC technology that it uses in its servers allowing customers a clear path to the cloud. Customers undecided on when they will move to the cloud can purchase SPARC servers to use on premises, easily moving to cloud services with few migration costs, and without the need to change applications, driving value from today’s investment in the future.

Server consolidation

By consolidating large numbers of smaller servers onto fewer large symmetric multiprocessing (MSP) servers the workload demands on compute power are evened out improving overall utilisation and performance. Large SMP servers simplify the deployment of applications, and less servers to manage means less management overhead, meaning further savings. Oracle approaches server consolidation with different levels of partitioning within SPARC servers, involving PDoms, Oracle VM Server partitioning and Oracle Solaris Zones technology, getting increasingly more granular and flexible. Different workloads have different service levels and will utilise resources differently, which will require different configurations. Oracle’s centralised, single management console simplifies the management of the consolidated servers.

Cost

Oracle SPARC has been priced competitively in the enterprise server market, with feature rich hardware at comparatively lower prices than many other vendors. Cost savings can also come from efficiency gains, enabled because SPARC servers perform more business transactions at a faster rate, so customers need less of them, keeping hardware costs and software license costs down.

Performance

Performance is critical for servers that will be running enterprise applications and serving mission critical data, and this is another area where Oracle SPARC performs well. Core and processor performance are strong, and specific features like Software in Silicon have been designed to ensure faster enterprise apps.

Security

Oracle has built in security from the group up, with advanced encryption for data at rest, in transit and in storage, with no degradation of performance. Oracle’s Silicon Secured Memory provides 24/7 intrusion protection. In addition, SPARC servers running Oracle Solaris offer protection for applications in memory, access controls, automated patching, and security compliance auditing.

Whatever the business requirement, application or environment, Oracle SPARC is a viable server technology that can meet the needs of a modern business, today and in the future.

Useful Links

Flexera State of the Cloud Report – 2019

SPARC and Solaris

Ten Reasons to Run Your Business on SPARC with Oracle Solaris

In a list of top ten predictions for the data centre in 2018 published earlier this year, IDC talked a lot about standardisation. In the complex world of the enterprise data centre, standardised hardware, software and processes can bring huge benefits in terms of scalability,streamlined maintenance contracts, improved user knowledge resulting in less downtime (hopefully) due to human error and faster deployment of additional resources.

If you are looking to standardise your server infrastructure, Oracle SPARC servers offer a more scalable and highly reliable server architecture than leading popular alternatives for business-critical systems and applications. The high-end, mid-range and scale-out servers in the SPARC portfolio mean they are a great choice for enterprise workloads. SPARC servers also run Solaris, which provides a secure, robust and flexible foundation for public, private and hybrid cloud environments.

So, what are the main reasons for choosing SPARC systems with Oracle Solaris?

1. Namely because you can enjoy transformational performance and efficiency gains, particularly for Oracle databases and applications, which are greater than with any other commercial processor.

2. Because your hardware is optimised to match your applications and databases. SPARC servers have been engineered to optimise the entire technology stack so that you can your databases and applications securely, speedily and more cost effectively.

3. Prior investment in applications is not wasted. SPARC servers support your legacy applications, both on premise and in the cloud, so your existing investment is optimised and your data centre can be modernised with minimal disruption.

4. Analytics are crucial in today’s data driven enterprises, in fact, IDG’s CIO Tech Poll: Tech Priorities for 2018 found that 60% of CIOs surveyed planned to increase spending on analytics this year. SPARC servers have built in features to accelerate database queries and offer data decompression for better analytics performance.

5. Oracle developer tools are built to work better on SPARC servers and can help identify coding errors, improve security and get new applications to market faster.

6. Open source software is free, non-proprietary and incredibly flexible. What’s not to like about that? SPARC servers running Oracle Solaris allow developers to adopt open source and take advantage of new security and analytics capabilities on your own scripts.

7. & 8. Security is paramount in the enterprise data centre. SPARC servers offer built-in encryption and Software in Silicon and Solaris protect data at rest and on the move. In addition, SPARC servers and the Oracle Solaris offer protection for applications in memory, access controls, automated patching, and security compliance auditing.

9. To future proof your investment, Oracle offers a guarantee that they will delivery binary compatibility until 2034, at least.

10. SPARC servers and Oracle Solaris provide a clear path to the cloud, using the same technology on premise as in the cloud, and applications and databases can be migrated to the cloud at any time without modifications. Speedy and simple.

Ten very compelling reasons to choose SPARC and Oracle Solaris as your enterprise data centre infrastructure, now and in the future.

Useful Links

IDG CIO Tech Poll

IDC Top Ten Data Centre Predictions