This document summarizes Jacques Kostic's presentation on achieving high availability solutions with Oracle and SQL Server. The presentation compares Microsoft Always On, Oracle Data Guard, and an alternative solution using Oracle Standard Edition 2 with Trivadis tools. It finds that Always On offers good high availability for its cost but has scalability limitations, while Data Guard is more capable but more expensive. The alternative solution using Standard Edition 2 and Trivadis tools provides strong performance at a lower cost.

1. BASLE BERN BRUGG DÜSSELDORF FRANKFURT A.M. FREIBURG I.BR. GENEVA
HAMBURG COPENHAGEN LAUSANNE MUNICH STUTTGART VIENNA ZURICH
Reach effective High Availability solution
With Oracle and SqlServer
which one is your better choice?
Jacques Kostic
Principal Consultant IMS Lausanne
Tel. +41 79 909 72 63
Jacques.kostic@trivadis.com

2. TechEvent 2017-march-182 19/09/2017
Experience:
• Oracle DBA since 1990
• High Availability and Backup & Recovery Architect
• SQL and Instance Performance & Tuning
• License Audit and Consolidation
Certifications:
• Oracle Certified Master 11g & 12c
• Oracle 11g Performance Tuning Certified Expert
• Oracle RAC 11g and Grid Infrastructure Administration
• Oracle Exadata Administrator Certified Expert
• Oracle Certified SQL Expert 11g
• Pending: Microsoft Sql-Server 2016 Certified Professional
Teaching Courses at Trivadis:
• Oracle 11g & 12c Grid Infrastructure & RAC
• Oracle 11g & 12c Data Guard
• Oracle 11g & 12c Performance & Tuning
• Oracle 11g & 12c Administration
• SQL & PL-SQL
• OEM – 12 & 13
About me

3. Agenda
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1. Introduction
2. What is High Availability and why we need that
3. The Business Case scenario
4. Microsoft Always On
5. Oracle Data Guard
6. Let‘s scale
7. What can Trivadis do for you?
8. Comparison
9. Conclusions

4. TechEvent 15 Sept 20174 9/19/2017
Introduction

5. Introduction
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 Today’s systems need to be up all the
time
 And scalability is a must!
 Therefore businesses is becoming
addicted to IT

6. TechEvent 15 Sept 20176 9/19/2017
What is High Availability
And why we need that

7. What is High Availability ?
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High Availability
Group of techniques which try to assure the continuous functioning of services,
even if computers fail, to avoid and minimize downtime
Data versus Service High Availability
More locations
of data
More locations
of service
Service High Availability
Data High Availability

8. What is High Availability ?
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Do I need High Availability
 Avoid certain periods of downtime
 Avoid certain lengths of downtime
 Avoid certain results of downtime
 Avoid a certain frequency of an error
 For a decision, whether High Availability is needed, look at
the consequences of a potential downtime

9. Why High Availability ?
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Generally
To preserve your business
Have you calculated the cost of downtime to your business?
To preserve your data
Have you calculated the impact of losing your data?
To improve your reputation and therefore your brand
Have you evaluated customer perception of your company?

10. Why High Availability?
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To be more Technical
 What do you want to protect against?
 How long are you able to survive without your system?
 What are your RTO and RPO?
 How to keep your system up to date?

11. TechEvent 15 Sept 201711 9/19/2017
The Business Case Scenario

12. The Business Case Scenario
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Description
Hand Spinner market is growing fast and there is a particular need for
personal customized models. The goal is to:
 Host a World Wide e*Commerce web site for selling custom Hand Spinners
 Setup a Read Only reporting database for the marketing team, day-1 is
tolerated
 Reporting must be accessible during office hours

13. The Business Case
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Concretely
 SLA: 24 * 7 access, RTO and RPO 15 minutes
 Less than five hours per month downtime is tolerated for plan maintenance
If production site is lost, a continuity scenario has to be in place to satisfy
the business within the SLA
 Reporting database is not available if failover is requested
More than 50 concurrent connections to the web site is forecasted
 Database initial size is 20 GB and grow estimate is 50 GB/month
 Backup strategy with no impact on production

14. The Business Case
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Internet
Web Servers Database ServersBasic Diagram

15. The Business Case
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Available Hardware: non negotiable!
 1 * 12 cores 2.9 Ghz E5-2650
 256 GB of RAM
 2 * 300 GB SSD for OS
 4 * 1.8 SSD Read Intensive for data storage
 2 * 2TB SATA drives for local data
 2 * 1 GB NIC
 4 * 10 GB NIC

16. The Business Case
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Software options are:
OS:
 Windows 2016
 Linux RedHat or OEL 7
Database:
 SqlServer 2016
 Oracle 12.2

17. TechEvent 15 Sept 201717 9/19/2017
Microsoft Always On

18. Microsoft Always On
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BackupsAuto Failover
Always On Availability Group
Listener
Synchronisation
Synchronous replication is applied to
“Read Only” instanceAll workload is absorbed by the
primary instance
The two instances R are linked to
the Listener and Read-Only
instance can become primary in
case of switchover or failover
Accessing instance Read-
Only for reporting is
done using a dedicated
connect string
Backups taken from
Read-Only instance

19. Microsoft Always On
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OS License cost:
W2K16 DCE: 1 * 12 = 12 cores  161 = 6’155 * 2 = 12’310 CHF
SQL-Server License cost:
The replica instance is “Read Only” and therefore need to be licensed.
 1 * 12 = 12 cores * 2 = 24 / 2 = 12 Licenses Packs
 SQL-Server 2016 EE
 14’256 * 12 = 171’072 CHF
Total cost: 183’382 CHF
Yearly support: 45’845 CHF
1 Minimum of 8 core per processor, minimum 16 cores per servers

20. TechEvent 15 Sept 201720 9/19/2017
Oracle Data Guard

21. Oracle Data Guard
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Backups
Auto Failover
Data Guard Configuration & Fast Start Failover
…
SqlNet
All workload is absorbed by the
primary instance
Synchronous replication is applied to
“Read Only” instance with Data Guard and
the Active Data Guard option
Synchronisation
Accessing the two instances in
case of switchover of failover is
done using a single connect
string alias
Accessing instance R for
reporting is done using a
dedicated connect string
Automatic Failover is
managed by the observer

22. Oracle Data Guard
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OS License cost: Free
Oracle License cost:
In total, two servers need to be licensed.
 2 * 12 = 24 cores / 2 = 12 Licenses CPU
 Oracle 12c EE + Oracle ADG
 47’000 * 12 + 11’200 * 12 = 698’400 CHF
Total cost: 698’400 CHF
Yearly support: 153’648 CHF

23. TechEvent 15 Sept 201723 9/19/2017
Let‘s scale

24. Let‘s scale…
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After few months…
Hand Spinner market is growing much faster than originally
planned!
 The e*Commerce system needs to scale as users are impacted
by performance issues
 System is sometime CPU bound
 Recommendation is to nearly double the amount of CPU

25. Microsoft Always On
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BackupsAuto Failover
Always On Availability Group
Listener
Synchronisation

26. Microsoft Always On
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BackupsAuto Failover
Always On Availability Group
Listener
Synchronisation

27. Microsoft Always On
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SQL-Server License cost: New production server has now 22 cores
Total cores to license is 34 compare to 24: increase is 10 so 5 Licenses Packs
 14’256 * 5 = 71’280 CHF
Total cost increase: 71’280 CHF
Yearly support: 17’820 CHF
New Yearly support: 63’665 CHF

28. Oracle Data Guard
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Backups
Auto Failover
Data Guard Configuration & Fast Start Failover
…
SqlNet

29. Oracle Data Guard
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Oracle License cost:
All servers need to be licensed.
 1 * 12 + 1 * 24 = 36 / 2 =18 Licenses CPU
 Increase 6 EE + 6 ADG
 47’000 * 6 + 11’200 * 6 = 349’200 CHF
Total cost increase: 349’200 CHF
Yearly support increase: 76’824 CHF
New Yearly support : 297’248 CHF

30. TechEvent 15 Sept 201730 9/19/2017
What can Trivadis do for you?

31. What can Trivadis do for you?
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What is the alternative?
Application is purely website workload with very short
transactions
 Response time is the key driver
 No I/O demanding queries
 No additional options required

32. Hyper Converged Oracle RAC Standard Edition 2
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TVD-Backups
Manual /Auto Failover
TVD-Standby
Scan Listener
…
SqlNet
Hyper Converged Infrastructure
Interconnect
Hyper-Converged Storage
Oracle Clusterware is used to manage
replication with ASM normal redundancy
Hyper Converge Software, no need to
have access to shared storage
Workload is absorbed by the
two instances
5 minutes Gap with
TVD-Standby
Backup performed by
TVD-Backup module
Accessing the two instances in
case of switchover of failover is
done using a single connect
string alias
Accessing instance R for
reporting is done using a
dedicated connect string

33. Hyper Converged Oracle RAC Standard Edition 2
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Oracle License cost:
The three servers need to be licensed.
 3 sockets = 3 Licenses CPU SE2
 17’000 * 3 = 51’000 CHF
Trivadis software cost:
TVD-Backup (1 Server) = 7’000 CHF
TVD-Standby (2 Databases) = 5’900 CHF
Total cost: 63’900 CHF
Yearly support: 36’5001 CHF
1 included 20’000 CHF for Hyper converge software support

34. Hyper Converged Oracle RAC Standard Edition 2
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Limitations:
 Max 2 sockets in the cluster
 Max 8 threads per nodes
 No other options are licensable
 Nothing prevent the customer to upgrade to EE one day

35. TechEvent 15 Sept 201735 9/19/2017
Comparison

36. Comparison
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Option
Initial To Scale
Investment Support Investment Final Support
Microsoft Always-On 183’382 45’845 71’280 63’665
Oracle Enterprise Edition + DG 698’400 153’648 349’200 297’248
Oracle Standard Edition 2 +
TVD-Tools
63’900 36’500 0 36’500
Option Total Investment Total Support
Microsoft Always-On 260’817 65’204
Oracle Enterprise Edition + DG 1’047’600 297’248
Oracle Standard Edition 2 + TVD-Tools 63’900 36’500

37. Comparison
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Option Implement Scale Performance Cost
Microsoft Always-On
++++ + +++ ++
Oracle Enterprise
Edition + Data Guard ++++ + +++ -
Oracle Standard
Edition 2 RAC +
TVD-Tools
+++ +++ ++++ ++++

38. TechEvent 15 Sept 201738 9/19/2017
Conclusion

39. Conclusion
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 Microsoft Always on is offering a very good alternative to Oracle for High
Availability but unfortunately, there are still limitations regarding scalability
 Depending of the application profile, mixing SE2 RAC with Hyper-
Converged Storage and Trivadis tools, is offering very powerful features to
run your business
 Even with some limitations like max 8 threads per RAC instance, Standard
Edition 2 version can handle a massive OLTP or Web Site workload
 For High Availability and scalability, Oracle is still the best option

40. Questions?
Jacques Kostic
Principal Consultant IMS Lausanne
Tel. +41 79 909 72 63
Jacques.kostic@trivadis.com
9/19/2017 TechEvent 15 Sept 201740

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