UPDATED 16:32 EDT / MAY 28 2013

Wikibon Reviews Oracle ZFS Appliance, Gives Strong Positive Recommendation

“CIOs, CTOs and senior storage executives should position the Oracle ZFS appliance as an ideal strategic fit for high streaming environments such as database backups,” writes Wikibon CTO David Floyer in the conclusion of his review of the new hybrid flash/disk storage appliance from Oracle. “As well, the product can be successfully integrated into high-performance Oracle database workloads. In write-intensive and heavy IO workloads, the ZFS appliance will likely prove the best-of-breed, lowest cost solution. Outside of that sweet spot, traditional midrange arrays and filers will often be a better economic fit.” The full, detailed review is available without charge on the Wikibon Web site.

This conclusion is based on a combination of Wikibon’s in-house analysis of the product and interviews with several Wikibon members who are early adaptors of the product. Wikibon as sometimes been very critical of Oracle products and policies, which makes this recommendation all the stronger.

Wikibon’s classifies the ZFS appliance as a true hybrid, allowing high continuous read and write rates with sustained low latency. This, Floyer writes, makes it suitable for high performance streaming workloads such as Oracle database backups. Oracle has integrated it closely with RMAN, its backup function, and other Oracle features such as Hybrid Columnar Compression, which also makes it easy to integrate into Oracle environments.

Wikibon found that, in common with all flash-first true hybrids, the ZFS’s latency was about or just below the 1 millisecond mark for read and write IOs, and the latency variance very low. Wikibon talked to a number of practitioner members using the product, who reported that a throughput of greater than 25 terabytes/hour could be achieved with an in-house ZFS benchmark, along with a sustained 11.5TB/hour for a backup workload. Wikibon analysis also found that the overall cost of purchase, deployment and operation was significantly lower than that of traditional storage arrays or filers for IO and write intensive workloads, with the advantage getting greater as the workload size and volume of IOs increased. The only caution is that for low-end workloads, traditional arrays are less expensive in total cost of ownership.

The appliance includes DTrace, which provides real-time storage analytics together with good visual presentation of the data, to identify, troubleshoot, and resolve performance issues. Of the hybrid and traditional arrays reviewed by Wikibon, only Tintrí has the equivalent quality of data (at a lower configuration level, and for VMware environments only).

Wikibon believes that 30% of ZFS appliances go into VMware environments, which are historically very tricky to diagnose from a performance standpoint. “Practitioners we spoke with indicated that Oracle’s support in VMware environments has been solid, despite concerns among many Wikibon members about virtualizing Oracle apps.”

Like all Wikibon research, this Alert is available in full without charge on the Wikibon Web site. IT professionals are invited to register to join the Wikibon community. Membership allows them to post their own questions, tips, and research, as well as comment on published research on the site. Members also receive invitations to the periodic Peer Incite Meetings at which their peers present on how they are using advanced technologies to solve business and technical challenges.


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