EMC, Emulex and Oracle Deliver Data Integrity Solution

At Oracle OpenWorld 2012, EMC Corporation, working with Emulex Corporation and Oracle Corp., announced an integrated, end-to-end data integrity solution to offer customers more protection from silent data corruption in mission critical environments.

The EMC E-Lab certified solution meets the requirements of the T10 Protection Information (T10 PI) industry standard for end-to-end data integrity validation.

Silent data corruption can go unnoticed and recovery is difficult and costly, or even impossible. The EMC, Emulex and Oracle data integrity solution protects mission critical application information from corruption, eliminating potential costs and downtime. This is made possible based on tight integration with the T10 PI standard (previously known as Data Integrity Field or DIF), which prevents silent data corruption, helping ensure that incomplete and incorrect data cannot overwrite good data, providing an extra tool to help companies comply with data integrity mandates.

With this announcement, EMC, Emulex and Oracle are providing data integrity capabilities to customers at all critical layers in their infrastructure:

• Within the Application and/or Database: Oracle has taken the lead in defining and developing technologies to prevent silent data corruption and safeguard data integrity. Through Oracle Linux with the default Unbreakable Enterprise Kernel, many features that are relevant to Linux running in the data center, including data integrity features, protect information in the application.
• Within the SAN: Emulex technology ensures the integrity and regulatory compliance of user data as it is transferred from the application through the SAN. It has implemented the T10 PI standard on its LightPulse 8Gb FC and 16Gb FC HBAs with its BlockGuard data integrity offload technology for enhanced data protection. BlockGuard is supported today with Oracle Linux via the Unbreakable Enterprise Kernel and EMC VMAX.
• Within the Disk Drive: VMAX is the first enterprise storage array to join together with Emulex and Oracle in implementing end-to-end T10 PI. The data protection information generated by Oracle Automatic Storage Management will be validated by the Oracle Linux operating system, then passed on to the Emulex HBA, and the VMAX array, thus enabling protection throughout the I/O stack.

The solution is certified by EMC E-Lab
The E-Lab is for server, networking and storage interoperability. It conducts interoperability testing. In the process, E-Lab creates a pool of knowledge about complete environments as well as about every individual component. All components are available and shipping. Each component can be purchased through each vendor—and/or each vendor’s select channel partners. EMC is a Platinum level member of Oracle PartnerNetwork. Emulex is a Gold level member of Oracle PartnerNetwork.

Wim Coekaerts, SVP Linux and Virtualization Engineering, Oracle, said: "We are pleased that our ongoing work with Emulex and EMC on the T10-P1 data integrity initiative has come to fruition. As a result of many years of development and collaboration, we can now offer an end-to-end Oracle Linux-based data integrity solution. With this combination, customers gain enhanced data security and reduced downtime risk."

Shaun Walsh, SVP of Marketing and Corporate Development, Emulex, said: "Emulex is pleased to be the only Fibre Channel HBA vendor to provide T10-PI support, elevating the reliability and operations of Oracle database environments. This solution gives IT managers the ability to protect their company’s data and resources, while maximizing service level agreements. Our latest LPe16000B HBAs provide the industry’s highest level of data integrity with full line-rate performance and no systems overhead with our vEngine CPU offload technology. One of our key goals for the 16GFC transition is to provide more than just a speed bump, our BlockGuard data integrity feature proves that Emulex is not just making SANs faster, we are making them operate better."

Brian Gallagher, president, Enterprise Storage Division, EMC, said: "Collaboration with Oracle and Emulex to deliver the industry’s first standards-based Data Integrity Solution is making the world’s most trusted enterprise storage array even more trusted and secure. EMC’s continued investment and evolution of its market leading enterprise storage portfolio has led to a history of industry firsts including the virtual matrix architecture, Flash-enabled enterprise storage arrays, and fully automated storage tiering. This solution is yet another proof point of how EMC continues to deliver innovation with the infrastructure customers need to run their mission critical applications and protect their most precious asset-information."