Database Reference
In-Depth Information
Chapter 11
e-Business Suite and the ODA
The Oracle Database Appliance is a preconfigured, highly available, engineered system running 11gR2 clusterware.
Previous chapters of the topic have explained the benefits of the ODA as the database and/or application platform. It's
understandable why e-Business Suite (eBS) owners want to use it for their systems too. Unfortunately, the “out of the
box” configuration of the ODA does not fully support e-Business Suite installations. This chapter will show how the
standard configuration of ODA can be adjusted to comply with the specific requirements of e-Business Suite, and how
to install or migrate e-Business Suite to ODA without sacrificing the ODA's flexibility and supportability.
Is ODA a Good Fit?
An obvious question is whether the ODA is a good fit for running Oracle's e-Business Suite. It's a good question,
and the answer must consider a number of facets, including:
•
Availability
•
Storage capacity
•
CPU capacity
•
Memory
•
Certification of eBS on the hardware
Availability is met by the RAC capability of the ODA. Typically, e-Business Suite is the core ERP system for
a company, and in most cases, it is mission critical, which means it has to be highly available. The technical
architecture of the ODA is built with high availability in mind. All components are redundant—from power supplies
to network interfaces. The availability of the shared storage is arranged by configuring the disks in normal or high
redundancy Automatic Storage Management (ASM) disk groups. If ODA is chosen as the platform for an e-Business
Suite deployment, using a RAC (database) configuration, or at least RAC One Node, which is also supported for an
e-Business Suite database, is recommended to fully utilize the capabilities of the ODA.
Storage capacity is easily met, at least for the typical case. An average e-Business Suite system rarely exceeds
2T size for the database.
1
The original ODA, depending on the storage configuration, provides up to 6T of space for
the database. The ODA X3-2 provides up to 9T of the storage space, and even up to 18T with the storage expansion
shelf added. In most cases, this is more than enough. As always, proper capacity planning is recommended before
migration to a new platform.
1
This figure is based on the author's experience working at The Pythian Group Inc. and supporting more than 15 e-Business Suite
systems.
