Oracle Hardware Assisted Resilient Data (HARD) Initiative

Fact Sheet

SUMMARY

Oracle's Hardware Assisted Resilient Data (HARD) Initiative is a comprehensive program designed to prevent data corruptions before they happen.  Data corruptions are very rare, but when they happen, they can have a catastrophic effect on a database, and therefore a business.  By implementing Oracle's data validation algorithms inside storage devices, Oracle will prevent corrupted data from being written to permanent storage. This type of end-to-end, high level software to low level hardware validation has never been implemented before. HARD will eliminate a large class of failures that the database industry has so far been powerless to prevent.  RAID has gained a wide following in the storage industry by ensuring the physical protection of data, HARD takes data protection to the next level by going beyond protecting physical bits to protecting business data.

DESCRIPTION

Over the years, Oracle has developed sophisticated techniques for detecting data corruptions and recovering from them.  These techniques include block level recovery, automated backup and restore, tablespace point-in-time recovery, remote standby databases, and transactional recovery.  However, recovering from a corruption can potentially take hours.  Furthermore, corruptions to critical data can cause the entire database to fail.  For example:

• A well known e-commerce company was forced to shut down for days when a bug in the file manager caused bad data to be written onto their database.

• A large telecom had their database corrupted when a faulty disk adapter wrote garbled data onto the database.

• A leading financial services company experienced repeated corruptions when a problem in the virtual memory system caused the wrong data to be written onto the database.

• A large manufacturer incurred repeated data corruptions over a period of many months that were later attributed to a faulty interrupt handler.

A data corruption in a database is like an infection in a human.  It is possible to diagnose and treat an infected person, however, it is better to prevent the infection in the first place. Doctors developed vaccines to prevent infections.  HARD is a vaccine that prevents business data from becoming corrupted.  It is cheaper, quicker, and easier to prevent an infection or corruption than to cure it.

In order to prevent corruptions before they happen, Oracle plans to tightly integrate with advanced storage devices to create a data corruption immune system that detects and eliminates corruptions before they happen.  Oracle will work with leading storage vendors to implement Oracle's data validation and checking algorithms in the storage devices themselves.  By validating Oracle data in the storage devices, corruptions will be detected and eliminated before they have a chance to be written to permanent storage.

The classes of data corruptions that Oracle plans to address with HARD include:

• Writes of physically and logically corrupt blocks
• Writes of blocks to incorrect locations
• Erroneous writes by programs other than Oracle to Oracle data
• Partially written blocks   
• Corrupted third party backups

The HARD initiative includes several technologies that can be embedded in storage devices to prevent all these classes of corruptions. These technologies will be rolled out by Oracle's storage partners over time.

INDUSTRY SUPPORT AND QUOTES

Oracle’s HARD initiative has received strong endorsement from the storage industry and Oracle’s partners.  In Addition to EMC, the following companies have joined, or plan to join, the initiative: Compaq, Fujitsu, Hewlett Packard, Hitachi, NEC, Network Appliance, Sun Microsystems, and VERITAS.

IDC:
According to Vernon Turner, Group Vice President, Global Enterprise Server Solutions, IDC - "The HARD initiative from Oracle addresses a much needed function to help customers protect their data. This gives Oracle a step ahead of its competition"

EMC:
“EMC is proud to deliver the first product under Oracle’s new HARD initiative," said Don Swatik, vice president of Alliances for EMC.  "As companies continue to build centrally managed information storage networks, storage vendors must have deep technological partnerships in place aimed at ensuring safeguards against data corruption.  EMC’s long standing relationship with Oracle provides customers with consistent first-to-market technology aimed at protecting their information.  EMC Double Checksum software, also announced today, is the latest fruit of the EMC/Oracle relationship.”

Fujitsu:
"Oracle has once again shown leadership in data base data integrity through its HARD initiative" said Tatsushi Miyazawa, Senior Vice President and Group President, Storage Systems Group, Fujitsu Limited. "Such a focus is consistent with Fujitsu's long standing commitment to providing customer solutions addressing high availability mission critical imperatives.  Fujitsu is looking forward to eliminate instances of data corruption through interaction between Fujitsu's innovative GR Storage and Oracle's industry leading data base software."

Hewlett Packard:
"We have been briefed by Oracle on its new HARD initiative.  We think it is very innovative.  By combining both Oracle and partner technologies  to provide end-to-end validation of customer data, this initiative will allow Hewlett Packard to provide unprecedented data protection for our customers.  HP intends to join the HARD initiative and quickly bring solutions to market."
--  Nora Denzel, Vice President and General Manager of Hewlett Packard's Network Storage Solutions Organization

Hitachi:
"Hitachi believes Oracle's HARD initiative and technology is an innovate approach to data protection and will significantly augment our existing data protection solutions. Ensuring data integrity through the entire stack from the database to hardware will give our customers better protection for their critical business data and increase application availability. We endorse this initiative and plan to integrate the HARD technology into our RAID storage subsystems."
--  Mr. Ikuo Kimura, Administrative Officers, Chief Operating Officer, Solution Systems General Manager, Storage Area Network Systems Solution Division, Hitachi, Ltd.

NEC:
"I believe this HARD initiative will achieve unprecedented high reliability for Oracle database.  NEC, as a member of the initiative, plans to provide the technology with NEC disk array "iStorage" series to our customers, especially those of mission critical environment." said
Koichi Ikumi, Executive General Manager of Computers Software Operations Unit, NEC.

Network Appliance:
As a strategic storage provider and partner with Oracle Corporation, Network Appliance is fully committed to supporting the HARD initiative as a way to deliver new levels of data integrity for enterprise database applications," said Rich Clifton, vice president of Network Appliance commercial solutions marketing.  "Network Appliance is focused on intelligent and highly available network storage solutions and this initiative will allow the leading storage vendors to architect more resilient global data management architectures."

Sun Microsystems:
"By supporting Oracle's HARD Initiative and integrating Oracle's data validation technologies into the Sun StorEdge(tm) solution stack, Sun will provide unprecedented data protection for customers on Oracle platforms," stated Kathleen Holmgren, Vice President, Network Storage Solutions Group, Sun Microsystems. "Sun is focused on meeting our customers' data requirements, and leveraging complementary technologies from our partners is one way that we accomplish this."

VERITAS Software:
"VERITAS Software continues to work closely with Oracle to enhance data availability through our participation in Oracle's H.A.R.D.program," said Kevin Reinis, vice president of strategic alliances, VERITAS Software. "VERITAS storage software solutions provide a high degree of investment protection for Oracle database customers."