WIkibon Cofounder and CTO David Floyer

Oracle Corp. has burst back into the SAN storage scene with the launch of its new Oracle FS1-2 Flash Storage System, which is “like no other array on the market”, writes Wikibon analyst David Floyer in his latest professional alert.

According to Floyer, the FS1-2 provides oustanding performance in Oracle application environments thanks to number of technology advances. These include the array’s built-in tiering quality-of-service technology (QoS), derived from Oracle’s acquisition of Pillar Data Systems in 2013, which allows for IOs to be prioritized for business critical applications and for low-overhead migration of small blocks of data from up to four tiers.

Another excellent feature is the ability to define application profiles within the array, writes Floyer. Pre-defined application profiles facilitate “1-click” provisioning to boost the performance of Oracle Database and other apps by disaggregating database components such as index files, database tables, archive logs, redo logs, control files, and temp files.

“They’ve pre-defined how you should set up Oracle databases, Oracle applications and even some non-Oracle apps,” explained Floyer during a segment on theCube at Oracle OpenWorld. “They’ve done all this work and they can automate it with a single click. They’ve done a really good job of making it work with Oracle.

Read more after the video:

Data integrity and data reduction are also very important components of Oracle’s new array. The T10 Protection Information (T10 PI) standard, formally known as Data Integrity Field (DIF), serves to prevent silent data corruption, while Oracle’s Hybrid Columnar Compression (HCC) standard allows for variable and high levels of data compression. Floyer says the latter is “very useful” for Oracle workloads, noting there’s a good business case for compression on flash storage in both AFAs and traditional storage arrays.

Additionally, the FS1-2 can be configured with two performance tiers in order to compensate for the lack of DRe functionality and reduce the cost of using flash.

Floyer points out that the lack of DRe capabilities aren’t really a problem for those running Oracle-only workloads. Nevertheless, Floyer believes that adding this feature would make the FS1-2 much more attractive to those who wish to deploy it across multiple workloads and urges Oracle to make this possible.

In conclusion, Floyer recommends the Oralce FS1-2 Flash Storage system as a well-balanced array that offers outstanding performance within an Oracle application environment, and can help to facilitate automation and reduce the costs of storage.

As with all Wikibon published research, Floyer’s full report is available on the Wikibon Web site. IT professionals are invited to register for free membership in the Wikibon community. This allows them to influence the direction of and participate in Wikibon research and to post questions, comments, and their own research to share with the community.

photo credit: kyeniz via photopin cc