Exalogic

FOR

DUMmIES

DLT SOLUTIONS SPECIAL EDITION

by Michael Wessler,
OCP & CISSP

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Exalogic For Dummies, DLT Solutions Special Edition

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Introduction

urrent IT systems are large, complex, slow to change,

and expensive to build and maintain. Businesses need
to lower costs while increasing capability and improving agility. Whether IT departments are consolidating the application
infrastructure in their datacenters or building out cloud-like
environments, Oracles Exalogic Elastic Cloud (or Exalogic in
short) can be a major building block.
Exalogic is an engineered system, a prebuilt and tested
combination of hardware and software for the application
and middle tier, optimized for Oracle Fusion Middleware and
Oracle Business Applications, and capable of running a wide
variety of non-Oracle software. Oracle engineered high performance, high availability, and efficient manageability into
a scalable hardware and software machine. Exalogic scales
to meet any capacity requirement needed by the customer
and grows as requirements increase. As a preconfigured and
optimized solution, Exalogic drives down complexity while
increasing performance at a lower cost.

About This Book

This book consists of four short chapters, each written as a
stand-alone chapter, so feel free to start reading anywhere
and skip around throughout the book!
Chapter 1: Exalogic Computing. We look at how IT systems
are currently architected and their pitfalls. Then we look at
Exalogic computing and why it is a better solution.
Chapter 2: Exalogics Optimized Architecture. Here, we get
into the specifics of Exalogics architecture and why engineered hardware and software solutions are superior.

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Exalogic For Dummies, DLT Solutions Special Edition

Chapter 3: Exalogics Capabilities. This chapter looks at the
extensive integration, reliability, and performance improvements within Exalogic that support cloud computing.
Chapter 4: Ten (Okay, Five) Things to Look For in an
Exalogic Solution. Here, in that famous For Dummies style,
we give you the Part of Tens chapter detailing the benefits
youll experience by implementing Oracle Exalogic and cloud
computing within your organization.

Icons Used in This Book

Throughout this book, we occasionally use icons to call
attention to important information that is particularly worth
noting. Heres what to expect.

If you see an icon that says remember, you may want to, uh,
remember the information. We wont have deep meaning-oflife stuff, but it may be good to know for later.

Sometimes you just have to know a term or technical details

to understand a larger topic. Or, it could just be that we want
to throw in cool terms to try to impress people. Either way,
this icon identifies techie stuff.

This icon usually denotes something the author wishes

someone had told him before he learned it the hard way! Keep
these items in mind to make life easier.

Where to Go from Here

Hey, its your book, so feel free to jump around wherever you
like, or simply turn the page and just start reading.

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Chapter 1

Exalogic Computing
In This Chapter
Identifying the current state and pitfalls of traditional computing

environments

Introducing the Oracle family of Exadata and Exalogic machines

Understanding Oracle Exalogic Elastic Cloud
Supporting very large systems and datacenter consolidation

urrent enterprise IT environments are a mix of highly

customized heterogeneous systems composed of various
hardware and software platforms. These systems are expensive
and time-consuming to establish and maintain. A better solution is cloud computing, which provides computing resources
on demand as a service in an agile, elastic environment. This
chapter delves into the ways that Oracle implements this architecture with Oracle Exalogic, optionally supported by Exadata.

Current State of Computing

IT organizations are good at building highly specialized
environments to support their applications which has
been the standard model for decades. Although some highly
specialized scientific or engineering problems require customized solutions, most business practices share common
requirements and dont require highly customized solutions.
However, costly in-house business solutions with the following characteristics continue to exist.

Setup takes a long time given the need to design, procure, install, configure, develop, test, and finally implement a solution.

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Exalogic For Dummies, DLT Solutions Special Edition

Complex computing environment may be understood only
by a few individuals who have institutional knowledge.

Maintenance for a custom solution is continual and often
expensive.

Resource consumption cant easily be directed toward
increased innovation.

Features are difficult to modify and grow as business
requirements change and new opportunities appear.
These factors result in higher costs and complexities for the
organization while providing less benefit to the business.
Individual components and processes can be improved, but
the negative aspects of highly customized solutions for relatively standard practices still remain.

Exalogic and Exadata Products

With the acquisition of Sun Microsystems, Oracle came into a
position to engineer together both hardware and software for
optimized solutions. Complete products including server hardware, storage, flash technologies, operating systems, database
software, middleware software, and application software could
be engineered in a secure, reliable, and optimized configuration. Oracle calls these solutions Engineered Systems.

Oracle Exadata
The first product to take advantage of the engineered hardware and software solution was Oracle Exadata. The Oracle
Exadata database machine is an optimized database and storage solution that offers a high-performance and highly scalable configuration. Key items include

A preconfigured hardware and software system using
optimized Oracle settings

Oracle RAC (Real Application Cluster) databases

A high-performance, fault-tolerant, and optimized I/O
subsystem

Increased performance and throughput

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Chapter 1: Exalogic Computing

The ability to scale capacity to meet customer requirements and grow as needed
Oracle Exadata database machines support both cloud and
noncloud environments. The success of the Exadata database
platform paved the way to the Exalogic solution.

Oracle Exalogic
Exalogic is Oracles Engineered System for the application and
middle tier. Like Exadata, Exalogic is an optimized software
and hardware machine. Instead of hosting databases, however, Exalogic is designed to host Oracle Applications, Fusion
Middleware, and third-party software. Customers deploying
applications on Exalogic will benefit from reduced complexity,
better performance, simplified operations, and faster time to
value at lower cost.
The Exalogic benefits that organizations find useful can be
categorized into three key areas:

Oracle Exalogic Elastic Cloud computing

Support of very large systems

Datacenter consolidation

Oracle Exalogic Elastic Cloud

One component of Oracles cloud solution is the Oracle
Exalogic Elastic Cloud, which is engineered to support Oracle
applications and middleware. Specifically, the Oracle Exalogic
Elastic Cloud is designed to support:

Oracle Applications, such as Oracle E-Business Suite,
PeopleSoft, Siebel, and JD Edwards

Oracle Fusion Middleware and Java applications such as
those using Oracle WebLogic J2EE server

Custom applications, including third-party applications,
not using Oracle Applications or Fusion Middleware
products
Figure 1-1 shows the layers of the Oracle Exalogic Elastic Cloud.
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Applications
Custom Web
Applications

E-Business
Suite

Fusion Apps

Siebel

Enterprise
Manager

Middleware Platforms
Integration:
SOA Suite

Process:
BPM Suite

Security:
User Interaction:
Identity Mgmt
WebCenter

Shared Services

Grid
Control

Cloud Application Foundation: WebLogic Suite

Database Grid

Exalogic Elastic Cloud Infrastructure

Operating Systems
Virtualization

OpsCenter

Exalogic
Exadata
Figure 1-1: Oracle Exalogic in the Oracle Cloud Technology Stack.

As you can see in Figure 1-1, Oracle Exalogic Elastic Cloud provides a platform for applications (Oracle Applications, Fusion
Middleware, or custom) riding atop middleware technology.
Infrastructure is provided by the engineered hardware and software solutions including Exalogic and Exadata. All components
are managed by Oracle management tools.
For database access within the cloud, database servers are
interconnected to the Exalogic servers. When that happens,
the database servers are typically Oracle Exadata database
servers, although standard Oracle servers or even non-Oracle
database servers can be used.
Oracles storage solutions provide storage capacity. These
solutions can take the form of external attached storage or storage internal to the Exalogic or Exadata servers. Furthermore,
the solutions can exist as high-performance disk, high-capacity
storage disk, high-performance solid state flash devices, or
tape. Oracle offers many possible storage solutions.

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Chapter 1: Exalogic Computing

Oracles Enterprise Manager toolset handles the critical management of these components. These tools can configure,
monitor, provision, tune, and proactively manage each component within the cloud.
Virtualization the ability to create environments that
appear to the customer as dedicated environments but in
reality are shared resources is a key component within
cloud computing. Oracle makes extensive use of virtualization
with little administrative overhead.
The Oracle Exalogic Elastic Cloud allows customers to
achieve many of the cloud characteristics described in the
National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) definition of cloud computing. Oracles solution provides customers with on-demand self-service as demand increases, broad
network access, resource pooling, rapid elasticity, and measured service metrics.
The benefits of the Oracle Exalogic Elastic Cloud include

Shared resource environment to reduce overall cost

Ability to rapidly increase or decrease capacity based on
resource requirements

A common, nonspecialized Oracle environment that is
readily understood

High availability and fault tolerance via a redundant
cloud of servers

High performance due to optimized hardware and software components

Easy integration into the cloud because it uses technologies already present in IT organizations

Ability to deploy most applications without any changes

Management by Oracle Enterprise Manager technology
stack, which is integrated across all components

Backing and support by Oracle Support Services
These factors make Exalogic Elastic Cloud a solid solution for
organizations looking for a better way to manage IT.

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Support of Very Large Systems

Some applications are simply too large to support on a single,
conventional server. Often the computing requirements of
asystem exceed those which are available on a conventional
server.
Exalogic can be termed a datacenter in a box in that it contains all the necessary hardware, software, and high-speed
networking in a single machine to make business sense for
smaller applications but also provides the elasticity to support the largest systems. Customers can move their systems
as-is to the Exalogic platform and know that the engineered
hardware and software will not only support the processing
requirements but also will likely improve performance and
throughput.

Datacenter Consolidation
It is very common for datacenters to have many more servers
and operating environments than what is actually required to
support the organizations systems. Often, each application
demands its own separate development, test, and production
server with all the necessary support components, such as
networking, storage, software licenses, and administrators to
manage the system. All these components increase both complexity and costs for the organization.
Exalogic excels at consolidating many smaller, independent
servers into a larger shared environment. Through the use
of virtualization, Exalogic allows applications to have virtual
operating environments, yet they share the same hardware
and infrastructure resources. The applications dont even
realize they are in a shared, virtualized environment. By consolidating multiple smaller servers onto one or more Exalogic
servers, you can reduce the number of individual servers in a
datacenter and simplify administration which dramatically
drives down support and maintenance costs.
Datacenter consolidation is often a mandate in large government organizations as a cost-cutting measure. If you can consolidate, you will meet these mandates and reduce cost and
complexity.
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Chapter 2

Exalogics Optimized
Architecture
In This Chapter
Examining the Exalogic architecture
Explaining how Exalogic scales to serve large environments
Detailing the hardware components of Exalogic

n this chapter, we cover the role Exalogic plays in a typical IT environment. We discuss the types of applications
it supports and functionally what it does. Finally, we describe
the hardware characteristics of the Exalogic X2-2 machine.

What Is Exalogic?
Oracle Exalogic is an engineered hardware and software solution. Oracle has created an application platform solution
that benefits a wide range of todays packaged or custombuilt software systems. Understanding how Oracle Exalogic
machines are architected and operate lays the foundation for
using them effectively.
At its core, Oracle Exalogic performs the role of a high-
performance and very efficient consolidation platform for
the application tier. As such, it is typically used to run the
application, web, and middle-tier components of the following
software products and workloads:

Oracle Applications such as Oracle E-Business Suite,
PeopleSoft, Siebel, and JD Edwards

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Oracle Fusion Middleware (FMW) applications such
as those using Oracle WebLogic J2EE server, SOA, and
Business Intelligence

Custom and third-party applications not using Oracle
Applications or Fusion Middleware products
During application processing, access to databases is the
norm. The database tier is very often Oracle, although support for non-Oracle databases is provided. Most frequently,
the Exalogic server will access standard single instance
Oracle databases, or clustered Oracle RAC databases, or
even the high-performance Oracle Exadata database machine.
Exalogic and Exadata rely on the same high-speed networking
backplane. As a result, any processing between the application and data tiers is performed fast and efficiently. Figure 2-1
shows an example of Exalogic application components.

FMW and Business Applications

Enterprise Manager

WebLogic
Server

Coherence
Tuxedo

JRockit and HotSpot

Exalogic Elastic Cloud Software

Exabus and Exalogic System Utilities
Linux

Solaris

Exalogic Elastic Cloud X2-2

Figure 2-1: Exalogic Elastic Cloud components.

In this example, Exalogic supports Fusion Middleware applications, Oracle Applications, and custom applications running on
top of the Exalogic Elastic Cloud Software and X2-2 hardware.
Not all components in Figure 2-1 need to be present to run
Exalogic; you can opt not to use WebLogic Server, Coherence,
or Tuxedo. A benefit of Exalogic is its flexibility to support
many different types of applications.

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Chapter 2: Exalogics Optimized Architecture

11

Exalogic is built to support cloud computing; however, cloud

computing is not a requirement in order to use Exalogic. If you
opt not to use the cloud computing architecture, you can still
benefit from Exalogic in a traditional computing environment.
Common use cases for Exalogic include the consolidation of
many traditional servers into one or a few Exalogic machines
and the use of Exalogic as the foundation for shared services
environments within the datacenter.
It is important to realize that the scope of Oracle software
products is far beyond just Oracle Applications and Oracle
WebLogic servers. Oracle Fusion Middleware encompasses
many products including (but not limited to):

Coherence Data Grid

JRockit and HotSpot JVMs

Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) Suite and Business
Process Management (BPM) Suite

WebCenter Collaboration and Content Management

Forms and Reports Services, Business Intelligence, and
Identity Management
Oracle Exalogic is a highly engineered and optimized hardware and software solution using these components and
characteristics:

Intel-based hardware servers called compute nodes with
memory and CPU and solid state disks integrated and
optimized for application tier workloads

Operating System (Oracle Solaris or Linux)

High-performance InfiniBand network connecting all components within Exalogic and other Engineered Systems
with low latency

Standard 10GbE-based client network and datacenter
connectivity

Shared disk storage based on a built-in Sun ZFS Storage
Appliance

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Exalogic Elastic Cloud Software, which is a set of crossstack software optimizations for optimized performance,
better throughput, simplified application provisioning,
and more

Extensive Management toolset

Clustering and virtualization capabilities

Optimized configuration and interoperability between all
components
Figure 2-2 shows how these components can fit together
within Exalogic.
Exalogic Components
Web Application Software
Fusion Middleware and Oracle Applications
WebLogic Server

Coherence

Tuxedo

JRockit and HotSpot JVMs

OHS

Exalogic Server Software

Linux

Solaris

Virtualization

Exabus and Exalogic System Utilities

Exalogic Server Hardware

Memory/Flash

CPU

Eighth Rack

Quarter Rack

Disk Storage
Half Rack

InfiniBand
Networking
Full Rack

Figure 2-2: Oracle Exalogic Elastic Cloud components.

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Chapter 2: Exalogics Optimized Architecture

13

In this example, you see how Exalogic is composed of hardware

and software components. When you get an Exalogic machine,
you will receive the prebuilt and tested hardware with either
Oracle Solaris or Linux OS installed and configured, as well
as the Exalogic Elastic Cloud Software. Applications can be
installed on top of this infrastructure without any changes.
Of key importance is the engineered optimization and interoperability between all these components. Because Oracle owns
all the components going into the Exalogic server, Oracle has
the control and resources necessary to ensure an optimal
design and configuration.

Scalability for Growth

Oracle Exalogic supports scaling to increase memory and CPU
resources in the form of adding compute nodes, which are
servers. A common technique is to add compute nodes until
the server cannot be scaled any larger. Then, when no additional servers are available within one rack, new racks can be
added and connected seamlessly to meet increased demand.
Oracle Exalogic machines come in Full, Half, Quarter, and Eighth
Rack sizes. In a Full Rack configuration, the hardware has the
maximum amount of memory and CPUs installed. A Half Rack
configuration has one-half the memory and CPUs installed, and
the Quarter and Eighth Racks have one-fourth and one-eighth
the memory and CPU installed, respectively.
Exadata and Exalogic machines are designed so that additional hardware capacity can be added with little or no interruption to current processing as expansion from Eighth to
Quarter to Half to Full Rack occurs. Separate Exalogic (as well
as Exadata) racks can be joined together without the need for
additional networking equipment.

Exalogic X2-2
Oracle Exalogic is currently offered in the form of the X2-2
model. Each machine type can be loaded with Oracle Solaris
11 Express or Oracle Linux 5. Full, Half, Quarter, and Eighth
Rack sizes are available. Enterprise Manager Grid Control and

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Enterprise Manager OpsCenter provide the server management. Individual hardware components through the application layer are managed via these tools and may be integrated
with Oracle Support Services. Solaris zones are supported to
add additional virtualization capabilities.
Hardware and operating system components are configured
at the factory before delivery to the customer. Additionally,
Oracle provides optional Exalogic Start-Up Packs, Advisory
Services, and installation, configuration, and quarterly patching assistance.
The X2-2 is based on the Oracle Sun Fire X4170 M2 server.
Processors are multicore X86 2.93 GHZ Xeon processors. The
unit of measurement is one compute node composed of two
6core processors with twelve 8 GB DIMMs (for 96 GB of RAM)
and two 32 GB SATA high-performance MTBF solid state disk
drives in a RAID 1 configuration.
Shared storage is provided by the Oracle 7320 ZFS storage
appliance; each Exalogic machine has 40 TB. High-performance
networking is provided via InfiniBand network and switches.
The X2-2 comes in Eighth, Quarter, Half, and Full Rack configurations. Table 2-1 lists the total capacity for each configuration.
For more information, check out www.oracle.com/exalogic.

Table 2-1

X2-2 Server Capacity

Resource

Eighth
Rack

Quarter
Rack

Half
Rack

Full
Rack

2-8 Racks

Xeon Cores

48

96

192

360

720-2880

Memory

384 GB

768 GB

1.5 TB

2.8 TB

5.622.4 TB

Flash Fire
SSD

128 GB

256 GB

512 FB

960 GB

1.97.7TB

Raw Disk
Storage

40 TB

40 TB

40 TB

40 TB

80320 TB

Compute
Nodes
(Servers)

16

30

60240

Within the X2-2, all components are fully redundant, including

power supply, network components, and storage. These features make for a very reliable and scalable machine.
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Chapter 3

Exalogics Capabilities
In This Chapter
Identifying performance-optimized components within Exalogic
Highlighting features within Exalogic to improve processing capabilities
Exploring administrative management tools and high availability

xalogic represents the engineering of hardware and

software to produce a highly reliable and optimized
application tier platform. Advanced management tools, fault
tolerance, and a focus on high availability make this machine
highly manageable for critical systems. This chapter takes a
look at some of the individual features that make Exalogic run
so fast and reliably.

Enhanced Performance
Multiple components across the typical IT stack have been
optimized by Oracle specifically for the Exalogic platform.
This close engineering and integration between hardware and
software is possible because Oracle owns many of the technologies From Apps to Disk and can address limitations in
how various layers of the stack interact.
One key item with Exalogic is that you do not have to make
changes to your applications to see performance benefits
simply moving to Exalogic will improve performance of most
applications. Enhancements within Exalogic are at the hardware, software, network, and integration levels; they touch all
parts of an application. Any application running on Exalogic
can see performance improvements as long as it is supported
on the Exalogic platform. This allows a very rapid time to
value for customers moving to Exalogic.
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Performance improvements within Exalogic manifest themselves in two manners for customers:

Processing times improve and the application runs
faster. This makes sense because as components run
faster, processes finish faster which is what many customers expect.

Efficiencies within applications are increased. Because
Exalogic is a faster platform, less raw processing power
is needed to support intense applications. This allows for
a smaller, simpler implementation to support the same
application workload.
Many customers will experience both faster performance
and a more efficient system because of the move to Exalogic.
Coupled with the fact that customers do not need to modify
their applications to take advantage of Exalogic, the benefits
of a move to Exalogic are both tangible and immediate.

Key Component Optimizations

Multiple components within Exalogic have been individually
improved as has the integration between components. Several
components that specifically stand out are networking infrastructure, Java application server components, and the operating systems.

Exabus InfiniBand backplane

The one component with the greatest overall performance
impact is the Exabus InfiniBand-based I/O fabric that links all
the components and subsystems within Exalogic together.
It is what allows any supported application deployed to
Exalogic to run faster, regardless of what language that application is written in. It is also the basis for the reliability and
scalability of Exalogic.
Exabus is based on Quad Data Rate (QDR) InfiniBand and is
composed of:

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Chapter 3: Exalogics Capabilities

17

Switches

Gateways

Host Channel Adapters

Firmware

Device drivers

Operating System extensions

Software libraries
Exabus eliminates previous network performance boundaries
that have the greatest impact on overall system performance.
By reducing the network wait time, applications run extremely
fast and fewer computing resources are required, thus
improving overall efficiency. Exabus benefits can be seen from
the web server component to the storage tier. It is considered
part of the special sauce that makes Exalogic run so fast and
be so efficient.

WebLogic Application Server

In addition, WebLogic has been optimized for the Exalogic platform via improvements to the JVM (Java Virtual Machine) and
Operating System. Improved parallel processing, intelligent
session replication, and enhanced network communication to
other WebLogic and JVM instances are notable benefits.
Improvements with the WebLogic Self-Tuning Thread Pool
and Increment Advisor, thread locking, and less thread
contention result in greater throughput. The number of
data buffer copies within WebLogic has been reduced, thus
improving performance within the JSP compiler, Servlet
Container, WebLogic Core, and the JVM.
You do not need to be running Java or WebLogic server to
gain performance benefits; non-J2EE applications can run
extremely well on Exalogic. For example, Oracle Forms appli cations run very well on Exalogic with improved performance
merely by using the underlying enhanced hardware, software,
and networking components. Oracle E-Business Suite is a
great example of such an application.

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Java optimizations: JRockit

and HotSpot JVMs
Java applications execute with JVM during runtime. These
are the runtime execution memory areas for Java programs.
Obviously, the faster and more efficient a JVM executes, the
faster the application will run.
JRockit is the JVM highly tuned for WebLogic J2EE servers,
and HotSpot is Sun Microsystemss JVM. Both are optimized
for the Exalogic platform in terms of thread management locking. A reduction in the number of data buffer copies inside
the JVM reduces heap usage, resulting in improved garbage
collection.

Operating systems
Exalogic comes with either Oracle Solaris or Oracle Linux.
Although these operating systems (OS) are certainly installed
on non-Exalogic machines, the installed software images
have specific Exalogic software, firmware, and device drivers. Furthermore, any software installed on Exalogic such as
Oracle Fusion Middleware has specifically been tested and
certified for the underlying OS. Tuned networking parameters,
such as enlarged Maximum Transmission Unit (MTU) size,
allow for larger packets and faster communications, which is
just one example of Exalogics specific enhancements.

Improvements in Application
Responsiveness, Capacity, and
Database Communication
Several optimizations have occurred within Exalogic to allow
more stable and improved communication between application
servers and databases. These optimizations promote a more
stable environment for users in which any internal failures are
masked and failover is transparent. Furthermore, enhancements
in communication to the database tier allow for improved application performance, capacity, and responsiveness.

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Chapter 3: Exalogics Capabilities

19

Session replication
As a user works on a web-based application connected to a
web application server, that users session data is important. If
a failure occurs, the session data can be lost and the user will
need to redo what he was doing before the failure. WebLogic
actively replicates that session data to a secondary WebLogic
server so that if a failure occurs, the session is picked up
transparently on the second server. The benefit is, the user
doesnt lose his work.
Within Exalogic, that replication speed and scale are
improved via the Exabus InfiniBand fabric using the Sockets
Direct Protocol (SDP). A faster network speed with larger mes sages allows for improved session replication and scalability
between WebLogic Servers.

RAC integration
Integration with Oracle RAC (Real Application Cluster) databases has been improved and simplified. Active GridLink for
RAC improves performance between WebLogic and RAC databases by allowing the WebLogic server to interface directly
with Oracle RAC protocols. This provides for improved loadbalancing and failover across RAC nodes. In the event of a
failure with a RAC node, the failover to a surviving node is
faster and more transparent. Overall configuration of the data
sources within WebLogic is also improved, thus making management simpler.
The database communication and RAC integration optimizations take effect in particular when you utilize the Exadata
database machine as the database tier. Remember that many
of the same architectural optimizations within Exalogic are
also found in Exadata.

JDBC driver and OS/Network

communications
Exalogic SQLNet communication to the Exadata database
machine is optimized via the Exabus InfiniBand network.
Using a native InfiniBand protocol, Sockets Direct Protocol

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20

Exalogic For Dummies, DLT Solutions Special Edition

performance between the application and database tiers is
greatly improved. This is especially important when large
amounts of data are being returned from the database server
to the application server.

Management Tools
Oracle Enterprise Manager (EM) is the basis for most management and monitoring activities within Exalogic. EM can
monitor and manage everything from hardware components
to deploying a new release of a web application to a WebLogic
server or instances of E-Business Suite or PeopleSoft. Optional
integration with Oracle Support allows for download and
installation of patches in addition to software health checks.
EM Grid Control (EMGC) is the tool specifically used for management of web application server software components and
applications. EM OpsCenter (EMOC) and Oracle Integrated
Lights Out Manager (ILOM) are focused on managing physical
hardware, OS, and networking components.

High Availability and

Backup and Recovery
Oracle Exalogic is designed so that via hardware redundancy,
clustering, and software configurations, no single points of
failure exist and critical components have automatic failover.
Furthermore, redundancy via additional computing servers
allows maintenance, patching, and upgrades to occur with less
overall risk and potential downtime and without impacting
users.
Finally, extensive monitoring and diagnostic capabilities of
Oracle management tools and agents help prevent many
minor issues from becoming more severe problems that could
impact system availability.

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dissemination, distribution, or unauthorized use is strictly prohibited.

Chapter 4

Ten (Okay, Five) Things to

Look For in an Exalogic
Solution
In This Chapter
Identifying the benefits of an Exalogic cloud computing architecture

his chapter covers Oracle Exalogics key benefits.

Getting Oracle Elastic Cloud

Computings Benefits
Moving to cloud computing architecture is an easy argument
to make when you emphasize the following points:

Cloud computing provides unlimited capacity on demand
as resource usage requirements increase.

New environments are set up in days instead of weeks or
months, allowing greater agility and faster time to market.

Computing resources such as storage, processing power,
and network bandwidth are shared across the cloud,
making the overall cost shared as well.

Usage is closely monitored and customers pay for only
what they use. Customers do not pay for excess capacity.

Oracle Exalogic is a major building block in the datacenter to achieve the benefits of cloud computing faster and
at a lower cost.
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22

Exalogic For Dummies, DLT Solutions Special Edition

Making Use of Optimizations

Because Oracle owns the hardware, operating system, storage, network, database, web, and application software, a very
high degree of engineering, integration, and testing occurs
between components. This is a key design principle across all
of Oracles Engineered Systems. Exalogic provides already optimized components and configurations for the application tier.

Parallelizing Your Processing

Two heads are better than one, and the same concept
applies to Exalogic. Exalogic is fully redundant across all
layers and provides a balanced set of resources for business
applications to run reliably and efficiently in either standalone or highly clustered deployments.

Accelerating Middleware and

Application Performance
Great focus is placed on improving database performance for
which Exadata can be a possible fit, but end-to-end application performance also requires a fast and scalable application
tier solution. Exalogics optimized architecture ensures performance bottlenecks will not occur at the middleware and
applications tier.

Simplifying Operations
Application and systems management, patching, and operations
are greatly simplified due to automation and preconfigured
components. Integration with Oracle Support and rich administrative tools reduce administration complexity and costs.
Visit oracle.com/Exalogic for more on Oracles engineered
solutions for your datacenter.

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dissemination, distribution, or unauthorized use is strictly prohibited.