The post by Frederic P "ZFS secures your application" describes a cost-saving alternative to using an internal RAID storage controller in an entry-level server. That solution uses the Oracle Solaris 10 OS and its ZFS file system to mirror the root hard drive. The benefits realized include higher uptime, simpler management, faster deployment, better data integrity and lower hardware cost. It was possible to deploy an application on a Sun Fire X2270 class system vs a X4170 class one -- a 20% difference in base prices -- and to reduce unplanned downtime and maintenance time from hours to minutes.
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The Edison Group's white paper, "Oracle x86 Infrastructure: The Optimized Stack: Reducing Total Cost of Ownership through Vertical Integration" examines the cost structures across a range of system sizes and deployments for the core x86 system stack by comparing Oracle's integrated complete infrastructure with alternatives from HP and HP, all deployed with Red Hat Enterprise Linux and VMware vSphere, both together and separately.

Among the findings is that TCO with an Oracle solution is as much as 57 percent lower than comparable deployments. Edison evaluated two, four and eight socket systems over three and five year periods using the Oracle Sun Fire X4170 M2 server for the two socket study and the Sun Fire X4470 M2 for the four socket system.

The white paper concludes that, "By engineering the entire infrastructure with service and support in mind, Oracle can deliver lower TCO in the design and operation of its system, in the ease of deployment enabled by VM Templates and Validated Configurations ... and in the efficiency and effectiveness of its ... Premier Support package."
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The South Korean city of Gunsan underwent a radical transformation recently that involved turning 401 square kilometers of reclaimed land and fresh water reservoirs into a new business, industrial, tourism, and residential area not knows as the Saemangeum Gunsan Free Economic Zone. As part of this transformation, Gunsan City Hall replaced its 100 legacy desktop environment with Oracle Sun Ray Clients, resulting in a 50% reduction in power consumption as well as significant reductions in system administration costs and improvements in employee productivity. Yet another bonus in this upgrade is that, rather than store confidential details of city administration practices on individual desktop hard drives, that data is now more securely stored on the city's central server. The time involved in data backup activities has been cut from three to four hours down to a mere 10 minutes. Employees voice enthusiastic praise for the new system, which consists of two Sun Fire X4170 M2 Servers and two Sun Blade X6270 Servers, all of which run Oracle Solaris. Gunsan installed Sun Storage 7310C and Sun Storage 7210 systems as well.
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