IBM Netfinity Servers Certified With Oracle Parallel Server, Adding Fibre Channel and Six-Node Capabilities
Oracle and IBM Offer Outstanding Performance and Scalability for the Most Challenging Enterprise Applications
NEW YORK (July 13, 1998) – IBM today announced certification with Oracle Parallel Server(R) for its Netfinity(TM) line of Windows NT(R)-based servers.
IBM is the first hardware provider to achieve Oracle Parallel Server certification with a Fibre Channel storage solution. IBM also is among the first to provide a six-node Windows NT-based configuration for Oracle’s relational database management technology.
For Netfinity customers, Oracle Parallel Server certification brings the opportunity to use the full power of hardware clustering for data-intensive applications such as business intelligence and enterprise resource planning. For Oracle users, certification means dramatically increased reliability, manageability and scalability through the use of Netfinity hardware with Fibre Channel storage.
A ServerProven Solution, Netfinity Cluster Enabling Software enables the use of Oracle Parallel Server and Netfinity servers attached to MetaStor Fibre Channel storage products. Configurations of up to six nodes are supported. These solutions will be available early in September 1998.
Oracle Parallel Server
Oracle Parallel Server is a leading open DBMS technology taking advantage of clustered systems running on Windows NT. In clustering, multiple computers, or nodes, can share cluster resources such as the disk storage arrays, while continuing to operate independently. All nodes have access to shared disks connected to the system. Oracle Parallel Server takes advantage of this technology to apply the full processing power of multiple machines against a single database.
Each node running an Oracle DBMS has its own memory cache for database data and efficiently coordinates these in-memory caches without sacrificing database functionality or performance. If one node becomes unavailable, users on the remaining nodes continue to do database work, while users on the failed node can switch to another node and continue processing. Database administrators save time by having to administer only one database, while application developers become more productive by only having to deal with data at one location.
Where most Intel processor-based hardware solutions have been limited to four-nodes or less, Netfinity servers running Oracle Parallel Server in a six-node certified clusters represents a leap in scalability for users.
Netfinity and Fibre Channel
IBM, working with MetaStor by Symbios, now supports Fibre Channel solutions for its Netfinity family. Fibre Channel is the next generation of high-speed storage interface used to connect large amounts of disk storage to a cluster of servers. Fibre Channel is rapidly becoming a technology of choice for medium-sized to large businesses purchasing Intel architecture for mission-critical applications.
The characteristics of optical fiber — bandwidth, transmission speed, and distance — are convincing users to switch from SCSI to Fibre Channel. Dataquest predicts that sales of Fibre Channel storage adapters will grow from $1 billion in 1998 to $10 billion in 2000, while sales of SCSI adapters will shrink from $11 billion to $8 billion during that same period.
Source: IBM