Integration creates added value & security

Just in time for the end of the first half of the 2015 calendar year, SAP has completed phase two of the certification for Oracle Database 12c options. After the general release of Oracle Database 12c for SAP in the first step and the release of the in-memory option in the second, the release for the database option Advanced Compression is also expected within the next months.

It contains the new Information Lifecycle Management feature of Oracle Database. For the first time, Hybrid Columnar Compression on Oracle Database Machine Exadata becomes available for SAP.

On the one hand, companies are accumulating more and more data that needs to be processed, stored and evaluated, while at the same time the cost pressure on IT departments is increasing.

SAP inventory customers are familiar with the operation and management of large and complex SAP landscapes consisting of a large number of coordinated IT groups. When SAP failures are imminent, these are expected to work closely together on troubleshooting and diagnostics.

But when it comes to optimizing the existing IT landscape, the performance and availability that would actually be possible are not achieved. In most cases, this is because too little time and know-how is available to properly balance and configure the components in individually configured database servers.

This can inevitably lead to bottlenecks in the system and dramatically reduces performance. In addition, what happens when individual components fail has usually never been checked because the system was not developed as an integrated unit.

Exadata was developed specifically for use with Oracle databases and is always configured uniformly; all machines are identical. This uniformity also ensures improved support, as Oracle support staff are always confronted with the same systems and companies only need to contact one manufacturer.

Provided the Exadata machines are operated in a certified configuration, users even receive Platinum Services from Oracle at no additional cost. This ensures even higher availability and performance.

The service also includes remote monitoring for early fault detection, accelerated response times and patch deployment services. Companies thus benefit from the experience gained from many thousands of Exadata machines already in use.

Single-vendor support and centralized monitoring of all components of a system free up resources that would otherwise be needed to run database servers.

Efficiency is the magic word, which is why Oracle Engineered Systems can be the ideal hardware basis for SAP installations. Oracle now provides everything from a single source: server, storage, operating system and virtualization.

Oracle thus offers an IT infrastructure solution for SAP that provides high system availability and a clear path to increased productivity. At the same time, hardware resources are optimally utilized, which also ensures a lower total cost of ownership.

Optimal system utilization as well as the higher component density ensure equal power requirements with more performance, while at the same time reducing space requirements in data centers, thus increasing environmental friendliness.

The use of the Exadata Database Machine has been certified for SAP since June 2011. All the hardware components integrated in the Exadata Database Machine are optimized for the operation of Oracle Database.

This includes, for example, servers based on Intel processors running Oracle Linux and optimized storage components. They are preconfigured, optimized and tested by Oracle experts.

This saves weeks or months that are usually required to build a high-performance system. In addition, Exadata has a redundant architecture in which all single points of failure have been eliminated.

The usual technologies for this, such as mirroring, fault isolation, protection against hard disk or cell failure, are included, so that the highest availability and protection of data is ensured.

The massively parallel architecture, built on Oracle Real Applications Clusters and Exadata Storage, delivers the highest performance with linear I/O scalability. This dramatically increases the bandwidth between database server and storage.

Intensive query processes and data mining evaluations are offloaded to storage servers. This means that the computationally intensive queries are performed closer to the storage location of the application data, which increases query performance and accelerates parallel queries. This close interaction between hardware and software illustrates very well the optimization that can be achieved with engineered systems.

Exadata optimizes SAP

Oracle's database engine is optimized to handle all database requirements, whether they are read-intensive data warehouse applications (e.g. SAP BW) or highly parallel OLTP applications (e.g. ERP/ECC 6.0).

Oracle Exadata can be used as a backend for all SAP applications built on NetWeaver 7.0 and later. The Oracle Exadata Database Machine takes on the most demanding workloads and achieves speed increases of up to ten times.

In addition, SAP users have the advantage that they can now limit themselves to only two providers for hardware and software for their SAP landscape: SAP and Oracle. This means that SAP environments and infrastructure on Oracle Exadata can be administered both via BR*Tools, SAP's own management tool for databases, and via Oracle Enterprise Manager. Even patches are provided together.

Exadata behaves totally transparent to the application. This means that the exact same code set that was already running with Oracle Database 11g Release 2 and with 12c Release 1 (and newer versions) on traditional database hardware also runs on Exadata - only faster.

This means that no changes to SAP applications are necessary when migrating to Exadata, and the performance gains are immediate thanks to the combined hardware and software "out of the box" solution.

SAP users only need to reconnect the SAP application instances to Exadata without modification. Depending on the source platform, a database migration can thus be as simple as a backup and then restore.

Oracle database features, such as Oracle Data Guard, for data protection and availability, and Recovery Manager (RMAN), for online backup and recovery, can also be used as usual on the Exadata.

The advantage for users and database administrators is obvious: They can continue to use their previously acquired database know-how. With the Oracle Database Engine, SAP users outsource or extend their database applications step by step and as needed.

The fact that Exadata can be deployed as an eighth, quarter, half or full rack from the outset means that expansion is not a problem in the event of any capacity or performance bottlenecks.

Exadata also has a unique technology that moves data-intensive SQL operations to the Oracle Exadata Storage Server. Only the rows and columns directly needed for a query are returned to the database servers.

The result is the highest performance in transaction processing and data warehousing. SAP transactions that demand data are most likely served from flash memory for ultra-fast results.

Reporting and batch processing thus do not affect users who use SAP for online transactions. Queries in SAP BW/BI data warehouses are thus accelerated many times over. Hybrid Columnar Compression (HCC) is a technology for high data compression and reduction of I/O.

Hybrid Columnar Compression

HCC is not included in the Oracle Database Option Advanced Compression, but is only available with Oracle Exadata, as it requires special hardware configurations. Average storage savings are 10 to 15 times, depending on which compression level is selected.

Due to its strong compression algorithms, HCC is particularly suitable for so-called "cold" data (e.g. historical). HCC can reduce a database in size from 100 TB to 10 TB.

With the 90 TB freed up, companies can do without the cost-intensive expansion of storage volume for some time. HCC thus represents a basic technology for both warehouse and archive compression.

As the name - Hybrid Columnar Compression - suggests, this technology uses a combination of row- and column-oriented methods for data storage.

The hybrid approach achieves the compression advantages of column-based storage without producing the disadvantages of a purely column-oriented format. The known advantages of the Oracle database in use with Exadata, high performance for OLTP applications and read accesses, thus remain.

Queries over HCC-compressed data run in the Exadata storage cells with Smart Scan, using a high-performance query engine.

The important thing here is that the compressed data is not only available on the hard disk, but continues to be quickly available for all database tasks, i.e. it is also available in the Exadata Smart Flash Cache, in the buffer cache of the database server and even for backups or log shipping with Data Guard.

Depending on the requirements, the type of compression can be specified: Warehouse Compression is optimized for query performance and is particularly suitable for data warehouse applications; Archive Compression is optimized for the highest compression rates and is particularly suitable for historical data and data that is no longer modified.

With the current Oracle database version 12c, which is now also certified for SAP on Exadata, (automatic) compression tiering can now also be used for SAP. The database thus decides for itself which data is compressed to what extent, if at all.

This means that "hot data" remains uncompressed, while "warm data" is compressed with Advanced Compression and only for "cold and very cold data" HCC is used.

This can dramatically reduce capacity requirements, as mentioned earlier. Storage requirements are reduced by up to 15 times, while application performance is significantly accelerated when querying historical data. Automatic compression tiering is controlled via Automatic Data Optimization (ADO).

With the "Engineered Systems" hardware philosophy and the built-in optimizations for databases, such as the Hybrid Columnar Compression described, the Exadata Database Machine is definitely suitable for consolidating large, especially SAP database landscapes.

27 years of partnership between Oracle and SAP guarantee users the highest performance, reliability and security at a low total cost of ownership.