This is a guest post from Larry Dignan of TechRepublic’s sister site ZDNet. You can follow Larry on his ZDNet blog Between the Lines, or subscribe to the RSS feed.

Oracle said Tuesday that the second release of its 11g database is generally available. The update comes two years after the launch of 11g.

Oracle Database 11g Release 2 is heavily focused on consolidating hardware and virtualization, according to Mark Townsend, vice president database product management.

Among the new features:

  • The Real Application Cluster (RAC) now has server pooling technologies so it’s easier to provision and manage database grids. Townsend said this update is geared toward dynamically adjusting servers as corporations manage the ebb and flow between data requirements for datawarehousing and applications.
  • RAC OneNode is a new option that makes it easier to consolidate databases that aren’t mission critical, but need redundancy.
  • Improvements to automatic storage management that add cluster file system tools. Townsend noted that these tools should make it easier for companies to virtualize their storage.
  • Performance improvement and optimization for Oracle’s Exadata storage appliances.
  • Performance improvements for data warehousing.

Oracle Database 11g launched in July 2007.