Oracle Infrastructure Cloud is the IaaS offering from Oracle, encompassing a comprehensive suite of cloud services tailored for enterprises with high technical requirements. From compute and storage to networking, security, and DevOps, discover the complete suite from the American tech giant!
Cloud technology is no longer just an option; it serves as the foundational backbone of modern information systems (IS). While AWS, Azure, and GCP dominate the cloud landscape, Oracle is making strides with its unique approach.
Designed for critical, often hybrid environments, Oracle’s infrastructure is performance-driven.
The cornerstone of its IaaS offering? Oracle Infrastructure Cloud, known as OCI. Make no mistake: it has moved far beyond its status as an underdog from a decade ago.
The platform provides a comprehensive range of cloud services capable of hosting applications, handling large data volumes, managing complex network architectures, and meeting stringent security requirements.
OCI: A Robust and Modular IaaS Foundation
As the infrastructure layer of Oracle Cloud, OCI includes all the essential components that empower enterprises to deploy, operate, and secure their applications and data in the cloud or within hybrid environments.
Unlike other cloud offerings more suited for developers and microservices, Oracle Cloud Infrastructure primarily serves enterprises with complex needs.
It excels in areas such as ERP, critical databases, intensive computing tasks, and sovereignty concerns.
Its promise? A robust, versatile platform crafted for demanding workloads.
All while maintaining predictable costs and advanced interoperability, even within multicloud setups.
Services are organized into major categories: “Compute” for running applications, “Storage” for data management, “Networking” for connecting and securing resources.
Additionally, categories like “Security and Governance” for access control, auditing, and protection, and “Observability and DevOps” for monitoring, automating, and optimizing are included.
Oracle also offers specialized services like AI, HPC, and multicloud interconnections.
To fully grasp these service categories, let’s delve into each one!
From Classic VMs to High-Performance Infrastructure
The core of any cloud service is its computing capability, and in this domain, OCI offers a highly comprehensive selection.
Virtual Machines
For conventional needs (web servers, business applications, databases…), Oracle VM virtual machines are customizable: number of OCPUs, amount of RAM, operating system…
They are billed per second, often priced more aggressively than market leaders.
Bare Metal
With bare metal, there’s no hypervisor between you and the machine, and Oracle provides direct hardware access. Ideal for applications needing raw performance (HPC, video processing, scientific computing…).
OCI’s bare metal is also utilized for Oracle Exadata databases requiring high optimization.
Container Engine for Kubernetes (OKE)
For large-scale container orchestration, Oracle provides a managed Kubernetes service.
The service adheres to CNCF standards and features advanced security through strict workload isolation.
Serverless
Oracle’s OCI Functions offers a FaaS (Function-as-a-Service) model, perfect for executing code on demand (event-driven, webhook, one-time processing), without the need to manage servers or infrastructure.
Spanning from standard computing to high-performance, tailored solutions, OCI addresses the entire spectrum, allowing for existing architecture migrations and the launch of new cloud-native projects.
Storage: Performance, Resilience, and Flexibility
No cloud infrastructure is complete without a robust storage system, which is why Oracle provides various complementary solutions tailored to different usage scenarios.
Block Volume
This block storage attaches to VMs or bare metal instances, optimized for databases, file systems, or transactional workloads.
With multiple performance tiers, it can be resized dynamically.
Object Storage
For storing unstructured data (videos, images, backups, logs), Object Storage resembles AWS’s S3.
It is highly available, resilient across multiple availability domains, and S3 API-compatible for seamless third-party tool integrations.
File Storage
This shared file system, a managed NFS, is perfect for applications requiring shared storage. It offers excellent performance, elasticity, and is fully managed by Oracle.
Archive Storage
For long-term storage, Oracle provides a cost-effective solution, suitable for regulatory documents, historical logs, or cold backups, though with longer access times.
With OCI’s diverse storage services, all needs are met, from transactional processing to archiving, while ensuring resilience and highly competitive pricing.
Networking: Optimized Connectivity and Built-in Security
In cloud environments, the network isn’t merely a conduit; it’s the backbone of performance and security. Understanding this, Oracle offers a suite of network tools that are powerful, flexible, and highly detailed.
Virtual Cloud Network (VCN)
FastConnect
A private, fast, and stable interconnection service between OCI and your infrastructure, ideal for bypassing the public Internet to avoid latency and security concerns, available via partners or direct connectivity!
Load Balancer
OCI offers managed load balancers to evenly distribute traffic across multiple instances, with redundancy, failover capabilities, and SSL handling.
DNS, firewall, NAT, peering
OCI’s network services also include essential elements: managed DNS, NAT Gateway, Security Lists, Network Security Groups, and Peering between VCNs (regional or inter-regional).
These tools enable the creation of powerful, segmented, and secure architectures that are highly programmable.
Security and Governance
Cloud security extends beyond merely “closing ports.” It requires automation, auditing, and integration across all layers, and Oracle has designed its infrastructure with this comprehensive security mindset.
The IAM (Identity and Access Management) provides granular management of users, groups, policies, and roles, based on the least privilege principle.
This ensures control over who can perform tasks, where, and how, facilitating multi-account or multi-tenant implementations.
By default, all OCI data is encrypted both at rest and in transit. Customers or OCI manage keys, with a HSM (Hardware Security Module) option for enhanced security needs.
The Cloud Guard threat detection and automated response service reviews your OCI environment for configuration discrepancies, suspicious activities, or potential vulnerabilities.
When configured with suitable rules, corrections can occur automatically. Moreover, all resource actions are audited.
Compliance with standards such as GDPR, ISO, and SOC is integrated. Resource tagging enhances rights management, billing, and traceability.
At Oracle, security is integral, not supplementary. It’s embedded within every service, offering a fine-tuned, significant advantage for regulated sectors or critical environments.
Observability and DevOps
A quality cloud platform offers more than resource hosting; it provides nuanced visibility and supports automated large-scale management.
OCI’s DevOps and observability suite provides a host of natively integrated tools for monitoring cloud resources.
Real-time insights on CPU, memory, I/O, and network requests are accessible. Centralized logs can be viewed via the console or through API.
Customizable alerts with threshold triggers are available. Integrations with external tools like Grafana, Slack, or PagerDuty are facilitated via webhooks and plugins.
For more detailed insights into infrastructure, Oracle provides a managed Application Performance Monitoring (APM) tool. It allows for observing application metrics such as response times, errors, or performance bottlenecks.
It also supports distributed tracing (tracing) and user experience monitoring (UX Monitoring).
The Resource Manager (IaC) service, based on Terraform, enables infrastructure deployment as code, complete with versioning, logs, and rollbacks—a vital tool for DevOps teams or strictly compliant environments!
The Service Connector Hub, though understated, is remarkably useful. It enables the automation of data flow between services: logs to storage, metrics to alerts, events to functions…
With these tools, continuous cloud management becomes possible, from anomaly detection to automating routine tasks.
Specialized Services and Multicloud Openness
Beyond typical offerings, Oracle’s cloud infrastructure includes advanced services for demanding use cases and hybrid or distributed architectures.
Optimized HPC instances with RDMA interconnections support distributed high-intensity computations (modeling, weather simulations, AI…).
Nvidia GPU instances are also available for AI, deep learning, and 3D video processing.
Oracle is one of the few cloud providers offering native interconnection with Azure for ultra-low latency and full interoperability.
This is ideal for companies aiming to leverage both Azure and OCI, such as deploying applications on Azure while hosting Oracle databases on OCI.
To facilitate serverless microservices, Oracle provides a managed API Gateway and integrated serverless functions, excellent for creating modern, scalable, cost-efficient architectures.
A marketplace of images, applications, and third-party tools is available with centralized billing, deeply integrated with other Oracle services like ERP, databases, and enterprise applications.
Oracle Infrastructure Cloud, Catering to All Your Critical Architectures
OCI establishes itself as a comprehensive, robust, pragmatic solution catering to the complex requirements of contemporary businesses.
Focusing on reliability rather than hype, it excels in robust compute services, intricate network management, intrinsic security, and built-in interoperability.
For those seeking to migrate ERP systems, establish Big Data environments, or build a sovereign multicloud architecture, Oracle’s cloud infrastructure emerges as a noteworthy contender.
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Now you’re thoroughly knowledgeable about Oracle Cloud Infrastructure services. For further details on related topics, explore our complete article on Oracle ERP or our article on Oracle Database!
