Exadata Database Machine gives you extreme scalability and performance for your online transaction processing, data warehousing and other database applications. You will gain a pre-configured system that is already optimized for any workload and database application. You can get a system that is able to give you 1.5 million input-output operations every second. There is also 150 terabytes of uncompressed user data limit per rack and you also get complete redundancy for high availability.
On the other hand, Oracle Database Appliance X4-2 allows you to deploy it easily and quickly. This gives you clustered database system that is highly available. The Oracle Database Appliance comes with Oracle Appliance Manager and Oracle Linux already installed. That saves you time and also simplifies deployment, support and maintenance.
Oracle Database Appliance: Cheaper but with fewer features
In all honesty, the Oracle Database Appliance has fewer features, but it is definitely comparable with Exadata as far as high availability is concerned. Oracle Database Appliance, however, has a cheaper price tag making it an attractive solution for smaller businesses or those without enough capital, or those who could not justify the costs of Exadata for their businesses. Exadata starts selling at six figures for the quarter rack, while Oracle Database Appliance prices can go as low as $50,000 especially for earlier releases.
Of course, that means that there is a trade-off in specs and features.
Comparing the hardware specs: Oracle Exadata Database Machine has the upper hand
Oracle Database Appliance X4-2 gives you two servers and a storage shelf, 48 processor cores, a pair of 12-core Intel Xeon E5-2697 v2 processors for every server, 256 gigabytes of main memory for each server totalling 512 gigabytes of memory, and up to 36 terabytes of SAS storage. You also get Oracle Database Enterprise Edition, Oracle Automatic Storage Management, Oracle Real Application Clusters, Oracle Linux, Oracle VM and Oracle Enterprise Manager.
Meanwhile, the Oracle Exadata Database Machine X4-8 gives you 240 CPi cores and can go up to 12 terabytes of memory for database processing at each rack. You also get 168 CPU cores that only do SQL processing in storage. You can get two 8-socket servers, 14 Exadata Storage Servers, 44 terabytes of Exadata Smart Flash Cache and 300 terabytes of usable capacity per rack. Most importantly, it has hybrid columnar compression and smart scan that the Oracle Database Appliance lacks, among others.
What do all these mean?
What these means is that while Oracle Database Appliance X4-2 gives you an easy way to set up your databases that are highly available with reduced planned and unplanned downtime, without worrying too much about the cost, it does not give you the outstanding performance that you can see from Oracle Exadata Database Machine X4-8. So you really need to take note of your operations and needs to see whether an Oracle Appliance X4-2 is enough for your operations. Or if you should invest more in an Exadata Database Machine.
If you need to figure out which Engineered System is right for you, call Four Cornerstone at 1 817-377-1144 today. We have a team of Oracle certified experts with decades of experience in various industries. Our team can help you make the right decisions when it comes to Oracle hardware and software.
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