The Oracle RAC Challenge

Oracle RAC provides high availability and excellent database performance. But maximizing its capabilities can require significant server I/O resources. At each server, Ethernet connections may proliferate due to network and management connectivity demands. Storage connections must deliver high throughput and low latency to eliminate bottlenecks. And especially critical is the cluster interconnect, which plays a key role in overall system performance.

Cost Effective Oracle RAC Performance

Xsigo meets the I/O challenge with an elegant infrastructure design that optimizes performance while enabling the simplest possible infrastructure. With just two I/O cables per server, the Xsigo solution eliminates I/O bottlenecks, doubles overall system performance, and enables the flexibility to re-purpose servers at any time, all at a cost that is 90% less than an Oracle Exadata Database Machine.

Fast Infiniband Interprocess Communications for Greater Efficiency

Xsigo's 40Gbps InfiniBand interconnect significantly boosts performance by leveraging simpler, more efficient protocols. These communication protocols, Reliable Datagram Sockets (RDS) and Sockets Direct Protocol (SDP), leverage InfiniBand's hardware-based reliable communication capabilities to accelerate interprocess communications, resulting in 2X to 12X better performance across a range of database operations.

70% Less Complexity Simplifies Deployments

Xsigo's simple architecture also minimizes space and power requirements and accelerates your Oracle RAC deployment. With Xsigo you need just two I/O links per server, giving you the flexibility to choose the smallest, most efficient server that meets your needs – even 1U servers or blades. PCI slot count is no longer a concern since you can configure all needed I/O with just one or two host adapter cards.

Architecting a Simpler, More Flexible Data Center

In a traditional data center architecture, servers are arranged in tiers that each have specific functionality: web, application and database. Hard-wired connections between tiers make it impractical to migrate compute resources among them.

Xsigo changes this by replacing fixed connectivity with virtual connectivity. By simply re-configuring I/O resources in software, a server in one tier can be re-deployed to another. You maintain the performance and isolation of hard-wired connectivity while gaining far greater resource flexibility.