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The following table provides definitions for some of the terms that are used in this document:
Term | Definition |
ACID-compliant | ACID stands for data atomicity, consistency, isolation, and durability. ACID-compliant databases can restart after a power failure or crash without loss of committed transactions. |
ASM | Oracle Automatic Storage Management (ASM) software layer, which manages Oracle database storage across host devices. |
CDB/PDB | Oracle Container Database (CDB) is a design in which the user data resides in Pluggable Databases (PDBs) and the system data and metadata in the CDB. This design makes it easy to scale, monitor, upgrade, and manage PDBs while conserving system resources. |
Devices and volumes | These terms are used interchangeably and have the same meaning: thin devices that are user-accessible when mapped to a host. |
OLTP and DSS | Online Transaction Processing (OLTP) refers to workloads that focus on short transactions when users make frequent data inquiries and updates. Decision Support Systems (DSS) refers to workloads that focus on long data (batch) updates and sequential reads spanning large segments of the database to produce reports. |
PMEM and DRAM | Persistent memory (PMEM) is a type of memory that maintains its data during system shutdown or power failure. DRAM is a type of memory that loses its data if power is lost. While both are fast compared to NAND flash storage, DRAM is faster but more expensive than PMEM. |
PowerMax dynamic media enclosure (DME) | PowerMax backend uses a dynamic media enclosure (DME) for the fabric-attached storage media. It is fully NVMe-based, where the drives are Self-Encrypting Drives (SEDs) for data security. The drives are set in Flexible RAID, providing a new pooled data storage capacity. |
PowerMax nodes | PowerMax 2500 and 8500 systems consist of modular building blocks called PowerMax nodes. Nodes provide compute, cache, connectivity, and are installed in pairs for redundancy and performance. |
PowerMax SGs | A PowerMax storage group (SG) is a group of PowerMax devices, or a group of previously created SGs containing PowerMax devices. In the latter case, the participating SGs are called child-SGs and the SG containing them is called parent-SG. Several management, control, and monitoring tasks can be done at a storage group level, which affects all the devices (or child-SGs) at once. |
IGs Hosts, and Host Groups | A PowerMax initiator group (IG) is a group of ports: FC- or IP-based, or a group of previously created IGs containing ports. In the latter case, the participating IGs are called child-IGs and the IG containing them is called parent-IG. IGs are used for masking operations, such as when an IG is used in a masking view. All the PowerMax devices in a masking view are mapped through the ports in the IG. In Unisphere, IGs or child-IGs are called Hosts, and parent-IGs are called Host Groups. |
PowerMaxOS 10 | The PowerMax operating system, initially released in Q3 2022. |
Unisphere for PowerMax | Unisphere for PowerMax is an HTML5-based management interface that allows IT managers to provision, manage, and monitor PowerMax data storage assets. It is embedded within PowerMax nodes as a container to manage a single PowerMax storage system. It can also be installed as a host software to manage more than one PowerMax storage systems. |
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