Oracle rolls out Linux database clusters

ORACLE, DELL, AND Red Hat on Wednesday announced that the companies have teamed to make it simpler for customers to deploy Linux-based database clusters atop industry standard hardware.

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The Oracle9i Database Release 2, combined with Red Hat Linux Advanced Server and Dell's line of Intel-based PowerEdge servers, now gives customers the option of deploying less-expensive Oracle databases using open-source Linux software and inexpensive, clustered Dell boxes, according to representatives for Dell, in Round Rock, Texas.

Growing in popularity, server clustering is a method of running applications across multiple servers as opposed to large, individual servers or mainframes.

To enable Oracle database clusters running Linux, Dell announced it has tuned its entire line of PowerEdge servers to Red Hat's Advanced Server and Oracle's Database Release 2. Dell will also begin to resell Oracle licenses via a number of preconfigured PowerEdge server clusters running Red Hat and Oracle, according to Dell representatives.

Going forward, additional pretested configurations of Dell servers, Red Hat Linux, and Oracle's Oracle9i RAC (Real Application Clusters) will also become available from Dell.

Although Dell and Red Hat will each reap the dividends of the success of future clustered Oracle databases, Oracle will likely be the biggest winner as companies that compete with Dell in the Intel-based server market begin to certify their own servers to RAC clusters, explained Dan Kusnetzky, a senior analyst at IDC, headquartered in Framingham, Mass.

"The idea is now Oracle can go create high-performance, clustered solutions atop their own software -- RAC -- and Linux will be underneath. And there will probably be a number of different hardware suppliers that Oracle will announce these capabilities with over time since this is x86 architecture," Kusnetzky said.

Wednesday's announcement was not without criticism from competing database vendors such as IBM and Hewlett-Packard.

Big Blue representatives charged that although supporting Linux clusters was a new idea for Oracle, it was old hat for IBM. "IBM's DB2 database software has supported clusters since 1994 and has hundreds of customers using DB2 in this environment today. DB2 was the first database to support Linux -- May 1999 -- and the first database to support Linux on the mainframe and clusters of servers --in December 2000," said representatives for IBM, based in Armonk, N.Y.

Likewise, HP representatives said "HP was actually the first vendor to deliver an Oracle 9i RAC-certified configuration on Linux, in June 2001, with the launch of Oracle9i RAC on ProLiant DL580 running SuSe Linux."

Oracle's move to simplify database clustering harks back to a plan the Redwood Shores, Calif.-based company introduced in 1998 called Raw Iron. Raw Iron promised similar database server architectures running on Sun's Solaris platform, but the plan simply fizzled out, Kusnetzky said

"Remember Raw Iron? Oracle was going to put software on top of a machine and people would just see it as a database server. They wouldn't see an OS, they would manage it with database tools. And they assigned Sun Solaris to be the platform for that but nothing happened," Kusnetzky said. "Now it looks like Oracle has come back to that idea, but now Linux is the OS and x86 hardware is the platform."