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Oracle says version 12c of its database works better with Oracle's own Sun ZFS and Pillar Axiom storage, with better performance, easier storage config, and faster test and development set-up. But the ZFS product seems preferred over the Axiom.

Oracle shoots out the following claims:

• The Sun ZFS Storage Appliances and Pillar Axiom arrays "are the only NAS and SAN storage that support Oracle Hybrid Columnar Compression … that typically compresses historical data by 12x, and improves query performance an average of 5x.
• An Automatic Data Optimisation feature, available with Oracle Advanced Compression, "automatically balances and optimises performance with maximum storage footprint reduction using … Hybrid Columnar Compression".
• The two boxes support Oracle multi-tenancy and provide "the ability to synchronise the backup, replication and maintenance of multiple pluggable databases as a single entity, allowing quick creation of complete development and test environments." This also helps move tested complex environments with interrelated databases into production.
• The two arrays support "Oracle’s complete software stack, from Oracle Applications to Oracle Database and Oracle VM, as well as the Oracle Exadata Database Machine and Oracle SuperCluster engineered system."

Database administrators can manage Pillar Axiom and Sun ZFS Storage Appliance with Oracle Enterprise Manager 12c.

Specifically on the NAS (filer) front:

Oracle Database 12c multi-tenant pluggable database customers using the ZFS Storage Appliance get "the fastest NAS database performance available."

In a part-echo of EMC's ViPR, Oracle Intelligent Storage Protocol (OISP) comes with 12c and will "enable the database to communicate directly with the Sun ZFS Storage Appliance and deliver a 65 per cent reduction in administration and provisioning by dynamically and automatically tuning database performance."

Selected future Oracle storage products will use OISP "to highly optimise configurations, accelerate provisioning, and auto-tune storage systems for increased performance."

Oracle Intelligent Storage Protocol. Click on chart for larger version.

On the SAN front, Oracle says: "The combination of Pillar Axiom's … Quality of Service (QoS), Storage Domains and Application Profiles enable customers to perform one-click storage provisioning with prioritised performance tuning for Oracle Database 12c images and the applications that run on them."

Oracle points out: "12c customers can use the secure multi-tenancy and QoS capabilities of the Pillar Axiom storage system to physically isolate data on a user or application basis and can deliver high levels of predictable performance to multiple customers in a consolidated SAN storage environment."

El Reg notes that the Oracle Intelligent Storage Protocol is not available for Axiom arrays and there is no statement made that it will be.

Oracle bought Pillar Data two years ago, and the 600 array had its last major refresh in January 2010 with a multi-core controller processor upgrade. The array is overdue an update, we at El Reg's storage desk think.

If it doesn't get OISP support then it looks to be a, ahem, less than fully supported Oracle storage product. ®

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