Database giant Oracle has signed up storage specialist Network Appliance to develop a product to let customers strip out a layer of complexity when accessing storage.
NetApps has created a piece of software, Direct NFS Client, that lets the Oracle database access storage directly without invoking a hardware or fibre channel protocol call.
The idea is to boost database run-time performance of customer Oracle-based gird implementations of its 11g database suite.
The software will be included in a future Oracle release.
Key to the approach is the way the software obviates the need for the system to know all the various implementations of NFS (Network File System), the main Unix distributed file management system, which has slightly different implantations between Linux and the main Unix varieties.
This version will also run on Windows clients, making it possibly attractive to smaller companies, say the firms.
"This cuts out complexity and means customers don't have to worry about all the various implementations of NFS," claims Paul Hargraves, consulting services engineer at Network Appliance.
