Tuesday, February 8, 2011

Oracle Introduces Oracle Cloud File System

a provider of software for information management, today announced that it has launched the Oracle Cloud File System to help organizations deploy their applications, databases and storage in the cloud.

According to the company, the Oracle Cloud File System offers organizations a solution that extends cloud characteristics to their storage by enabling more effective storage pooling through a network accessible elastic storage cloud. The Oracle Cloud File System is available today and is priced at $5,000 per processor. It is available free of charge for storing Oracle software binaries, metadata, and diagnostic files (terms, conditions and restrictions apply).

It avers that customers seeking to transition from a traditional computing model to a cloud computing environment should consider the Oracle Cloud File System for:
  • Providing shared pooled storage with unified namespace for applications, operational files, and user files
  • Accessing storage either directly over a storage network or over traditional networks
  • Rapidly growing, shrinking, and migrating storage pools while applications are online
The company says that the Oracle Cloud File System provides advanced data management and security features including:
  • Snapshots and replication of files and file systems for backups and disaster protection
  • Data access security and encryption to protect from security threats
  • Easy aggregate management operations via file tags
It mentions that the Oracle Cloud File System comprises the following features: Oracle Automatic Storage Management Cluster File System and Oracle Automatic Storage Management Dynamic Volume Manager. The cluster file system stores all files and the volume manager provides volume management support, enabling storage of all file system data.

"Oracle Cloud File System delivers all the components and characteristics necessary for customers to deploy a storage cloud," said Angelo Pruscino, Senior Vice President of Product Development, Oracle. "Organizations can move beyond expensive and difficult to manage and scale hardware and storage silos to a highly available, scalable cloud environment that adapts to change in workloads to meet their service level objectives. Oracle customers can begin down the path to a cloud storage environment today with the Oracle Cloud File System."

"Oracle Cloud File System's advanced and automated data management capabilities help to simplify storage pooling across files, middleware and applications in a cloud," said Daniel Smith, Senior DBA at Carfax. "In addition, Oracle Automatic Storage Management Cluster File System replication coupled with Oracle Data Guard provides a complete disaster recovery solution for database files, external files and all other general purpose files in the operating system."