Oracle Exadata’s Latest Version Increases Flexibility
Oracle Exadata X5-2, the sixth generation Oracle Database machine that was launched in January 2015, has been getting attention from many IT professionals and purchasing managers. It’s because Oracle delivers its promise of impressive performance with the machine’s faster processors and larger memory capacity – a 50% improvement when compared to the latter version. Despite this, it is the most inexpensive Oracle Database platform.
It does not end there. What makes Oracle Exadata X5 more interesting is its increased flexibility. For the first time, you can put together different combinations of compute, memory and storage. Exadata X5’s flexible configurations enable users to configure and expand the storage and compute one server at a time. As a result, you can scale the server depending on your requirements.
Oracle Exadata X5 uses the latest Intel Haswell technology with 18-core chips. It is equipped with faster InfiniBand with leading-edge software drivers and bigger DRAM memory. Its X5-2 Extreme Flash Storage Server with eight 1.6TB PCIe flash devices (a total of 12.8TB flash), performs faster than the previous Exadata X4-2 High Performance Storage Server with twelve 1.2TB hard-disk drives (a total of 14.4TB flash). The updated version features valuable improvements, such as in-memory fault tolerance to eliminate possible downtime, and InfiniBand to speed up processing of online transactions.
Oracle offers two options to ease the license cost and make it more affordable to customers.
- Capacity on Demand (CoD)
This option, which is only available in X4 and X5 versions, gives customers the flexibility to purchase DBMS software incrementally depending on their business requirements. As such, users do not have to spend a huge amount upfront for the entire Exadata configuration. COD gives customers an opportunity to reduce the licensing requirements by activating only the specific number of cores on a compute server depending on your need. If you will require more processor power in the future, you can enable and license additional cores accordingly. This “Pay as You Grow” model works well with many organizations because you pay only for the server usage based on what you need.
- Trusted Partitions
Oracle Exadata implements “Trusted Partitions” through Oracle Virtual Machines (OVM). OVM enables users to pin virtual machines to specific cores to save on licensing costs. Trusted Partitions allow software licensing on Exadata by Virtual Machine instead of full servers, reducing licensing costs. Two elements are required to be eligible for a ‘Trusted Partition.’ It has to be an Oracle Engineered System (like Exadata Database Machine) and it must use Oracle Enterprise Manager. In the case of Exadata, it must be running 12.1.2.1.0 or higher Exadata Storage Server Software.
In summary, Oracle Exadata X5-2 offers technology upgrades of all components. One of its most important enhancements is flexibility on the hardware. What’s more, it can also be configured to optimize the database performance while reducing the license cost and upgrades. It boasts of capacity on demand pricing and availability of Oracle Virtual Machine on Exadata.
Contact Four Cornerstone now and speak to the experts to evaluate the advantages of Exadata. We provide Oracle Consulting in Dallas Fort Worth with expertise in architecting your Exadata. We can assist you with all the necessary information to evaluate the product and associated costs.
