Achieving Oracle Database
Scalability using SharePlex
Complement or replace RAC with enterprise-class database replication technology.
Written by Sujith Kumar, Chief Technologist, Dell Software
Introduction
Users demand high performance, but databases are
constrained by hardware limits.
Due to the so-called “Google effect,” users have come to
expect rapid response from applications, and that demand for
performance trickles down to the underlying databases. But
the hardware supporting traditional relational databases has a
finite limit in terms of system resources: hardware resources
such as CPU, memory, network and storage have a vertical
scalability limit.
Oracle RAC enables IT organizations to scale horizontally
using cheaper hardware—but it is costly.
To help, Oracle introduced Oracle Parallel Server (OPS) in
Oracle 7, and then morphed OPS into Real Application Cluster
(RAC) in Oracle 9i. Oracle RAC enables IT organizations to
scale horizontally using cheaper hardware, making it a cost-
effective alternative to expensive single monolithic super
servers. Specifically, RAC supports seamless deployment of one
or more servers accessing the same database within the same
cluster, providing fault tolerance, high availability and horizontal
scalability within the same data center. However, RAC has
important drawbacks, including platform options, geographical
availability and, most importantly, cost.
SharePlex delivers cost-effective database replication that
overcomes RAC’s shortcomings.
This tech brief offers a better option: SharePlex from Dell
Software. SharePlex is an enterprise-class logical database
replication technology that allows data to be replicated
between databases in the same data center or across data
centers with no distance limitations. With SharePlex, IT
organizations can overcome RAC’s limitations and achieve
“six nines” of availability for their databases with no platform,
geographic, network or performance limitations.
 This tech brief is aimed towards Oracle
DBAs, disaster recovery and high
availability (DR/HA) architects, and
application architecture architects
responsible for engineering, creating
and managing application infrastructure
stack interested in achieving highly
available and scalable Oracle databases
focusing on data replication needs at
the same time. It assumes readers are
familiar with Oracle database technology
and Oracle RAC and that they have
a rudimentary understanding of data
RAC requires replication options.
specialized and Why consider RAC?
expensive hardware, Traditionally, the only option available
to IT organizations facing increasing
not only for the database size and load was to scale
vertically. Vertical scaling involved
servers but also for investing in expensive proprietary
the network and hardware. With the release of Oracle
9i in 2001, Oracle unveiled the re-
storage layers. invigorated and re-designed version
of Oracle Parallel Server (OPS) called
Oracle Real Application Cluster. Oracle
RAC enables transparent and concurrent
access to a single database by multiple
servers, each with its own independent
instance, thereby providing fault
tolerance, high availability and affordable
horizontal scalability. RAC is included
as part of the Oracle Standard Edition
database license, and RAC is considered
a paid add-on with Oracle Enterprise
Edition database.
Benefits of RAC
• Scalability—RAC allows seamless horizontal
scaling by enabling transparent deployment
of servers into a cluster that supports user
and data growth.
• Availability–Since multiple instances
running on different servers are accessing
the same database, the database itself is
impervious to server and network failures;
the user workload gets shifted from the
failing or failed node to one of the other
surviving nodes. This is accomplished
using RAC technologies such as Single
Client Access Name (SCAN), Transparent
Application Failover (TAF) and Failover
Application Notification (FAN).
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• Load balancing–Since there is more than
one node within a cluster, workloads can
be distributed across multiple servers,
thereby optimizing system resources.
• Consolidation–The shared-everything
architecture of RAC allows for
consolidation of disparate databases within
the same cluster, enabling better utilization
and scheduling of system resources based
on the needs of the different databases.
Drawbacks of RAC
• Single point of failure (SPOF)—Oracle
RAC’s shared-everything architecture
makes the database a single point of failure.
If the RAC experiences a storage failure,
it will stop working and cause the whole
database to fail. Moreover, all the instances
and the database within a given RAC are
orchestrated by Oracle Clusterware, which
constitutes another SPOF.
• Downtime during upgrades—Since all
the instances in RAC are accessing the
same database, downtime is required for
upgrades to the database server (such
as hardware changes, operating system
upgrades, Oracle upgrades, storage
replacement and application upgrades).
The rolling upgrades features in Oracle 10g,
11g and 12c support only minor version
upgrades of the Oracle binaries in
RAC instances.
• Geographic limitations—All the nodes
in a cluster must be hosted in the same
data center. This is a requirement since
all the nodes will have to be connected
to each other using expensive network
interconnects such as GigE or Infiniband
network interfaces. RAC supports extended
distance clusters (that is, clusters across
data centers); however, the maximum
distance between data centers is 100
kilometers. For longer distances, Oracle
recommends using Oracle Data Guard
between the source and target data centers.
• Performance limitations—RAC allows
the same workload distribution across
multiple nodes within the cluster. However,
because all the instances are accessing
the same database, there is no way to tune
each instance or node for a different type
of workload, such as online transaction
processing (OLTP), data mining or reporting.
• Platform limitations—RAC does not
support heterogeneous hardware within
the same cluster, such as a mixed platform
of a combination of HP-UX, Oracle Solaris,
IBM AIX or Linux x86 servers. A cluster also
cannot span multiple versions of Oracle,
such as 10g, 11g and 12c.
• Costs—Due to its shared-everything
architecture, RAC requires specialized
and expensive hardware, not only for
the servers but also for the network and
storage layers. It also requires an additional
highly skilled IT professional to implement,
manage and maintain it. Furthermore,
Oracle charges an additional licensing fee
for the RAC add-on when it is used with
Oracle Enterprise Edition database.
The cost-effective
alternative: SharePlex
SharePlex from Dell Software is an
affordable logical replication solution
that can either complement Oracle
RAC or completely replace it. Easy to
use and manage, SharePlex can help
IT organizations achieve horizontal
scalability by providing one or more
real-time copies of the production RAC
or single-instance databases with no
distance limitations.
SharePlex has been a leading
database replication product since
1998 and boasts a global customer
base. In its November 2012 report,
Worldwide Database Development and
Management Tools 2011 Vendor and
Segment Analysis (Doc #237963), IDC
Export
Export
queue
Read
Post
Redo/archive logs
Capture Capture
queue
Source
Figure 1. SharePlex captures changes to the source database and keeps the replica in
sync in real time.
3
placed SharePlex as the #1 third-party
database replication solution, with over
19 percent of the database replication
market compared to Oracle’s native
tools at 25.5 percent (inclusive of
GoldenGate, Data Guard, Active Data
Guard and Oracle Streams).
What is SharePlex?
SharePlex is an affordable, easy-to-use
logical data replication solution for
Oracle databases. It provides a real-
time copy of production data without
impacting the primary database’s SharePlex from
performance and availability.
Dell Software is an
The data is replicated from the source affordable logical
database to one or more target database
servers. SharePlex runs continuously replication solution
on the database server itself, replicating
data in real time with sub-second
that can either
latency and no perceivable impact on complement Oracle
the source database performance. On
the source database, the transactional RAC or completely
data changes are captured directly from
the Oracle redo logs or archive log files
replace it.
using a proprietary capture mechanism.
Applications are able to access multiple
copies of the database seamlessly—an
analogue to receiving e-mails in desktop
Microsoft Outlook client and mobile
devices simultaneously. SharePlex can
replicate the database in its entirety
or can be limited to specific schemas,
tables, columns or rows within tables.
It also has the ability to modify or
transform replicated data on the fly prior
to posting it to the target database.
Import
Post
queue
SQL
Post
Cloud target Target
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 • Optimization for different workloads–
How does SharePlex work?
RAC allows for the same workload to be
SharePlex operates on both source
distributed across various nodes operating
and target database servers. It spawns
within the same cluster and does not allow
capture, read and export processes
disparate workloads to be run on different
on the source database server, and
nodes. SharePlex maintains multiple copies
import and post processes on the
of the same database in real time, so each
target database server. The capture
replica database can be customized for
process scans the Oracle redo logs for
different workloads. For example, even
any changes to the data and captures
if the main source database is optimized
the changes. If necessary, the capture
for online discrete transactions, you can
process has the ability to scan the
optimize a replica for reporting by creating
archive logs instead of the online redo
a different set of indices that will run
logs. The read process prepares the data
With RAC, if the to be transported across the network
•
reports and queries more efficiently.
Geographic flexibility–As noted earlier,
after processing it and hands it over
database goes the export process. The export process
RAC cannot span data centers over long
distances. SharePlex, on the other hand,
down, the entire transports the data to one or more
target database servers via TCP/IP across
uses TCP/IP to communicate between

cluster will fail. the LAN or WAN.

data centers via LAN/WAN with no distance
limitations, thereby reducing the total cost
SharePlex eliminates On the target database server(s), the
of implementation.
• Heterogeneous platform & version
this single point import process intercepts the TCP/IP
packets and process the data received
support–Oracle RAC requires

of failure by from the source database server and

homogeneous hardware architecture
and all nodes must run the same version
hands it over to the post process. The
creating one or post process constructs SQL statements
of Oracle. Since SharePlex is agnostic
with respect to operating system, CPU
more replicas of for the DML operations based on
the data changes observed on the
architecture and database version, it can

the database; if source database and executes them by

connecting to the target database(s).
the database goes
down, you can SharePlex also has the ability to encrypt
and compress the data while being
support any mix of operating system and
database versions, including Oracle 9i to
Oracle 12c. Replication between Oracle
Enterprise Edition and Oracle Standard
Edition is also supported.

simply flip the users transported across the network to

• ZeroIMPACT upgrades & migrations–As
we saw, rolling upgrades in RAC are limited,
enhance security and performance. High
or the application throughput and resiliency is achieved by
and schema object changes, network
or storage infrastructure upgrades, and
to a copy of the transmitting the data in memory under
ideal circumstances. Organizations that
application upgrades require downtime.

database with no need fault tolerance and high availability

Since SharePlex maintains two or more
distinct copies of the same database, it
can persist the data in proprietary disk-
downtime. based queue files.
can fully support all types of upgrades
and migrations with near zero downtime.
You can upgrade the operating system,
Benefits of SharePlex
storage and network infrastructure, servers,
SharePlex offers some of the same
databases and applications with no impact
benefits as Oracle RAC while eliminating
to your applications or users.
its drawbacks:
• Database consolidation–A single
• No single point of failure (SPOF)–As
implementation of RAC allows multiple
we saw, with RAC, if the database goes
databases to run on the same node, sharing
down, the entire cluster will fail. SharePlex
the same storage, so if the storage fails,
eliminates this single point of failure by
all the databases will become unavailable.
creating one or more replicas of the
SharePlex allows you to consolidate
database; if the database goes down, you
databases on the same node using different
can simply flip the users or the application
storage mount points. This eliminates
to a copy of the database with no downtime.

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 the single point of failure: even if one of
the storage mount points fails, the other
databases and the associated instances
running on a given node will continue to
function. Moreover, since the database can
be replicated to more than one node at the
same time, total failures are prevented.
• Reduced costs–As noted above, RAC
requires specialized and expensive
hardware. SharePlex, on the other hand,
can run on low-cost or re-purposed
hardware, allowing it scale horizontally
at an affordable cost. You can add new
commodity servers without incurring
the cost of replacing the existing more
expensive and older servers, so you can
•
scale up more cost effectively.
Load balancing– Since all the nodes within
a RAC access the same physical databases,
even though the user load can be spread
across multiple nodes, the users access the
same database, which will end up being a
bottleneck at some point. With SharePlex,
the database and its replica(s) can be set up
in multi-master or bi-directional replication
mode, so you can spread the user load
across multiple databases and also across
multiple data centers.
How SharePlex complements RAC
In IT organizations where Oracle RAC
has been implemented and is an integral
part of the enterprise, SharePlex can
overcome some of the shortcomings of
RAC at a much lower cost. By providing
one or more copies of the primary
database on separate servers within
the same data center or across data
centers, SharePlex:
• Provides a shared-nothing architecture
that eliminates the single points of failure
discussed above
• Supports replication to and from a virtually
unlimited number of nodes using the
cascading configuration, overcoming
Oracle 11gR2’s limitation restricting each
RAC implementation to a maximum of
100 nodes
• Eliminates geographic limitations by
removing RAC’s distance limits
• Supports multiple operating system types,
CPU architectures (x86, x64, SPARC and
RISC) and database versions
• Enables you to take advantage of new
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failover technologies, such as FAN and
TAF, without re-writing application logic,
unlike RAC, which requires application
modification
What about Oracle Standard Edition?
Small to medium size companies often
implement RAC as part of Oracle
Standard Edition. They therefore face
certain limitation, including the number
of CPUs in a server, that SharePlex can
help them overcome.
SharePlex will also help create low-cost In IT organizations
Oracle Standard Edition deployments
that can be used for development and where Oracle
testing without incurring additional
cost overhead.
RAC has been
implemented,
How organizations are using
SharePlex today SharePlex can
Overview
Organizations use SharePlex for a wide
overcome some of
range of purposes. Here are a few the shortcomings
examples on how some customers use
SharePlex in a RAC environment. of RAC at a much
Case study 1: Dell IT: Siebel 10g to 11g
lower cost.
database migration
Dell needed to migrate a 10TB
business-critical database running a
Siebel application from Oracle 10g
RAC to 11g RAC. The application
served both internal users and 22,000
customers worldwide, so it required
99.99% uptime—only 4.38 hours of
annual downtime were available for
maintenance and upgrades.
To upgrade the database while
minimizing downtime, IT staff followed
this procedure:
1. RMAN was used to perform the initial copy
of the 10g database from the old hardware
to the new hardware. Since Linux was the
operating system on both the old and new
hardware platforms, the OS was not
a concern.
2. SharePlex was installed on both source
and target servers and was configured to
capture data on the source while the post
or apply process on the target server was
stopped and the transactional data was
allowed to queue up on the target server.
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 10g, 4-node RAC,
RedHat Linux 4,
Siebel application
Figure 2. SharePlex migration with reverse replication for failback, if required
3. Oracle Data Guard was established
One team was able between the source 10g database and
the target 10g database running on the
to reclaim 1.2TB of new hardware platform. Once Data Guard
caught up with the logs, it was stopped and
storage space in an the database was recovered. At the time
11g environment of database recovery, the SCN number of
the last transaction was noted and the 10g
by performing database on the new server was upgraded
to 11gR2.
the archive/ 4. The transactions in the SharePlex queue
purge during the were reconciled (duplicate transactions
were eliminated from the queue) to the
migration. SCN noted in the earlier step, and the
remaining data was applied to the
new database.
5. Once the SharePlex queue was empty, the
10g and the 11g database were considered
to be in sync and users were switched over
to the new 11g database.
Figure 3. Using SharePlex active-active replication across multiple data centers
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11g, 5-node RAC,
RedHat Linux 5,
Siebel application
Reverse replication from Oracle 11g to
10g was configured as a failback option,
in case it would be required.
The Dell DBA team summarized the
benefits of using SharePlex for the
migration as follows:
• SharePlex allowed the migration and
upgrade to be completed six weeks ahead
of schedule, and allowed enough time for
extensive testing.
• The team was able to reclaim 1.2TB of
storage space in the 11g environment by
performing archive/purge. They paused
SharePlex during the archive/purge
process and restarted it after the process
was complete.
• The project resulted in an improved
user experience.
• SharePlex enabled the team to test multiple
environments in the new platform with
no downtime.
RAC 1: Airline reservations
Figure 4. SharePlex peer-to-peer replication using a RAC configuration
Case study 2: Horizontal scaling with
HA & DR options
A Dell customer has multiple data
centers spread across the U.S., with
multiple RAC implementations at each
data center. However, the limitation of
RAC make it impractical, if not impossible,
to link the RAC implementation in each
data center either to work in tandem to
service the user load or to be configured
in HA/DR mode.
Using SharePlex in active/active
replication configuration mode, the
customer was able not only to scale
horizontally within the same data center
but also to have each data center act as
HA/DR for the others. The configuration
of data replication between multiple
data centers using SharePlex is shown
in Figure 4.
Data center 1
Target 1: Billing Target 2: Reporting
(internal users) (external users)
Figure 5. RAC replicating to reporting single instance
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RAC 2: Hotel reservations
In addition to providing the HA/DR
functionality, SharePlex replication also
enabled application, OS and Oracle
Using SharePlex
version upgrades with near-zero in active/active
downtime.
replication
Case study 3: Peer-to-peer replication
using RAC
configuration mode,
A well-known e-commerce company the customer was
uses SharePlex to replicate data between
two RAC databases residing in two able not only to
different data centers. One of the RAC
environments has two databases for
scale horizontally
processing transactions and queries within the same
from booking agents, direct channels
and online customers supporting the data center but also
first product offering. The second RAC
environment has another two databases
to have each data
for handling transactions and queries center act as HA/DR
from booking agents, direct channels
and online customers supporting a for the others.
second product offering.
Data center 2
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 Using SharePlex peer-to-peer replication,
the customer has been able to offload
querying and report processing to the
least loaded environments without
impacting the user experience on
the source database. In addition, the
customer can perform customized
database backups, upgrades and
maintenance activities without impacting
users, and site outages due to database
malfunction have been eliminated.
Case study 4: Replication from Oracle
SharePlex can RAC to Oracle single instance
An online collaboration company with
be used either a data center in San Jose, California,
in conjunction and another in Denver, Colorado, has
implemented multiple RACs in both data
with RAC or as a centers to handle online meetings by
users. Each data center acts as a HA/DR
replacement for RAC site for the other. Both data centers are
to provide seamless considered to be active, since they are
used for load balancing of users as well.
horizontal scaling
SharePlex is used to replicate data
within the same or between the RAC environments in the
across data centers two data centers in a bi-directional
configuration. In addition, SharePlex
without the costs replicates selected data from both data
centers to two separate single instance
or other drawbacks databases, which are optimized for
associated with RAC. customer billing and external reporting.
Using SharePlex in this configuration
has enabled this customer to achieve
unparalleled high availability that Oracle
RAC cannot provide, leading to a better
user experience and enhanced
customer satisfaction.
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Conclusion
It’s inevitable that your user load and data
size will grow along with your business.
At some point, vertical scaling of your
databases will become cost prohibitive
or physically impossible to attain.
Oracle’s answer to this problem is Oracle
RAC. However, RAC has important
disadvantages, including high hardware
and support costs, a single point of
failure, downtime for upgrades and
migrations, and limited ability to tune for
performance based on user workloads.
SharePlex can be used either in
conjunction with RAC or as a
replacement for RAC to provide
seamless horizontal scaling within the
same or across data centers without the
costs or other drawbacks associated
with RAC.
About the author
Sujith has more than 20 years of
experience in a variety of database
technologies. For the past 15 years,
he has been working on SharePlex,
architecting custom data management
solutions for Fortune 500 companies.
As one of Dell’s chief technologists, he
has been involved in acquisitions and
mergers of other software companies.
Sujith holds a M.S. in Engineering from
Texas A&M University and a B.S. in
Engineering from Bangalore University.
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TechBrief-SharePlex-OracleDB-US-KS-24265