Oracle Database 12c, First Such for the Cloud, Now Available

Cloud adopters may rejoice. Oracle Database 12c, touted as the first database designed for the cloud, is now available for them.

The Oracle Database 12c brings to customers a new multitenant architecture that simplifies the process of consolidating databases onto the cloud, thereby enabling customers to manage many databases as one - without having to change their applications.

Oracle India has also announced new database-to-storage system capabilities for customers using Oracle Database 12c with Oracle's Sun ZFS Storage Appliance and Pillar Axiom storage systems.

The new capabilities are touted to enable Oracle Database users to optimize database performance, streamline storage configuration and provisioning, and quickly create new development and test environments.

Oracle Database 12c introduces 500 additional features and is the result of 2,500 person-years of development and 1.2 million hours of testing, in addition to an extensive beta program with Oracle's customers and partners. The foundation of Oracle Public Cloud Services, Oracle Database 12c can greatly benefit customers deploying private database clouds and Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) vendors looking for the power of Oracle Database in a secure multitenant model.

Oracle Multitenant works with all Oracle Database features, including Real Application Clusters, Partitioning, Data Guard, Compression, Automatic Storage Management, Real Application Testing, Transparent Data Encryption and Database Vault.

Furthermore, to help customers efficiently manage more data, lower storage costs and improve database performance, Oracle Database 12c brings out new Automatic Data Optimization features. The new feature, available with Oracle Advanced Compression, automatically balances and optimizes performance with maximum storage footprint reduction using the massive data compression uniquely available on Oracle storage systems with Hybrid Columnar Compression (HCC).

Oracle Database 12c customers are promised that they can accelerate performance of Oracle Multitenant pluggable databases by using the fastest NAS database performance available from the Sun ZFS Storage Appliance. Oracle Database 12c also introduces Oracle Intelligent Storage Protocol (OISP), which 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.

OISP will allow select future Oracle storage product releases to highly optimize configurations, accelerate provisioning, and auto-tune storage systems for increased performance.

Also, Oracle Database 12c customers can immediately utilize the Pillar Axiom enterprise-grade storage system to provision and tune storage to the unique aspects of Oracle Database 12c.

The combination of Pillar Axiom's patented Quality of Service (QoS), Storage Domains and Application Profiles enable customers to perform one-click storage provisioning with prioritized performance tuning for Oracle Database 12c images and the applications that run on them. QoS on the Pillar Axiom and OISP on the Sun ZFS Storage Appliance are said to provide advantages when used in Oracle Database 12c environments.

Oracle's Sun ZFS Storage Appliances and Pillar Axiom storage systems are the only NAS and SAN storage that support Oracle Hybrid Columnar Compression, an Oracle Database-specific feature that typically compresses historical data by 12x, and improves query performance an average of 5x.

Oracle Database 12c introduces several high availability features, as well as enhancements to existing technologies that enable continuous access to enterprise data. Global Data Services offers load balancing and failover to globally distributed database configurations.

Data Guard Far Sync extends zero-data-loss standby protection to any distance - not limited by latency. Application Continuity complements Oracle Real Application Clusters and masks application failures from end-users by automatically replaying failed transactions.

Oracle Database 12c includes more security innovations than any other previous Oracle database release. It's new redaction capabilities allow organizations to protect sensitive data such as credit card numbers displayed in applications - without changes to most applications.

Oracle Database 12c also includes new Run-Time Privilege Analysis, enabling organizations to identify privileges and roles actually being used, helping revoke unnecessary privileges and enforce least privilege with confidence that business operations will not be disrupted.