The adoption of SaaS and subscription-based systems has helped many firms reduce costs by building vendor-agnostic best-of-breed solutions tailored to their specific operational needs. This development has certainly helped to increase IT flexibility, but it may have come at a cost to performance.
Yes, cloud-based platforms offer unrestricted growth and scalable resource assignment – but they are not typically tuned to the demands of specific workloads. Technologies like AI and IoT and 5G rely on real-time processing – the faster the better. With Oracle Solaris running your Oracle Database, you’ll have the agility to take advantage of these technological innovations. Benefiting from a flexible infrastructure that can easily scale as demand increases and allow you to set your own pace for moving to a multi-cloud environment.
So, as you plan for a more agile, faster future, it may be time to re-evaluate your Oracle set-up.
Operating systems still matter
Without an up-to-date, modern operating system, your infrastructure could be prone to system outages and potential data loss. Creating extra work for your IT team firefighting problems when they should be focusing on other business-critical tasks.
When using Oracle Database, it makes sense to use the full Oracle technology stack – including the Solaris operating system. Even before Oracle acquired Sun, resources were being allocated to ensure maximum performance from SPARC-based hardware running Solaris. The result of these efforts is several significant benefits:
Maximised hardware returns
The latest Solaris offers superior virtualisation functionality over generic alternatives. Oracle Solaris Containers are optimised for SPARC hardware, allowing you to operate several Solaris 11 virtual machines on a single physical server for maximum resource utilisation – and return on investment.
The Containers also offer a future for your legacy systems if required. Applications and workloads can be migrated onto the newest Solaris hardware to improve performance and increase resilience.
Granular OS analysis
Optimising code and application configurations help to provide a performance gain – as does tweaking the underlying operating system. But unlike most OSs, Solaris does away with the trial-and-error approach by delivering actionable insights direct to your systems administrators.
Oracle Solaris StatsStore automatically monitors the full technology stack, generating valuable performance statistics and isolating potential issues early. These granular insights dramatically shorten the troubleshooting process and can also be used to better direct your efforts to optimise the performance of your Oracle databases.
Automation goes beyond analysis too. Solaris ships with all the tools you need to manage the full software lifecycle – including a stack diagnosis facility. This automatically checks for software faults – including the database engine – and suggests potential fixes.
Improved security
Solaris 11 has been designed to boost security at every point of the IT lifecycle, from design to build, test and ongoing maintenance. The OS also offers a built-in framework to ensure that your database operations are fully logged to assist with proving compliance with security standards like PCI DSS and HIPAA.
Defence-in-depth technologies further protect your Oracle databases by preventing cybercriminals from attacking your systems. Without the ability to establish command and control, accessing data becomes almost impossible for unauthorised users.
Enhanced data management functionality
As well as being resilient, Solaris has been built to protect the integrity of your data. The native ZFS file system offers near-zero administration to reduce the burden on sysadmins and DBAs. Advanced file system and volume management capabilities give even greater control of your technology stack – and the overall performance of your Oracle databases.
Oracles Commitment to The Future
To reduce the complexities and cost of systems upgrades Oracle Solaris now follows a continues delivery model. So, since the launch of Oracle Solaris 11 customers no longer have to go through time-consuming upgrades to gain the latest features and capabilities. Instead, you get them as a simple update, included in your Solaris subscription. Which means less work for you, less disruption to your business, and constant reassurance that you have the latest features and security coverage.
Oracle are also committed to offering support for Solaris 11 until at least 2031 under Oracle Premier Support. And if you get Oracle Extended Support, you’re covered until 2034. This all means that you can count on the latest system enhancements for years to come, and your investment is fully protected.
WTL are Solaris and Linux specialist, with the skills and knowledge required to support customers’ heterogeneous environments, both on and off premises.
We offer a Solaris Heath Check that is designed identify and address configuration, updates, security, and performance problems you might be experiencing.
Ready to get more from your Oracle Databases with Oracle Solaris. Give us a call today.