Leveraging Commodity Based Hardware

VMware's   ESX/ESXi virtualized servers leverage x86 hardware.   When there is an opportunity to leverage commodity based hardware and run Linux and Windows servers, virtualized environments provide a lot of advantages.   However, just because you are running commodity based hardware does not mean you are not running high performance systems.

When Oracle DBAs talk about database servers they usually mention there largest systems.  However, even I was surprised to see that the average Oracle database server meets the following profile below.

• 2 CPUs
• 4 - 6 GB of memory
• < 2.5 Mbits/s
• < 2.4 IOPS

Especially since large VM environments can scale to over 50,000 IOPS, 250 MB/s and over 250,000 transactions.   Most customers are surprised to discover the how easy a virtualized server (ESX/ESXi) can handle running multiple Oracle database servers running on a virtualized server.