Introduction

For many businesses, Oracle Database is the backbone of their critical applications. However, the cost of licensing Oracle Enterprise Edition (EE) and its associated add-ons can be a significant financial burden. This is especially true when features like advanced security, performance tuning, and disaster recovery become essential. But what if you could achieve comparable performance, security, and high availability without the hefty price of a combined Oracle Enterprise Edition (EE) Database along with the required additional cost products you need?

This blog post explores how combining strategic third-party software with Oracle Database Standard Edition (SE) can deliver a cost-effective, high-performing environment, rivalling many EE deployments without breaking the bank.

The Challenge: Bridging the Gap Between SE and EE

Oracle EE offers a robust suite of features, but many organizations find that their needs can be met with SE if the right tools are in place. The key challenges with SE are often:

• Lack of advanced security features: Transparent Data Encryption (TDE) is a paid option of EE with the Advanced Security Option.
• Limited high availability and disaster recovery options: Data Guard is exclusive to EE.
• Absence of advanced performance diagnostics and tuning tools. Oracle Diagnostics & Tuning are paid add-ons to EE

The traditional solution is to upgrade to EE and purchase additional cost options of Advanced Security Option and the Diagnostic and Tuning Packs. This represents a significant increase of licensing and support costs, by up to 1000% or more.

The Solution: Strategic Third-Party Integration

By strategically integrating third-party software, we can effectively address the limitations of SE and create an environment that rivals EE in terms of performance, security, and availability, all while maintaining a significantly lower total cost of ownership.

Here's a breakdown of the technologies we use:

• Quest Software Shareplex: This powerful replication tool provides real-time data replication to a disaster recovery (DR) site. Shareplex offers comparable functionality to Oracle Data Guard, enabling near-zero downtime failover and ensuring business continuity without the need for EE. This eliminates the need to purchase the Active Data Guard Option for EE.
• Randtronics Encryption: This solution provides robust TDE for Oracle databases, fulfilling critical security and compliance requirements. By implementing Randtronics, we gain the essential encryption capabilities of Oracle Advanced Security (an EE extra cost option) within our SE environment.
• Quest Foglight: This comprehensive performance monitoring and diagnostics tool provides deep insights into database performance, enabling proactive tuning and optimization. Foglight empowers DBAs to identify and resolve performance bottlenecks effectively, providing similar functionality to Oracle's Diagnostics and Tuning Packs, again extra cost options for EE.

�?/p>

The Benefits: Cost Savings and Enhanced Capabilities

The combined power of Shareplex, Randtronics, and Foglight delivers several key benefits:

• Significant cost savings: Avoid the substantial licensing fees associated with Oracle EE and its add-on options.
• Enhanced security: Implement robust TDE to protect sensitive data at rest.
• Improved high availability and disaster recovery: Achieve near-zero downtime with real-time replication to a DR site.
• Proactive performance management: Optimize database performance and prevent potential issues with comprehensive monitoring and diagnostics.
• Flexibility and choice: Select best-of-breed tools that specifically address your needs, rather than being locked into a single vendor's ecosystem.

Conclusion: A Smarter Approach to Oracle Database Management

By strategically combining third-party technologies with Oracle Database SE, organizations can create a high-performing, secure, and highly available environment without the prohibitive costs associated with a full EE deployment. This approach empowers businesses to maximize their IT investment, achieving enterprise-grade capabilities on a Standard Edition budget. This not only saves money but also provides the flexibility to choose the best tools for the job, creating a truly optimized and cost-effective solution. Contact us with your challenges and let Corvus IT design a solution that can save you potentially hundreds of thousands of dollars.

�?/p>