Database Reference
In-Depth Information
Chapter 1
Consolidation as an industry trend
Welcome to chapter one! In this chapter you will be introduced to many of the concepts important in the context
of database consolidation. Unlike the chapters that follow, this chapter will specifically focus on the theoretical
foundations rather than technical implementation.
Let's begin the discussion with an overview of consolidation, automation, and database standards as I see them.
Consider Figure
1-1
, which describes the roadmap ahead for a possible consolidation project. The figure depicts a
situation where the current IT landscape has grown organically and become unstructured over time, which is termed
“legacy IT landscape.” Most likely there is a wealth of platforms supported and a rich ecosystem of applications for
each. Due to current business and budget constraints imposed by management and additional reasons explained
shortly (bear with me!), the number of architectures can be reduced to meet the goals set by management. At
the same time the IT organization should aim to improve quality and reusability of solutions rolled out by using
consolidation, automation, and a largely standardized set of environments, leading up to what is meant by the future
architecture shown in Figure
1-1
.
Figure 1-1.
The three pillars of the future architecture proposition
Each of the future architecture's three pillars will be explained in detail in the course of this chapter. Further
sections detail additional concepts often heard in the context of database consolidation, such as virtualization and
cloud computing. They are covered here to give the reader a more complete overview of the subject. I think that
without an explanation of the virtualization trend and cloud computing it is difficult to follow the path set by
Oracle 12.1, which allows you to implement virtualization inside the database.
