Nimble Storage is kicking off this week’s Oracle OpenWorld 2013 conference with a new SmartStack reference architecture for relational database environments. Certified to run Oracle’s Linux distribution, virtualization framework and database software, the solution offers “adaptive performance with high availability, capacity savings, efficient data protection, and improved staff productivity.”

According to Nimble, the converged architecture couples one of its CS-series hybrid storage arrays with two Cisco UCS B200 M3 blade servers and Oracle VM 3.2. The platform also includes Oracle Linux 6 Update 4 with the Unbreakable Enterprise Kernel, and supports Oracle Database 11g Release 2 and Database 12c.

“By utilizing our intelligent storage architecture, organizations can deploy affordable disaster recovery while meeting the performance and availability needs of storage teams and DBAs, without the complexity of traditional solutions. In addition, Nimble Storage customers experience significant capacity savings with compression for database workloads,” said Radhika Krishnan, the vice president of product marketing and alliances at Nimble.

Last week, VCE, the joint venture between VMware, Cisco and EMC, bolstered its own converged infrastructure portfolio with an Oracle-optimized Vblock that supports mixed workloads, including transactional and analytical processing. The platform made its debut alongside the pure-flash Specialized System for Extreme Applications and the hybrid Vblock 340, which ships with XtremSW flash cache, EMC VNX storage and the latest version of VMware’s hypervisor.

In August, Nimble further solidified its partnership with VMware by incorporating vSphere into SmartStack for Business Critical Applications, a virtualized architecture designed with traditional enterprise apps in mind. The company said that the platform is certified for powering Exchange, SharePoint, and SQL Server deployments up to 500 seats in size.

Previously, Nimble teamed up with Cisco to deliver a private cloud solution for the growing number of enterprises that leverage Hyper-V in their environments.