Oracle ZS3 Storage System Delivers Record Performance for Oracle Applications …

Oracle Corp.‘s latest ZFS Storage Appliances, the ZS3 Series, enable customers to improve operational efficiencies, reduce data center costs, and increase business application performance.

Powered by a cache architecture and multi-threaded SMP OS, the ZS3 Series has achieved higher throughput, lower latency, and better price/performance when compared to similar NetApp, EMC, IBM, and HP systems.

ZS3 Series storage enables customers to accelerate time to insight, mitigate risk and reduce data center costs through performance, dynamic automation and extensive Oracle co-engineering.

With new record performance, ZS3 Series storage enables customers to perform critical business functions faster, including optimizing supply chains, closing quarterly books, evaluating a greater number of investment scenarios, and accelerating database queries. It also enables enterprises to respond to application needs dynamically while helping to reduce time-to-business value.

To simplify Oracle Database deployments, increase database performance and reduce storage requirements, the ZS3 Series takes advantage of Oracle-only storage features and capabilities:

• New Oracle Intelligent Storage Protocol (OISP) automates Oracle Database tuning and administration. Through OISP, Database 12c communicates metadata to the ZS3 storage which can automate tuning, reducing manual processes by 65%, while optimizing database performance and eliminating human error. As a result, customers can do more with the same headcount and deliver strategic projects faster.
• New Heat Map and Automatic Data Optimization (ADO) capabilities of Database 12c apply different compression levels through the data lifecycle to deliver database performance and reduced storage capacity.
• Hybrid Columnar Compression (HCC) compresses Database data by 10-50x, reducing the amount of storage and bandwidth required, leading to savings through storage cost avoidance, including data center infrastructure, cooling, switches, conduit, cables, racks, floor space, and maintenance.

The ZS3’s SMP OS leverages a next generation architecture, massive cache and multi-core processors to provide users with over 32GB/s of sustained bandwidth within a single system. This enables to support thousands of VMs per system, handling highly threaded I/O which saturates conventional NAS filers, leading to filer sprawl.

It is a storage system with real-time, dynamic application-aware performance and health analytics, enabling customers to visualize CPU, cache, protocol, disk, memory, networking and system-related data-all at the same time.

An independent study showed that DTrace Storage Analytics, a standard feature of Oracle ZFS storage appliances, enables customers to troubleshoot 44% faster with 38% less complexity than NetApp FAS3270, resulting in estimated savings in admin costs up to $27,000 per system per year.

The ZS3 Series features an Hybrid Storage Pools cache design delivering a 4x increase in space efficiency for better caching of critical data and write performance enhancements that deliver a consistent low-latency response time. The ZS3 Hybrid Storage Pools architecture has been flash optimized and multi-core enabled since 2008 and the latest iteration delivers a 2x improvement in overall response time over the prior generation.

With ZS3’s intelligent caching algorithms, up to 70% of all I/O is served from DRAM – up to 2TB per system – which is one thousand times faster than flash drives and 10,000 times faster than HDD drives, accelerating queries and time to insight.

"Oracle’s ability to deliver Application Engineered Storage is a major differentiator which enables customers to maximize performance, efficiency and productivity at lower cost than the competition," said Scott Tracy, VP, software development, Oracle. "Oracle’s new ZS3 storage appliances demonstrate the raw power and value that hardware and software engineered systems can provide."

"As an Oracle partner with long-running hardware and software practices, we can now offer our customers the compelling performance benefits of application engineered storage at a relatively low cost," stated Mike Thompson, president and CEO, Groupware Technology, Inc. "We can conduct ZFS storage proof of concepts in our lab facility to demonstrate the Appliance’s measurably higher performance and unique features like Hybrid Columnar Compression for greater efficiency and Oracle Intelligent Storage Protocol for dynamic database tuning."

"Continental Resources is a loyal and long time OPN member. We are very excited about the latest storage release. Oracle’s new ZS3 series can provide the best integration with Oracle Database clients using features like Oracle Intelligent Storage Protocol and Hybrid Columnar Compression to take the guesswork out of tuning and configuration," said Continental Resources, Inc.‘s COO Kevin McCann. "Now we can help ensure our customers are getting the highest performing application engineered storage solutions. Especially when running Oracle-on-Oracle."

"Oracle’s new ZS3 series test results indicate that users can obtain better storage performance with fewer systems to manage," said Jason Peterson, Oracle solution architect, Forsythe Technology, Inc. "As a Platinum member of Oracle PartnerNetwork, we see value for our Oracle clients in the optimized return on data center resources that the ZFS Storage Appliance will offer."