Today we are happy to announce the availability of the Oracle VM blade cluster reference configuration for Sun Blade 6000 modular systems.  The new Oracle VM blade cluster reference configuration can help reduce the time to deploy virtual infrastructure by up to 98 percent when compared to multi-vendor configurations.

Oracle's virtualization strategy is to simplify the deployment, management, and support of the enterprise stack from application to disk. The Oracle VM blade cluster reference configuration is a single-vendor solution that addresses every layer of the virtualization stack with Oracle hardware and software components. It enables quick and easy deployment of the virtualized infrastructure using components that have been tested together and are all supported together by one vendor — Oracle.

All components listed in the reference configuration have been tested together by Oracle, reducing the need for customer testing and the time-consuming and complex effort of designing and deploying a stable configuration.

Benefitting from pre-installed Oracle VM Server for x86 software on Oracle’s highly scalable and reliable Sun Blade servers with built-in networking and Oracle’s Sun ZFS Storage Appliance product line, the configuration provides high availability via the blade cluster as well as a documented best practice guide that helps reduce deployment time and cost for customers implementing highly virtualized applications or private cloud Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) architectures.

To further support easier, faster and lower-cost deployments, Oracle Linux, Oracle Solaris and Oracle VM are available for pre-install on select Sun x86 systems, and Oracle VM Templates are available for download for Oracle Applications, Oracle Fusion Middleware, Oracle Database, Oracle Real Application Clusters, and many other Oracle products.

Key benefits of the Oracle VM blade cluster reference configuration include:

• Faster time to value – Begin deploying applications immediately because the optimized software
  stack is pre-configured for best practices and is ready-to-run on the recommended hardware
  platforms.
• Reduced deployment cost and risk – The entire hardware and software stack has been tested and
  is supported together by Oracle.
• Elastic scalability – As capacity needs grow, the system can be easily scaled in multiple dimensions
  with the ability to add compute, storage, and networking resources independently.

For more information, see:

• Oracle white paper: Accelerating deployment of virtualized infrastructures with the Oracle VM blade cluster reference configuration
• Oracle technical white paper: Best Practices and Guidelines for Deploying the Oracle VM Blade Cluster Reference Configuration