Pythian Group

This post has bee updated live from the Oracle OpenWorld as I’m learning what’s new. Last update done on 28-Sep-2010.

Oracle Exadata v2 has been transformed into x2-2 and x2-8. x2-2 is just slightly updated while x2-8 is a much more high-end platform. Please note that Exadata x2-2 is not just an old Exadata v2 — it’s a fully refreshed model. This is a huge confusion here at the OOW and even at the Oracle web site.

The new Exadata pricing list is released and Exadata x2-2 costs exactly the same as old Exadata v2. Exadata x2-8 Full Rack (that’s the only x2-8 configuration — see below why) is priced 50% higher then Full Rack x2-2. This is hardware price only to clarify the confusion (updated 18-Oct-2010).

Exadata Storage Server Software pricing is the same and licensing costs per storage server and per full rack is the same as for Exadata v2 because number of disks didn’t change. Note that storage cells got upgraded but priced the same when it comes to Exadata Server software and hardware. Nice touch but see implications on databases licensing below.

This comparison is for Full-Rack models Exadata x2-2 and x2-8 and existing v2 model.

Finally, data-sheets are available for both x2-2 (Thx Dan Norris for the pointers):

http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/database/exadata/dbmachine-x2-2-datasheet-175280.pdf

and x2-8:

http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/database/exadata/dbmachine-x2-8-datasheet-173705.pdf

It means that live update of this post is probably over (27-Sep-2010).

Read the rest of this entry . . .

It’s Sunday morning early in San Francisco and the biggest ever Oracle OpenWorld is about to start. It looks like it’s also going to be the busiest ever OpenWorld for me — my schedule looks crazy and I still need to do the slides for my Thursday sessions (one on ASM and one on cloud computing). Fortunately, my slides for today’s presentation are all ready to go.

OK. Don’t let me carry away — I started this post with the intention to write about what I expect Oracle to announce at this OpenWorld and it seems like the most important announcements happen at tonight’s keynote. I hasn’t been at the Oracle ACE Directors briefing so unlike them, all I can say is pure speculation-based and my wishes of what should be covered. Actually, unlike them, I actually CAN say at least something. :)

1. Oracle Exadata Database Machine v3 (x2-8) — well, that shouldn’t come as a surprise to anybody by now. I fully expect upgrade of the hardware — new Intel CPUs (probably with more cores), more memory, possibly more flash (this technology moves really quick these days). Maybe 10GbE network can be introduced to address some of the customers demands but I don’t think it’s needed that much. InfiniBand might just stay as it is — I think there is enough throughput but Marc Fielding noted that moving InfiniBand to the next speed level shouldn’t be very expensive. Other then cosmetic upgrade, I believe that hardware architecture will largely stay the same — it works very well, it’s proven and very successful. Maybe something should be done to let customers integrate Exadata better into their data-centers — folks keep complaining of inflexibility (and I think Oracle should stay firm on this and don’t let customer screw themselves up but who knows).
   On the software side, Read the rest of this entry . . .

Pythian has full-featured Oracle Exadata Services complete with successful implementations and reference customers.

When Oracle first introduced Exadata at OpenWorld 2008, it was aimed squarely at the data warehouse market dominated by Teradata, Netezza, and other pure-play vendors. Version 2, introduced a year later, has expanded the scope to include general-purpose mixed and even pure transaction processing workloads. Marketing claims abound with reports of 10x and faster speed improvements.

In this series of articles (part 2 here and part 3 here), we’ll explore the major components of Exadata and the Oracle Database Machine and take a peek at how they’re designed with performance and scalability in mind.

Going against the industry trend of embedding database-specific logic in hardware, Exadata makes use of commodity off-the-shelf hardware components, with an underlying open source operating system stack. While arguably such a common hardware architecture makes it easier for competitors to copy functionality, it also gives Exadata a well-understood, stable, and tested platform that’s constantly evolving higher speeds and capacities.

Database nodes

The database nodes in an Oracle Database Machine will be familiar to anyone who has worked with Oracle RAC in a Linux/x86 platform. They consist of exactly the same Sun Fire x4170 1U servers sold for general-purpose computing, but come maxed out in terms of configuration: Read the rest of this entry . . .

One of the customers (actually a prospect) here in Australia asked me about minimal Oracle licensing on a quarter rack database machine. This prompted a thought of using Oracle Standard Edition instead of full blown Enterprise Edition with bunch of options.

Before even going into possibility of using Oracle SE for the database machine, let’s see if we even want to.

Why Oracle Standard Edition?

If the environment is data warehouse then it’s extremely unlikely that Standard Edition will cut it. Lack of many feature make it non-feasible to use for data warehousing — no partitioning licensing, no parallel query, and dozens more.

Oracle Standard Edition might fit OLTP environments depending on the application design and data volumes. Since Database Machine is made to store large amounts of data, we assume that it makes financial sense to run databases that are quite large. Oracle SE lacks some critical features in order to successfully manage VLDB (Very Large Databases). It’s not impossible and depends a lot on the presence of outage windows, how active is the development life-cycle, availability requirements and etc.

Where Standard Edition seems to fit nicely is Read the rest of this entry . . .

In line with my prediction from few days ago, Larry Ellison is announcing the new Database Machine — the new version is targeting OLTP workloads and is based on Sun hardware.

Looks like I just got the date wrong. Oh well, now is the announcement, hype and demo is at the Oracle Open World and shipments are to start upon Oracle-Sun acquisition completion.

So what’s new in Exadata that I didn’t mention in the previous blog post? Ah, right — Sun FlashFire technology. It’s no surprise that the new OLTP version of Database Machine is boosting the IOPS (IO’s per second) capacity by introducing the flash drives. Nothing prevented Oracle to place flash disks into the original Exadata, not from technology perspective.
Read the rest of this entry . . .

Update 9-Jul-10 Pythian has now announced our range of Oracle Exadata Services, along with successful implementations and reference customers.

Update 16-Sep-09: Apparently, all this was true and you can find more details after the announcement that posted here.

OK. It’s not often that I make predictions these days but this was on my mind for a while so here we go. Mind you, I don’t have any confirmed insider information so it’s based on some assumptions, my perspective on Oracle-Sun acquisition and some vibes I can feel in the air.

The rumors are that Oracle Exadata v2 and Oracle Database Machine v2 are going to be announced within few weeks and my take is that it’s going to happen at the Oracle Open World. I don’t think it comes as a surprise to anyone that it will be configured with Oracle Database 11g Release 2.

Moving on to predictions and speculations…
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For those of you who didn’t see the Larry Ellison’s keynote here it is courtesy to Sheeri.

We cut out the HP part but I don’t think anyone will complain. It’s not the best angle but we didn’t get there early in advance to secure the right location for the camera.

Read the rest of this entry . . .

Pythian has a full-featured Oracle Exadata Practice complete with successful implementations and reference customers.

*Updated* see comments.
Exadata — the smart storage server. I am definitely excited about this product, but my point of view is a bit different.

It’s fast, and much faster than anything out there right now. But how many shops will actually need this? How many shops can spend 2.2 million dollars on hardware and equipment?

What are the products, in a nutshell? The Oracle Exadata Storage Server (Data Sheet, PDF):

• 2U Storage “unit” with either 1 TB SAS or 3.3 TB SATA redundant capacity. There is a query processor in the box that can “offload” tasks from the main database server. Primary filtering, decompression, joins, backups.
• Storage units linked to database servers via dual Infiniband offering 20 Gbit/s (2.5 GBytes/sec) bandwidth

The Database Machine (Data Sheet, PDF):

• A standard 42U rack with 8 database servers and 12 Exadata storage servers.
• Pre-installed Linux and Oracle. Pre-configured.
• In 8 servers — a total of 256GB RAM, 64 Intel cores @ 2.66 Ghz, InfiniBand-ed and gigabit-switched.

The cost for one Database Machine: $2.33M ($650,000 + $1,680,000 in software) as grabbed from Larry’s keynote (thank chet) I called the “call us now” phone mentioned on the Oracle Exadata website to ask them for pricing. They had no idea what I was asking about, and I’m still waiting on a salesperson to call me back. (Hint for Oracle — educate your sales staff about new products, just in case I decide to buy one the day after you announce it.)

You have to realize how “cheap” this is. It comes down to $25,000 per core for Oracle EE, RAC, and Partitioning! And extra “free” CPUs for decompressing, filtering and joining, and backups. That’s a good deal. Oh, did I mention you can interconnect several 42U racks?

Back to the main question, what problems does this product solve?

Read the rest of this entry . . .