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The Ancient Oracle Architecture
One of the issues associated with the
ancient single-server Oracle systems was the deliberate
over-allocation of computing resources.
Each system would experience periodic
processing spikes, and each server had to be equipped with
additional resources to accommodate the irregular frequency of
the demands of various applications. This led to a condition in
which Oracle servers had unused CPU and RAM resources that could
not be easily shared.
The ancient client-server Oracle
paradigm presented many serious problems for the Oracle DBA:
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High Expense - In large enterprise
data centers with many servers and many instances, hardware
resources must be deliberately over-allocated in order to
accommodate the sporadic peaks in CPU and RAM resources.
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High Waste - Since each Oracle
instance resides on a separate single server, there is a
significant duplication of work which results in sub-optimal
utilization of RAM and CPU resources.
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Very Time Consuming for the Oracle
DBA - In many large Oracle shops, a “shuffle” occurs when a
database outgrows its server. When a new server is
purchased, the Oracle database is moved to the new server,
leaving the older server to accept yet another smaller
Oracle database. This shuffling consumes considerable time
and attention from the DBA.
This waste and high
DBA overhead has lead IT managers to recognize the benefits of a
centralized server environment, and there is now resurgence in
popularity of large monolithic servers for bigger Oracle shops.
There is also a rapid depreciation rate for servers which also
contributed to the move toward server consolidation. For
example, three year-old Oracle servers that cost over $100k new
are now worth less than $5k. |
