Highly Valued storage on a commodity storage platform?

The other day I saw an email on The Toasters mailing list of NetApp users regarding the certification by Oracle of StoreVault – the new SMB aimed product by NetApp. I have not been in very many SMB business that are running Oracle, but I began thinking about the thought process that would allow a small business to spend big bucks on their Oracle implementation and then skimp on the hardware it runs on. It would seem that the SMB company that values its data so much would use high end hardware, not low end hardware. Perhaps NetApp’s high end units will suffer shrinking their sales volume if the low end box can be Oracle certified, and can deliver the performance, reliability and Snap Mirror that high end customers require.

Below is the email that got me thinking about all of this. Email me your thoughts.

http://toasters.mathworks.com/toasters/17609.html
Re: StoreVault 500
From: Tim XXXX(XXXXX@gmail.com)
Date: Mon Jul 17 2006 – 14:14:32 EDT
Eric,
To answer your question, the S500 is not yet Oracle certified but NetApp is
working on this.
Regards,
Tim
On 7/16/06, Eric XXXXX wrote:
good morning,
Thank you for this information,
do you (or somebody else on the list) know whether the StoreVault
product(s) are or will be certified for usage with Oracle database as
described in
http://www.oracle.com/technology/deploy/availability/htdocs/vendors.html
(“Network Appliance” is mentioned, not Data ONTAP).