Virtualization

Abstract

Virtualization is a term used liberally within computing. In its broadest sense, virtualization is used to define any technology solution where a level of abstraction is applied to separate the consumers of resources from the compute resources themselves. Virtualization is a term frequently used in grid computing, and RAC is correctly identified as a virtualization technology in its own right. Within this context, RAC is the abstracting technology that enables a number of separate physical servers to appear to Oracle database resource consumers as if it were a single database.