Oracle Made Huge Server Announcement At OpenWorld

Five years ago, when Oracle bought Sun Microsystems, Larry Ellison talked a lot about how owning the entire systems stack would allow him to do unique things with the servers from Oracle. After five years of hearing the hype and the talk, Ellison looks like he may have finally delivered. However, the big question still remains whether or not consumers will actually buy what he's selling.

Oracle has announced a brand new line of servers at OpenWorld recently that are based on a new Sparc processor known as the M7. This upgrade has the typical improvements that you would expect in a new chip, including more cores, bigger caches, and higher bandwidth though the most interesting thing is software functions that Oracle has embedded into the silicon that improves the performance and security of applications. These include a memory-protection technology that is capable of providing a new level of security for in-memory databases along with an acceleration engine that allows data to be decompressed in near-real time for analytics. As a result, you get a wider use of compressed data.

According to Principal Analyst at Insight64 Nathan Brookwood, "Both of those are very interesting, because they're features I don't think a company that makes just chips -- that didn't have the software guys working with them -- would have invented." Brookwood has asked Oracle what new features it was able to include on each new processor the company has released as a result of owning both companies." Invariably they would say, well, you know, it takes time to do that, we don't really have anything yet," Brookwood added. "But with the M7, they do."

This is also the first new Sparc processor core designed entirely in-house by Oracle. It takes four to six years to design a new microprocessor, which has been the time frame that Oracle has owned Sun. "This is the first project that has Larry's fingerprints all over it," added Marshall Choy, Oracle Senior Director for Optimized Solutions. The M7 is currently on sale now and is in new models of Oracle's T-Series and M-Series servers along with an upgrade to the Oracle Supercluster, which is a pre-configured system for running the Oracle database.

The memory-protection technology, which is also known as "silicon-secured memory", prevents malicious programs from accessing parts of main memory that they're not used to, thus disposing of a common attack method for hackers. Whenever a new application needs new memory, the M7 creates a unique "color bit" which ensures the application can access only the portion of memory assigned to it. When the application process ends, the color bit expires and a new one is created for the next allocation of memory. "That's how we can prevent a piece of malware from accessing a memory segment it's not authorized to, because it will do that color code checking and abort the program if it doesn't match," Choy added.

This is particularly significant due to the fact that customers are storing large amounts of data in memory for analytics, where it is more susceptible to attacks. The secured memory technology will be available to any application that runs on the M7 systems, Choy said, and not just ones from Oracle. In addition to that, it is also capable of uncovering low-level bugs in software because it exposes any problems with memory allocation. For decompression, the accelerator in the chip will run at the full speed of Oracle's in-memory database. This means that customers will be able to use compressed data for in-memory computing without the performance overhead that they would normally have to deal with.

Oracle is offering the M7 chip in the T-Series servers, which are typically used for scale-out configurations, and in the M-Series servers, which scale up to form big SMP boxes. This is also the first time the company will use the same processor across both product lines and, according to Choy, "We literally have one chip. We have exactly on part number for the M7."

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OpenStack Are Now Being Put Into Docker Containers By Oracle

If you thought that OpenStack and Docker containers were competitive technologies then you thought wrong. In fact, the exact opposite is true as Oracle is now offering the very best proof yet in using Docker images as a mechanism to install an OpenStack cloud.

Oracle OpenStack for Oracle Linux Release 2 (that's a mouthful) is now available and gives users an interesting new way to benefit from Docker and OpenStack simultaneously. This new release is based on the OpenStack Kilo milestone that came out on October 15th. Senior Vice President of Linux and Virtualization Engineering at Oracle Wim Coekaerts has said that Oracle's goal is to provide a single release per year of OpenStack. "At this time, we see a release per year as a good mix between being current and being stable. Our first release was based on Icehouse, we skipped Juno, and picked up Kilo. We plan to skip Liberty and pick up a release after Liberty," Coekaerts stated.

He also stated that OpenStack releases are development releases similar to how the distributions from Linux acquire a specific upstream kernel and stabilize it. He went on to say that Oracle treats OpenStack in the same way by picking up a version of OpenStack, testing it, developing it, packaging it, and hardening it before releasing a new version of Oracle OpenStack for Oracle Linux.

Coekaerts noted, "If we did this with every version it would not be effective for customers since they would always be upgrading, and stability is important to our customers. Liberty is brand new. At Oracle, we spend a lot of time testing, packaging, fixing, and developing in-depth integration; this is needed to help ensure our products are shipped enterprise ready."

When the first release of Oracle OpenStack for Oracle Linux came out, the platform was packaged as individual RPM packages for each and every component, similar to how vendors package OpenStack. Coekaerts stated that in that particular model, an administrator for a cloud would be required to install an operating system and then install and configure every rpm. "Now, with Oracle OpenStack for Oracle Linux Release 2, we provide an entire preconfigured/installed image with all the Oracle Linux bits needed (and not more, or less) and all the OpenStack components needed (not more or less), that simplifies things for customers," Coekaerts added.

Coekaerts also provided an example of the package list that is to be installed on top of Oracle Linux as part of an OpenStack installation. You can find that here. Coekaerts added, "All of that is now contained in a nice Docker image for each module, and updates are based on Docker image updates. The nice thing is that each service is broken up in a separate Docker container."

The advantages to having OpenStack packaged as a Docker image include things like improved visibility. Coekaerts went on to say that pre-Docker, there would have been hundreds of python daemons installed and running with no breakdown, meaning that an administrator would have to do ps auxww and witness a labyrinth of processes in order to discover what is running and what is not.

"With Oracle OpenStack for Oracle Linux Release 2, each component is a separate Docker instance and a simple Docker ps will show all the different-named OpenStack services running - it's much cleaner," according to Coekaerts.

Considering the fact that Docker instances are simply filesystem checkouts on a filesystem, a system administrator has the ability go into the subdirectory for the Docker instance and view everything that is installed, according to Coekaerts. System administrators also have the ability to use the Docker tools to see which versions, what the changelog is, and other things about whatever is running. "By running Docker instances for services, it makes it simpler and easier to manage a complex product like OpenStack, compared to running many processes," Coekaerts stated. "It also gives a better overview of what is running and what is not."

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Dell Debuts New PowerEdge R930 Server for Enterprise Workloads

Dell recently debuted its PowerEdge R930, an enterprise application of its PowerEdge server lineup. This new launch is a part of Dell's attempt at capturing more workloads, including analytics. The R930 is specifically aimed at the traditional enterprise running workloads, like enterprise and customer relationship management applications from Oracle and SAP.

Executive Director of Dell Server Solutions Brian Payne stated that the server replacement cycle will take around three to five years. However, Payne argues that performance improvements from Dell along with configurations and preintegrated applications from Cloudera, SAP HANA and Oracle should convince enterprises to upgrade. "The aim is to be future read," Payne adds.

Other enterprise vendors, like IBM, have already moved away from the x86 server market as a commodity business but Dell is arguing that this type of server is taking UNIX workloads. Sure there's still the cloud but Payne believes that there will be growth in hybrid data centers.

The PowerEdge R930 is as follows:

• 22% improvement on the SAP SD 2-Tier benchmark for a four-socket server
• 6TB of memory in 96 DIMMs
• 24 internal hard drives and support for SSD or hard drives
• Automation, reliability and availability  features and software

In addition to that, Dell has also pre-engineered appliances based on the PowerEdge R930. Payne noted that the majority customers buy the standard R9309. Dell has also updated the PowerEdge VRTX and PowerEdge M1000e converged systems.

Dell also announced the PowerEdge FC830 and M830 blade servers. These servers are designed for database, technical computing and virtualization. The FC830 and M830 both run up to 3TB of memory and up to 72 processing cores for the Intel Xeon E5-4600 v3 processors.

Dell hasn't listed any pricing or availability for the new systems but noted that integrated systems based on the PowerEdge R930 will be available later this year.

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Oracle Executives Regret Sun Acquisition

According to a filing by HP in a dispute with Oracle over the porting of its software to the Itanium platform, HP stated that Oracle had gone with an aggressive strategy against HP's Itanium servers after sales of competing Sun's Sparc servers have dropped considerably. In addition to that, HP stated that Oracle executives believed that the 2010 acquisition of Sun Microsystems was a mistake.

Oracle announced back in 2011 that it would not support HP's Itanium platform on future products, which marked the latest move by the company that made running software on the HP platform more expensive. HP also submitted the filing to the Superior Court of the State of California, Santa Clara County, in opposition to Oracle's motion for summary adjudication.

Oracle decided not to support servers running the Itanium processors due to the fact that the processors were nearing the end of their life. When Oracle made this move, HP decided to sue because HP uses the chip in its high-end servers. Oracle CEO Larry Ellison made the decision not to port the software, a decision that was only shared with a few Oracle executives. Not even Oracle's Senior Vice President of Database Development was consulted on the issue.

Last month HP filed for a pretrial ruling that Oracle is contractually required to offer future versions of its software on the Itanium platform and claimed that an agreement between Intel and HP ensured that the Itanium was not an end-of-life processor. Oracle, on the other hand, stated that HP fraudulently induced it to enter into the agreement, stating that the company withheld information that it was secretly paying Intel $88 million per year to artificially continue the Itanium processor's life span.

The most recent filing points out that Intel had refuted Oracle's claims regarding the supposed end-of-life of the Itanium platform. A testimony from the Intel Executive in charge also made it clear that, "far from being near its demise, Itanium had just gained new vitality when Oracle made its announcement."

Oracle's internal sales communications shows the real reason the company decided to drop support for Itanium. The sales force was exhorted to take full advantage of the Itanium announcement according to the new filing, which quoted a sales executive from Oracle saying that, "we are the ones dictating IT/Itanium obsolescence."

According to a statement from HP, "This new information that has come up during the discovery period further underscores Oracle's behavior as 'anti-customer'. It reinforces the fact that Oracle breached its contractual agreement with HP in a bad faith attempt to drive hardware sales from Itanium to Sun servers." Deborah Hellinger, spokeswoman for Oracle, declined to comment on the filing.

Source: Computer World - HP: Oracle executives believed Sun acquisition was a mistake

Security Flaw at Oracle Could Take Down Application Servers

Oracle just released an emergency patch that is designed to fix a vulnerability that, according to the company, could bring down HTTP application servers sold by Oracle, ones that are also based on Apache 2.0 or 2.2.

According to a statement released by Oracle, hackers have the ability to exploit weaknesses remotely without the need of a username or password for entry. There are multiple products that are affected by the bug, including Oracle Fusion Middleware 11g Release 1, versions 11.1.1.3.0, 11.1.1.4.0 and 11.1.1.5.0; Oracle Application Server 10g Release 3, version 10.1.1.5.0 and Oracle Application Server 10g Release 2, version 10.1.2.3.0.

The United States Government's National Vulnerability Database has already assigned a Common Vulnerability Scoring System (CVSS) rating of 7.8 to the bug, indicating a "complete Operating System denial of service (dos)", according to the company. However, Oracle did take issue with the assessment in its security alert.

According to the company, "A complete Operating System denial of service is not possible on any platform supported by Oracle, and as a result, Oracle has given the vulnerability a CVSS Base Score of 5.0 indicating a complete denial of service of the Oracle HTTP Server but not the Operating System."

Regardless of how you score it, the bug was, evidently, serious enough for Oracle to release a patch for it outside of the company's usual large quarterly update schedule, the next of which is poised to take place on October 18, 2011.

The hack at Oracle is just the latest in a series of hacks against large corporations, government websites and other companies from multiple hacker groups that like to be known as "hacktivists". These attacks have gotten so bad, actually, that the government has started an all out campaign against these hackers in an attempt to stop them before they cause any extremely serious damage.

Source: PC World - Oracle: Security Flaw Could Bring Down App Servers

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HP Not Letting Oracle Drop Itanium Support Without A Fight

So, if you haven't already heard, HP has no plans of letting Oracle off the hook for supporting Itanium. Oracle publicly announced back in March that it was officially discontinuing support of Oracle applications running on HP's Intel Itanium powered servers.

Jump forward three months and HP is starting to fight back by claiming that Oracle has a legal obligation to continue supporting Itanium. According to a statement made by HP, "HP believes that Oracle's March 22 statement to discontinue all future software development on the Itanium platform violates legally binding commitments Oracle has made to HP and the more than 140,000 shared HP-Oracle customers. Further, we believe that this is an unlawful attempt to force customers from HP Itanium platforms over to Oracle's own platforms."

HP has sent Oracle a formal legal demand letter telling the company that it needs to reverse its decision on abandoning Itanium. "HP believes that Oracle is legally obligated to continue to offer its software product suite on the Itanium platform and we will take whatever legal actions are available to us necessary to protect our customers' best interests and the significant investments they have made," HP stated.

Oracle, back in March, made numerous claims that HP apparently disagreed with. Not only did Oracle announce publicly that the company was discontinuing support for HP's Itanium but they also claimed that Intel was hopping on board and doing the same thing. According to Oracle, "Intel management made it clear that their strategic focus is on their x86 microprocessor and that Itanium was nearing the end of its life."

The unfortunate thing, for Oracle at least, is that both HP and Intel are refuting Oracle's claims. According to HP, "HP remains committed to a long-term mission-critical server roadmap, including Intel's Itanium processor. Similarly, Intel has repeatedly reinforced its ongoing commitment to the Itanium roadmap."

While HP is going after Oracle for Itanium support, other vendors have already begun abandoning the platform. Microsoft announced back in April of 2010 that it was ending support for Itanium. Will HP win out over Oracle or will Oracle's claims that Intel is dropping Itanium as well come true?

Source: Server Watch - HP Demands Oracle Support Itanium

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Latest Version of Oracle GlassFish Server Launched

Oracle has officially launched a new version of Oracle GlassFish Server as well as an update to the Java Platform Enterprise Edition (Java EE) 6 software development kit (SDK)distribution through the latest release of the Java EE 6 Reference Implementation.

Oracle GlassFish Server is based on the company's open source counterpart, GlassFish Server Open Source Edition, which allows customers to have more control over their product deployments via the publicly available roadmap of product features and priorities.

Oracle stated that Oracle GlassFish Server 3.1 delivers on the roadmap laid out at JavaOne 2010 with a focus on new highly availability features specifically in load balancing, failover, state management and centralized administration. Key features of Oracle GlassFish Server 3.1 include: new features for OSGi Enterprise like support for JDBC and HTTP Service; faster startup/deploy/re-deploy cycle; sophisticated tools integration with NetBeans and Eclipse and increased compatibility with Oracle WebLogic Server 11g.

This new release also features failover as well as load balancing capabilities and even built-in HTTP and Enterprise Java Bean (EJB) state management. High availability messaging with GlassFish MQ is also available. According to Oracle, the new offering's centralized administration enables customers to monitor, and even manage, clusters and standalone servers securely from a single web-based console. This will help decrease operational costs as well as enabling users to respond to change quickly. It even allows centralized policy-driven management of GlassFish Metro Web Services from Oracle Web Services Manager.

Source: CBR - Oracle launches latest version of Orcale GlassFish Server

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Oracle's New SPARC Supercluster

When the Sun SPARC microprocessor first came out, many people thought that it would be a dead end. Well, Larry Ellison, CEO of Oracle, is on a mission to prove all of those naysayers wrong.

Oracle announced a plethora of new servers powered by SPARC as well as an outline for future development of SPARC. Among the new servers there is an SPARC based Exalogic Elastic Cloud and the newly unveiled SPARC Supercluster. It seems that the new SPARC servers are being optimized for the upcoming Solaris 11 Unix os as Sun's hardware and software portfolios undergo an update from Oracle.

According to Ellison, "For all our competitors that have been enjoying their Sun down and Sun set programs, this is the end of that. The Sunrise program is all about SPARC and Solaris, those two foundation technologies are going to lead the industry into the next generation of engineered systems."

One of the new SPARC systems announced by Oracle is the Exalogic Elastic Cloud server which is powered by SPARC. Back in September, Oracle debuted an x86 based Exalogic server at OpenWorld. The Exalogic server is a middleware enhanced cloud-in-a-box solution that is specifically designed for Java applications. On the flipside, the SPARC version is powered by a 16 core T3-1B SPARC processor.


Oracle is also making a general purpose computing platform with the new SPARC Supercluster while Exalogic is focused on Java middleware performance. "The Supercluster is a general purpose server that will run your middleware, your customer apps and your database extremely well," Ellison said. "It runs your database faster than anyone has run any database before."

Aside from talking about the new SPARC T3 processors in the Exalogic and Supercluster platforms, Ellison also talked about the benefits of InfiniBand, which is used in both systems in order to approve overall performance. InfiniBand is typically seen in high performance computing systems and offers lower latency than your traditional Ethernet configurations.

According to Ellison, "We think InfiniBand is dramatically better for linking servers to other servers and servers to storage than Ethernet. We certainly have Ethernet connectivity to these boxes, but when these servers are talking amongst themselves and talking to storage, they're going through a high performance, reliable and guaranteed delivery network called InfiniBand."

Oracle is continuing to move ahead on SPARC performance beyond the current generation of T3 processors. According to Ellison, "The T4 is alive in the lab delivering a lot better single-threaded performance than the T3. In T3 we focused on adding more cores, and in the T4 we're trying to make our single thread performance better and it looks very good right now."

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Server OS Landscapes Going with the Flow

The world of UNIX and Linux server operating systems right now is anything but boring. However, that may not be the best thing, especially for enterprises that want a background of stability and certainty when they choose a server OS to power their business.

If you use Sun UNIX, then you know all about this. The OpenSolaris project just recently disintegrated into nothing after a long run of uncertainty and was replaced by something probably based on the Illumos project like the OpenIndiana spork. Users of Solaris weren't greeted with such a rude awakening though. Their enterprise OS hasn't actually gone away. They have, however, come to terms with the fact that UNIX is now a product of Oracle which means it is being developed along a very, very different style then it was under Sun.

The Suse Linux Enterprise Server (SLES) is under Novell and is also one of the two leading open source server distributions. The server itself runs just fine but, being owned by Novell, which is known for being a little chaotic, has cast a shadow over the product.

On a lighter side, if you are a Red Hat shop, you can rest assured that you are running the number one open source server OS from a dependable and stable company. In fact, Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) is respected so highly that Oracle uses it as a basis for its own Linux offering.

But how long will this last? Oracle has decided to drop Red Hat compatibility in its Oracle Linux Product after announcing the Oracle Unbreakable Kernel for Oracle Linux at Oracle OpenWorld last week. According to Oracle, it is a "fast, modern, reliable kernel that is optimized for Oracle software and hardware." Oracle also promises that the new kernel will offer a 75% performance gain demonstrated in OLTP performance tests over a Red Hat compatible kernel, a 200% speedup of Infiniband messaging and 137% faster solid state disk access.

It is rumored that VMware may buy Novell's Linux business, and if that does happen, then Red Hat is going to be a minnow among sharks in the server OS market going forward. To put it into perspective, Solaris is a part of a $140 billion Oracle Corporation while SLES would be a part of a $36 billion VMware. As for Windows, AIX and HP-UX, they are each owned by corporations worth some $220 billion (Microsoft), $166 billion (IBM) and $90 billion (HP) respectively. Red Hat is definitely the odd one out with only $7 billion.

That leaves IBM, HP and Microsoft. All these companies are fairly predictable and boring, but they are also huge. However, with all that is going on in the enterprise operating systems market at the moment, big, boring and predictable may be the perfect thing for many potential customers.

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Oracle Unveils New High-Performance Sun Fire Clusters

Holding true to CEO Larry Ellison's promise that Oracle would primarily focus on the high-performance server market, last Monday Oracle expanded its line of x86 Sun servers with new rackmount, blade and network clustering servers. The newly released Sun Fire x86 Clustered Systems are intended for massive server configurations and will deliver a smaller footprint than previous generations of Sun File Server hardware. The servers themselves will come equipped with Xeon 5600 and 7500 processors, the latter is aimed at mission-critical systems which must always run and never go down. In doing so Oracle is competing against Intels Itanium processor line and even Sun's own SPARC line which has raised a few eyebrows.

The Sun Fire x86 Clustered Systems are designed for customers that run a mix of Oracle and non-Oracle enterprise workloads across a variety of systems. The cluster servers themselves consist of five rackmounted and two bladed servers that can hold two to eight processors and have been tightly integrated with Oracle software, middleware and management applications. Oracle has assured their customers that all Oracle software and middleware has been certified to run on these systems which have been optimized for Oracle Solaris, Oracle Enterprise Linux, and Oracle VM which supports Red Hat, Suse Linux, and even the KVM hypervisor.

In addition to optimizing their software and operating systems, Oracle has integrated Sun's Ops Center with its own Enterprise Manager providing a dynamic work flow for a single "lights-out" point of management. Blades, servers, storage, networking, virtualization and even powering the systems on and off can be handled all from a single web browser. Oracle has even included an Integration Assistant so you can configure and boot the systems straight out of the box within minutes. Even with no OS installed, the systems can reach out across the Internet to Oracle servers to check for firmware and BIOS updates and then download and install them.

"We claim we can manage a full blade ecosystem without requiring any network skills, because network virtualization is done in the silicon and through Oracle middleware technology," - Dimitris Dovas, director of product management for Sun hardware at Oracle

Oracle claims that this hardware will be able to deliver up to a 45 percent improvement in energy efficiency over previous generation systems and also the ability to run 70 percent more workload. They also claim that their new hardware can deliver the same performance in one-tenth the space with one-tenth the devices and one-fifth the number of network cables. The simpler cabling on the Sun Fire systems come through oracles Sun Blade 6000 10 GbE switches which are embedded within the blade itself or inserted through the top of the rack to connect the clusters. This improvement allows the server clusters to communicate to a network without having to connect though a networking cable and a switch.

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