Database Reference
In-Depth Information
Chapter 5
Networking
Understanding network deployment is important for anyone considering ODAs as a solution for their company.
You need to understand the networks provided by an ODA to determine how they mesh with your requirements
and data center standards. Security requirements may need to be considered during your network planning.
The deployment of engineered systems often involves blending or broadening job roles, because tasks that used to
be handled by multiple teams are now packaged into the engineered system solution. When deploying new solutions
at your company, you can seldom just pass the documentation on to your networking and data center teams and
ask them to develop the network requirements. You may need to become directly involved in preparing the network
specifications for deploying your ODAs, or at least understand the options to answer questions that come from other
teams. This chapter will help you understand your ODA network deployment options.
ODA Models
Oracle has released two ODA models. The networking aspects of these models differ noticeably. The next two
subsections describe the networking available on each of the two models.
Oracle Database Appliance V1
The first ODA model is called the Oracle Database Appliance. It is often referenced as ODA V1. The ODA V1 is a single
unit appliance that houses two standard Sun Fire X4370 M2 servers and 24 disk drives, 20 of which are used for shared
storage. The V1 has the same 4u rack space footprint as the current modular model, the X3-2.
The ODA V1 server nodes differ from those in the current X3-2 model in that they include a fiber network card
that support 10G fiber cabling. The new X3-2 model currently only supports copper cabling. The ODA V1 10G fiber
network can be deployed for either the public network or as a private backup network. Since only one 10G network is
supported, it has to be used for either the public or backup networks, but not for both.
In addition to the 10G network, the ODA V1 supports a bonded pair of 1G interfaces for the public network, and
four additional 1G network interfaces that can be deployed as two bonded networks for other purposes. The ODA V1
can potentially be deployed with one 10G bonded network and three additional 1G bonded networks, in addition to
the ILOM and serial connections.
The 10G fiber network requires a 10G small form-factor pluggable (SFP) transceiver on both ends of the fiber
cable connections. This includes the connection to the PCIe0 network port on the appliance, and the connection to
the fiber cable connection to the switch or network fabric extender. As an example, a bonded 10G backup network
requires four fiber cables, or two per server node. A total of 8 SFP adapters are thus required, at two per fiber network
cable. The SFP adapters are a little pricey, so their cost needs to be accounted for. They resemble a typical USB flash
drive in size and appearance.
