The Oracle Database 12c is an enterprise class high performance database. Oracle has described this release as "the first database designed for the cloud." Oracle Database 12c has many important capabilities. By far the most notable key feature is the ability to consolidate pluggable databases into a single container database. This is referred to as
multitenant architecture.
What can Oracle Database 12c Database Consolidation offer businesses?
In many production database servers, a large portion of CPU cycles can go unused. The consolidation of databases is an important business strategy to reduce the costs of hardware and reduce the management tasks of DBAs. Oracle Database 12c can consolidate many Oracle databases onto fewer physical database servers which enables the hardware to be more effectively utilised.
Oracle's Multitenant architecture consists of a container database (cdb$root) and multiple pluggable databases (PDBs). Most of the working parts of a database are already present in the root container. Therefore, creating a new PDB is a quick and easy task. When a completely new PDP is created, the PDB is created as a copy of a seed PDB (pdb$seed), so it only takes as long to create as the files take to copy.
Oracle Database 12c's pluggable database feature simplifies consolidation as a DBA can easily plug or unplug an existing Oracle 12c database into or out of a container database. No code changes to applications need to take place. When a user connects to a plugged database, the database environment looks identical to a traditional database. This makes multitenant architecture ideally suited for a test environment. Oracle databases software upgrades are greatly simplified as databases can be unplugged from one release such as 12.1.0.2 and plugged into another release such as 12.2.0.1.
Pluggable databases can lower resource consumption. The Oracle memory structures and background processes are owned by the container database and shared by all the pluggable databases. This improves the overall resource consumption of the Oracle databases. Pluggable databases can be backed up, restored and recovered independently of the container database. A new feature of Oracle's Resource Manager can be used to control resources consumed by an individual pluggable database.
How has Oracle Database 12c Database Consolidation proven successful?
Oracle Database 12c database consolidation has proven successful in that it can be carried out far more effectively with pluggable databases than in any previous release. Database consolidation optimizes database workloads, lowers IT costs and delivers a higher quality of service by enabling consolidation onto database clouds. It also delivers fast, reliable, secure and easy to manage performance.
