I just got to try out the Oracle database appliance (ODA). It's supposed to be quick and easy to setup and get it running. We've run into some intial hiccups, but this is a POC box and I'm not going to give Oracle grief here.
Here are my quick thoughts
Pros:
1. Extremely easy to setup (hardware perspective)
2. Very cost effective.
3. Comes with lots of Storage and now allows expansion into another Storage Shelf.
Cons:
1. Only Oracle Linux. No Solaris.
2. Only one ASM across all the databases.
3. Patching has to be done in a particular order. You can't simply patch Db, you need to patch hardware, OS and such, before you get to the Db patching (There is a hierarchy)
4. When you start patching, depending upon what you're patching, ALL Databases need to be shutdown. This is very hard to do, especially when you have multiple applications using Dbs hosted on the ODA.
So - where is Solaris and why you ask.
1. Solaris 10 / 11 allows you to run Oracle RAC clusters in Zones.
2. With Solaris, you can have Zones running your Oracle RAC, and multiple Oracle RAC instances can be spun up, especially with MULTIPLE ASMs running. This will immediately allow you to patch your infrastructure one node at a time.
3. The bonded connections with Solaris 11 makes it incredibly simple to work with. This link specifically: Network Virtualization High Availability made me think of ODA on Solaris a lot more.
4. Solaris 11 allows you to add disks to zones without a reboot (a big Solaris 10 limitation).
5. Zones allow you to CPU cage.
6. The Hardware is all based off the Sun systems.
7. You can use ZFS for all OS disks.
8. You can get away from the clunky OVM DOM0 world that the ODA appliance uses now.
9. You can effortlessly do virtualization and use the VM Templates.
10. CloudFS partition would be effortless too - just make a new ZPOOL and you're done!
11. All this can be tied into Oracle Enterprise Manager & Oracle Ops Center for the hardware.
12. All the patching can be made so much more effortless.
