Data Warehouse Appliance: Oracle Exadata

Announced by CEO Larry Ellison at the 2008 Oracle OpenWorld conference in San Francisco, Oracle Exadata Database Machine is a complete database appliance with support for both transactional (OLTP) and analytical (OLAP) database systems. Delivered as a complete package of database software, operating system, servers, and storage, the Oracle Exadata Database Machine is simple and fast to implement and ready for large-scale business applications.

The product was initially assembled in collaboration between Oracle Corporation and Hewlett Packard (HP) where Oracle developed the database, operating system and storage software, while HP constructed the hardware.  However, with Oracle’s acquisition of Sun Microsystems, Oracle announced the release of Exadata Version two with improved performance and usage of Sun Microsystems storage and operating systems technologies. The main idea of Exadata is to make the storage database aware and push processing of queries down to the disks for optimal scanning and performance. Subsequently an Exadata machine can scan 1 TB of data in about 3.5 seconds by scanning several (or all) disks in parallel with Oracle’s Parallel Query technology.

Oracle Exadata Database Machine

Currently the Oracle Exadata Database Machine provides a solution for all types of database systems, ranging from scan-intensive data warehouse applications to highly concurrent transactional applications.  With its bundled combination of storage, database software, operating system, and standard hardware components from Sun, the Oracle Exadata Database Machine provides extreme performance within a highly-available, highly-secure environment. Additionally Oracle’s unique clustering and workload management capabilities position the Oracle Exadata Database Machine to be well-suited for consolidating multiple databases onto a single and centralized environment.

Facts and Benefits of Oracle Exadata Database Machine

•  Accelerates data warehouse query performance by at least a factor of 10x.

•  Runs more queries concurrently for faster access to business-critical information.

•  Scales to 10x more concurrent users.

•  Provides a trusted highly-available and cost-effective platform.

•  Replaces and consolidates isolated special-purpose databases into one platform.

•  Allows for massive parallel processing of data with a high-bandwidth.

•  Easily expands with the connection of multiple units.

•  Includes combination of Oracle Exadata Storage server, Oracle database software, Sun Solaris operating system (OS), and the latest industry standard hardware components from Sun.