ENTERPRISE GRIDS WITH REAL APPLICATION CLUSTERS

Real Application Clusters (RAC) enables the enterprise to build database servers across multiple systems that are highly available and highly scalable. In a Real Application Clusters environment Oracle runs on two or more systems in a cluster while concurrently accessing a single shared database. What this provides is a single database system that spans multiple hardware systems yet appears to the application as a single unified database system. This extends tremendous availability and scalability benefits for all your applications.

Real Application Clusters enables enterprise Grids. Enterprise Grids are built out of large configurations of standardized, commodity-priced components: processors, servers, network, and storage. RAC is the only technology that can harness these components into useful processing system for the enterprise. Real Application Clusters and the Grid dramatically reduce operational costs and provide new levels of flexibility so that systems become more adaptive, proactive, and agile. Dynamic provisioning of nodes, storage, CPUs, and memory allow service levels to be easily and efficiently maintained while lowering cost still further through improved utilization. In addition, Real Application Clusters is completely transparent to the application accessing the RAC database and does not need to be modified in any way to be deployed on a RAC system.

Real Application Clusters gives users the flexibility to add nodes to the cluster as the demands for capacity increases, scaling the system up incrementally to save costs and eliminating the need to replace smaller single node systems with larger ones. Grid pools of standard low cost computers and modular disk arrays make this solution even more powerful with the Oracle Database 10g.