System News for Sun Users

Migrating to the Cloud: Oracle Client/Server Modernization

2012-01-06T17:00:00+01:00

The responsible parties in any company planning on a database migration, desktop application migration, or that has IT infrastructure consolidation projects, will find the information in "Migrating to the Cloud", the new book by Tom Laszewski and Prakash Nauduri, a useful guide. The book, which focuses on Oracle grid relational database technology and Oracle Fusion Middleware, provides recommendations on tools, strategy and best practices and serves as a guide as an enterprise plans, determines effort and budget, designs, executes and rolls its modern Oracle system out to production.

Doorway to the Cloud: Oracle WebLogic Server 12c

2011-12-12T17:00:00+01:00

WSJ's MarketWatch reported the release to general availability of Oracle WebLogic Server 12c, which it describes as, " ... the Number 1 application server for conventional systems, engineered systems and cloud environments," with considerable enthusiasm. Market Watch celebrated the innovative new capabilities of Oracle WebLogic Server 12c for building, deploying and running Java Platform, Enterprise Edition Java EE) applications and the capability to leverage Java Platform Standard Edition (Java SE7) features in the creation of cleaner, more easily maintainable code.

Know What the Cloud Means to Your Enterprise Before You Enter

2011-12-01T17:00:00+01:00

In his post on syngress.com "A Brief Introduction on Migrating to an Oracle-based Cloud Environment," Tom Laszewski prudently begins at the beginning and suggests that his readers do the same: defining what the cloud means to an enterprise. He points out the four characteristics that distinguish the cloud from virtualizing IT infrastructure and making it available on the web. Those characteristics are:

Provisioning
Metering and Charge-back capability
Multi-tenancy
Elasticity

For further information, Laszewski points his readers to his 400-page book "Migrating to the Cloud" (co-authored with Prakash Nauduri).

Building an Infrastructure Cloud with Oracle VM for x86 + Enterprise Manager 12c

2011-11-17T17:00:00+01:00

Setting up an infrastructure cloud service is a piece of cake, so to speak, blogs Richard Rotter on Oracle Systems Blog Austria. He did it himself, he writes, in a mere three hours -- configuring a complete cloud environment with three x86 servers and a small JBOD. All the process required was Oracle VM for X86, Enterprise Manager 12c and some experience with both those solutions. He outlines the process aspect by aspect, moving from hardware to virtualization and concluding with cloud management. Rotter's post is an ideal place for the relatively uninitiated to begin in familiarizing themselves with the cloud. He promises a technical cookbook on the subject in a matter of weeks.

Oracle Enterprise Manager Enables Cerner Health Care to Cut Capital Expenditures by $9.5 Million

2011-11-07T17:00:00+01:00

Cerner, a global health care company with over 9,000 facilities worldwide, has implemented Oracle Enterprise Manager in its aim to eliminate error, variance and waste for its affiliated health care providers and customers while also generating additional revenue. The new cloud-based services supported by Oracle Enterprise Manager have enabled Cerner to reduce capital investments by $9.5 million. The simplified management environment of Oracle Enterprise Manager allows Cerner staffers to operate from a single management console, enabling preventive actions that have reduced database incidents by 50 percent and allowed 17 percent of problems to be identified without DBA intervention.

Inside the Oracle Database Cloud Service

2011-10-31T16:00:00+01:00

In his blog post Inside the Oracle Database Cloud Service Rick Greenwald summarizes the introduction of the Oracle Public Cloud, which was a major event at Oracle OpenWorld 2011. In his summary Greenwald touches in such features of the Oracle Database Service as RESTful Web services, Application Express (APEX) and the suite of productivity applications that enable users to track events on a shared calendar or manage projects in the cloud.

Oracle Enterprise Manager Cloud Control 12c

2011-10-31T16:00:00+01:00

The cloud, the issues, and Oracle's solution: Oracle Enterprise Manager 12c, which Oracle describes in its white paper entitled "Oracle Enterprise Manager Cloud Control 12c: Complete, Integrated and Business-Drive Cloud Management" are among the items of interest that Anand Akela brings to the attention of readers in his blog post on oracle.com. The white paper argues that Oracle is uniquely positioned to enable enterprise IT organizations to transform themselves into departments that allow users to consume IT services on demand, without needless complexity and in a fashion that manages IT from a business perspective.

Oracle Public Cloud and Its Parts: Java, Database, Social Network, Fusion CRM, Fusion HCM

2011-10-24T16:00:00+01:00

Want to know more about the Oracle Public Cloud? Then you could not do better than log on to Arun Gupta's blog where, in his own words, he describes the cloud as " ... a suite of Oracle Applications, Middleware and Database offerings delivered in a self-service, subscription-based, elastically scalable, reliable, highly available and secure manner. Oracle provides hosting, management, software updates, and world-class support for these offerings," and then provides instructive links to each of the components of the cloud.

Oracle Public Cloud: Database, PaaS, HCM, CRM

2011-10-17T16:00:00+01:00

The Oracle Public Cloud is a full-featured solution that comes with an Oracle Database Service based on Oracle Database 11g Release 2; the Oracle Java Cloud Service (Platform as a Service), built on the enterprise-grade WebLogic Server; Oracle Fusion Human Capital Management (HCM) Cloud Service; the Oracle Fusion CRM Cloud Service; and the Oracle Social Network, a solution for intra- and inter-enterprise collaboration: in a word, a comprehensive cloud offered on a subscription basis.

Integrate Your Enterprise with the Oracle Social Network

2011-10-17T16:00:00+01:00

Integration is fundamental to Oracle's business culture, and with its new Oracle Social Network, Oracle offers its customers the tool to integrate operations within their respective enterprises and with vendors, customers and other interests beyond the enterprise wall. The Oracle Social Network drives business through natural, stream-based conversations that consolidate IM, e-mail, applications, content, editing tools, and telephony into a single context, accelerating productivity with social networking and contextual enterprise collaboration without the noise that typically characterizes other social networks.

Overview Video Demo of Cloud Management with Oracle Enterprise Manager 12c

2011-10-15T16:00:00+01:00

Oracle Enterprise Manager 12c, Oracle's complete cloud lifecycle management solution, includes self-service provisioning balanced against centralized, policy-based resource management, integrated chargeback and capacity planning and complete visibility of the physical and virtual environment from applications to disk. The three-minute video overview of Oracle Enterprise Manager 12c gives viewers a comprehensive look at the capabilities of this solution.

Oracle Public Cloud

2011-10-11T16:00:00+01:00

Oracle CEO Larry Ellison recently unveiled a new service, the Oracle Public Cloud, which is designed to deliver subscription-based, self-service access to Oracle Fusion Customer Relationship Management (CRM) Cloud Service, Oracle Fusion Human Capital Management (HCM) Cloud Service, Oracle Social Network, Oracle Java Cloud Service and Oracle Database Cloud Service. Customers will be able to deploy existing standard Java and Oracle Database applications to the Oracle Public Cloud without rewriting them, allowing users to take advantage of their existing IT assets, skills and ecosystems.

Feds Race to Join the Crowd

2011-10-10T16:00:00+01:00

It's one thing to declare a change at the policy-making level and quite another to make that change a reality in the trenches. So, as Federal CIO Vivek Kundra, who ordered government agencies to begin a migration to the cloud in December 2010 has discovered, implementation is somewhat slower than declaration. Cost constraints and security issues, as well as the diverse storage needs of various agencies, along with congressional insistence on demonstrated cost benefits, are among the considerations slowing things down. The story is capably covered in Mary K. Pratt's article "Feds race to the clouds" in ComputerWorld.

Some Winners in Cloud Services

2011-09-28T16:00:00+01:00

The cloud is still in the infancy stage and yet some MSPs are finding the key to success while others are still searching for answers on both the provider and user sides. The cloud must "Is It Time to Reinvent the Cloud? Not necessarily if you leverage what you do best in a vertical market. One cloud solution can't be everything to everyone but to someone the cloud can be everything.

Security Trumps Scale

2011-09-26T16:00:00+01:00

A study has found that "SMBs Just Aren't Into the Cloud". SMBs recognize the benefits of the cloud, the problem is that their necks are on the line and if for any reason, yours, mine or an Act of God, it the cloud doesn't protect my data and perform as promised I'm the one on the street.

SAS Grid omputing with the Sun Blade 6000 Modular System and the Sun ZFS Storage 7420 Appliance

2011-09-21T16:00:00+01:00

In her OTN article on creating a robust platform for SAS Grid Computing that uses the Sun Blade 6000 Modular System and the Sun ZFS Storage 7420 Appliance, Maureen Chew concludes that this particular blade/storage appliance combination and the Solaris 10 OS constitute an ideal environment for SAS Grid Computing applications. She writes that 30 compute hours in the SAS Grid Mixed Analytic workload finished in approximately 45 minutes, adding that a mirrored pool across two disk shelves was found capable of delivering more than 3 GB/sec of I/O throughput. Tests using a single PCIe, dual-ported, InfiniBand connection from the Sun ZFS Storage 7420 appliance performed roughly equivalent to a quad 10 GbE link aggregation despite the expectation that the quad 10 GbE might perform 20% to 25% better.

Joyent's Cloud Has Designs on Amazon EC2

2011-09-14T16:00:00+01:00

Joyent's "infrastructure cloud," which now welcomes Linux and Windows applications, is in a good position, writes Cade Metz in The Register, to take on Amazon's EC2 with its Solaris-based SmartOS. With the KVM hypervisor ported from Linux to SmartOS the Joyent Cloud delivers a readily scalable computing resource that includes both power and storage, as well as D-Trace and ZFS. Joyent has also changed its pricing model from subscription to a charge-by-the hour structure. Joyent claims that its SmartOS VMs are up to 14 times faster than Amazon's comparable server instances.

Six-Part Oracle Series on Cloud Computing: Data Integration for Private Clouds - Part 1 of 6

2011-08-24T16:00:00+01:00

Oracle's six-part series on Discover the Cloud Advantage for Database includes a number of programs that prospective and active cloud users will find instructive. The archived and forthcoming series includes:

Data Integration for Private Clouds August 18, 2011 at 10:00am PT / 1:00pm ET

Database Consolidation onto Private Clouds September 8, 2011 at 10:00am PT / 1:00pm ET

Managing Databases in Private Clouds October 13, 2011 at 10:00am PT / 1:00pm ET

Maximum Availability on Private Clouds November 10, 2011 at 10:00am PT / 1:00pm ET

Database Consolidation: Better Data Security at Lower Cost On-Demand (Webcast was originally broadcast on June 16, 2011)

Storage Management in Private Clouds On-Demand (Webcast was originally broadcast on July 21, 2011)

Registration and log in are required for each webcast.

Get into the Cloud but Stay Out of Trouble

2011-08-15T16:00:00+01:00

While cloud computing, whether public or private, offers clear benefits to users, there are nevertheless a few perils involved that need to be addressed. Regulatory compliance is one of them, and Jim Buchanan's InfoWorld article "Cloud computing: 4 tips for regulatory compliance" presents some ideas on keeping one's corporate head above water when it comes to compliance:

Be aware of new challenges the cloud may add to the IT workload
Track the fast-changing standards landscape
Pay attention to the requirements of SLAs
Make security a priority

Commercial Unix Users Cool on Public Clouds, Gabriel Survey Finds

2011-08-08T16:00:00+01:00

While the public cloud has not caught on with commercial Unix users, interest in developing private cloud infrastructure is certainly of obvious interest to them writes Joseph F. Kovar in CRN. A survey by Gabriel Consulting Group of 306 companies worldwide who depend on commercial Unix for their mission-critical applications revealed that only 27 percent are using public clouds to augment their infrastructure. It is not so much cost that is the primary driver in the move to cloud technology, the survey found, but rather the desire to increase IT flexibility and speed. The databases and ERP applications of these commercial Unix users could run in public clouds, Dan Olds, principal analyst at Gabriel, contends. Both the relative unavailability of public clouds and the security requirements of individual users make the move to the public cloud a less attractive option, he adds. Olds expects to see these commercial Unix users focusing either on developing heterogeneous private clouds or on clouds that can work with their Unix, Windows, Linux and even mainframe servers.

Oracle's Cloud Offering - Summary View

2011-07-04T16:00:00+01:00

Imagine the Oracle cloud in graphical form. Blogger Ron Batra did, producing a summary to illustrate his observation that Oracle has employed Oracle Enterprise Manager as the foundation for its system management in the cloud. This, he contends, will keep the installed base happy as they amble toward their respective private clouds.

Unix Server Vendor Preference Survey: Virtualization and the Cloud

2011-06-27T16:00:00+01:00

Among the findings in the Gabriel Consulting Group"s (GCG) fifth annual 2010-11 Unix Server Vendor Preference Survey is a certain degree of skepticism concerning cloud computing as a source of cost savings and a reduction in management effort. Some 306 enterprise data center managers responsible for data centers of all sizes responded to the survey, more than half of whom reported that meeting SLA commitments had become easier as a result of virtualization although fewer than half of the Unix users said virtualization has reduced their server management chores. The survey also revealed that less than one-third of enterprise Unix customers are using public clouds while half of the respondents are currently building their own private cloud infrastructure. Finally, half of the respondents reported the belief that the cloud will increase IT flexibility and speed, though less than half believe it will significantly reduce IT costs.

Oracle's Complete Stack for Cloud Computing: Optimized Solution for Enterprise Cloud Infrastructure

2011-06-20T16:00:00+01:00

Oracle Optimized Solution for Enterprise Cloud Infrastructure, newly announced by Oracle, is a tested solution that is fully integrated with Oracle's Sun Blade server modules, Oracle Solaris or Oracle Linux, Oracle's ZFS Storage Appliance, and Oracle VM. In addition, Oracle Optimized Solution for Enterprise Cloud Infrastructure that, in conjunction with Oracle Enterprise Manager 11g, can be managed and supported as a single system for simplified datacenter operations using a single console to manage servers, operating systems, firmware, VMs, storage, and network fabrics to provide end-to-end lifecycle management, including built-in integration with My Oracle support, according to Oracle's press release. Oracle offers a variety of service agreements for this solution that enable users to maximize the value of enterprise cloud infrastructure investments.

Oracle Optimized Solution for Enterprise Cloud Infrastructure: 32-Page White Paper

2011-06-20T16:00:00+01:00

The Oracle white paper "Oracle Optimized Solution for Enterprise Cloud Infrastructure" outlines best practices for optimizing virtualization infrastructures in the course of deploying this solution. The paper covers deployment of software, hardware, storage, and network components and is intended to serve as a practical guide to help IT organizations get up and running. Users can benefit from the integrated nature Oracle has built into the Oracle Optimized Solution, which allows efficient deployment without extensive troubleshooting and testing. Adopting the Oracle Optimized Solution allows deployment teams Deployment teams to avoid having to assemble and integrate a range of hardware and software components from different vendors (e.g. servers, storage, network, virtualization software, and operating systems. Oracle has done all of this for its customer base through the use of its own Oracle Validated Configuration testing program.

'The IT revolution that isn't'

2011-06-20T16:00:00+01:00

"The IT Revolution that Isn't." There's a striking title. So what is Eric Knorr saying in his InfoWorld article? That the "IT revolution" is more like an evolution, and a slow one at that. Only in the area of virtualization does he see anything worthy of the term, and even there he asks whether the changes are simply the result of accelerating automation. The modest increase in Software as a Service; the declining numbers of PC sales; the effect on the productivity market of Microsoft's dominance ... these are some of the reasons Knorr cites in asserting that revolution may mischaracterize what's going on in IT at the moment.

Discover Enterprise Cloud Computing: Oracle�s Use of Oracle VM for IaaS

2011-06-13T16:00:00+01:00

Oracle invites participants to register and log in to their event "Discover Enterprise Cloud Computing: Oracle's Use of Oracle VM for Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS)" scheduled for 9:00 a.m. Pacific Daylight Time on June 28, 2011. Speakers will be Don Nalezyty, Director, Enterprise Architecture, oracle Global IT, and Adam Hawley, Senior Director, Virtualization, Product Management, Oracle, who will discuss Oracle's own in-house use of Oracle VM Server for x86 as a foundation for private Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS). Benefit from Oracle's example in using Oracle VM server virtualization to get into the cloud and reduce administration overhead while increasing agility in Oracle's business systems.

Advancing Business Innovation through the Cloud: Saugatuck Technology White Paper

2011-06-13T16:00:00+01:00

In a report sponsored by Oracle, Saugatuck Technology finds that "better, faster, cheaper" is no longer the governing consideration among businesses shifting to business in the cloud. Rather, in their paper "Advancing Business Innnovation through the Cloud" Saugatuck reports that "transforming the enterprise" has become the principal motive for this move. As the paper notes, smaller companies remain focused on cost savings and risk mitigation, exploiting the Cloud to gain access to otherwise unavailable customers, services and suppliers. Saugatuck estimates that, through 2015, the largest driver of Cloud IT workloads will continue to be Software as a Service (SaaS) in all of its forms, including business applications, social computing and mobile solutions.

Develop Your Roadmap for Cloud Computing

2011-05-04T16:00:00+01:00

Beginning on May 5, 2011 and extending through May 26, 2011, a series of webcasts on cloud computing under the umbrella title "Develop Your Srategy and Roadmap for Cloud Computing" will be presented. The times, topics and speakers for each are as shown below:

May 5, 9:00 a.m. PT: Roadmap to Enterprise Cloud Computing with Rex Wang, VP, Product Marketing, Oracle Infrastructure and Management

May 12, 9:00 a.m. PT: Oracle Exalogic Elastic Cloud: Revolutionizing Data Center Consolidation with Alex Andrianopoulis, VP, Product Marketing, Oracle Fusion Middleware

May 19, 9:00 a.m. PT: Private Cloud Database Consolidation with Willie Hardie, VP, Product Marketing, Oracle Database

May 26, 9:00 a.m. PT: Planning a Cloud Implementation with Jim Baty, VP, Oracle Global Enterprise Architecture Program

Registration is required for this series.

National Australia's Bank Builds Cloud Infrastructure on Oracle VM, Oracle Enterprise Linux

2011-04-27T16:00:00+01:00

Oracle's Virtualization Blog recommends having a look at the recent three-part article in CIO Magazine, part one of which is entitled "NAB private Cloud builds new paradigm." National Austrailia's Bank (NAB) is building its private cloud infrastructure on the concept of Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) and Platform as a Service (PaaS), using Oracle VM and Oracle Enterprise Linux as the enabling technologies. Already, Ubank, the online-only division of NAB, is running almost exclusively on virtualized infrastructure that extends from the OS to the web portal, as Oracle observes.

Grid Consolidation in a Private Cloud

2011-02-17T17:00:00+01:00

There is an informative slide presentation by Oracle's Director of Product Management Bob Thorne entitled, "Grid Consolidation in a Private Cloud," that introduces cloud technology, differentiating the several kinds of clouds from one another, and then treats both the business drivers and cloud architectures common to the database cloud. Thorne includes recommendations for optimal cloud architecture by workload type, noting that private database clouds consolidate servers, storage, operating systems, databases and workloads. He adds that Oracle's Exadata is a pre-integrated, highly optimized platform for deploying private database clouds that maximizes ROI. The presentation includes cases studies of successful implementations of Exadata cloud consolidation by Commonwealth Bank Australia, Dell, and FedEx.