HP offers a scalable, modular, high performance NAS solution for Oracle® 10g RAC and non-RAC with no single point of failure. Using NAS storage for Oracle makes provisioning and managing storage significantly easier than using SAN storage, thereby reducing the overall cost of storage. HP Scalable NAS has built-in high availability services and scales well beyond traditional NAS in both performance and scalability, making it an ideal solution for Oracle consolidation or grid initiatives.

All technology has strengths and weaknesses. With NAS filers, the strong points for Oracle databases are ease of use and cost. Architecturally speaking, however, traditional NAS filers show weaknesses in the areas of availability and scalability. This is a bold statement given the wide acceptance of NAS for Oracle databases. The goal of this paper is to discuss these characteristics of the traditional single-filer NAS model and the emerging technology that addresses the issues.