Oracle Exadata is the ideal database management solution for companies managing large quantities of data. Find out all you need to know about this platform, its technology, benefits and use cases, and the best training to learn how to master it!
In the age of Big Data, large companies collect and generate huge quantities of data. This information is stored in databases, serving as the backbone of the applications and services we use every day.
Effective management of these databases is crucial to guarantee optimum performance, continuous availability and robust security.
To meet this need, Oracle Corporation has drawn on its many years of experience and research in the field of computing and enterprise software to offer a solution adapted to modern constraints: Oracle Exadata.
What is Oracle Exadata?
Launched in 2008, this database management platform is designed to deliver exceptional performance, unrivalled reliability and uncompromising scalability, and to meet the needs of companies with huge data volumes and intensive workloads.
This solution combines both hardware and software in a single integrated system.
A symbiosis that delivers an optimized environment for running Oracle databases. Exadata’s architecture is based on several key components, each playing a specific role in the system’s operation.
The Database Servers host the databases and run the data processing operations. They are equipped with high-performance processors and memory to handle intensive workloads.
Storage Servers are responsible for data storage and storage management. They use unique shared disk technology, optimizing storage and retrieval performance.
To interconnect these two types of servers, we use the ultra-fast InfiniBand infrastructure.
This high-bandwidth connection enables extremely rapid transfer between components: essential for high-performance applications.
Benefits and strengths
For companies looking to maximize the efficiency of their databases, Oracle Exadata offers a wide range of significant advantages. It can handle multiple queries in parallel, reducing the time needed to process large quantities of data.
This translates into shorter response times and improved query performance. What’s more, Smart Scan technology scans only the relevant data in a query.
This eliminates the need to read the entire table, considerably reducing the workload on the storage system. Here again, query processing time is reduced!
The platform also features advanced data compression, enabling more data to be stored on the same disk space. This significantly reduces storage requirements and improves read and write performance.
Beyond raw performance, reliability and availability are essential factors for any enterprise database. And Exadata is designed to offer continuous availability and protection against outages.
Key components such as compute and storage servers are designed with built-in redundancy features. In the event of hardware failure, the system can automatically switch to a backup component. This minimizes downtime.
In addition, fault-tolerance mechanisms ensure that data remains accessible even in the event of hardware or software failure. All these features guarantee operational continuity!
At a time when cyber-attacks are exploding, data security is another major concern for businesses. That’s why Exadata offers data encryption during storage and transfer.
What’s more, advanced monitoring tools enable companies to track database activity and generate audit reports to comply with current regulations such as GDPR in the EU.
What's it for? Common use cases
Oracle Exadata is a highly versatile solution that can be adapted to a wide range of applications and business sectors. For companies needing to process data in real time, such as financial institutions or e-commerce companies, the power of this platform is a great help.
It lets you manage financial transactions and track inventory in real time, and make critical decisions much more quickly.
It’s also an ideal solution for data warehousing and business intelligence. Huge quantities of data can be stored and analyzed efficiently, enabling companies to extract valuable information for strategic decision-making.
In particular, companies managing vast volumes of data, such as those in the media or telecoms sectors, find Exadata a powerful tool for storing and accessing this data quickly and reliably.
What’s more, this platform facilitates the consolidation of multiple databases into a single platform. This reduces infrastructure and management costs, while improving performance.
Business-critical applications, such as ERP, CRM and HR systems, also benefit from the performance and reliability of Oracle Exadata to ensure flawless execution.
How do you set up and manage Oracle Exadata?
To take full advantage of Oracle Exadata, careful planning and specialized skills are essential.
First, you need to identify your company’s specific database requirements, including performance, storage capacity and security needs.
After this assessment, choose the configuration that best suits your needs. Take into account the number of compute and storage servers required.
Then physically install the Exadata compute and storage servers in your data center. Configure the software to optimize database performance and security.
Following this set-up, day-to-day management involves several essential tasks. You need to set up monitoring tools to continuously measure the health of your Exadata system: performance, availability, security…
In addition, regularly schedule and carry out maintenance tasks such as software updates and backups. Establish backup and recovery strategies to guarantee data protection in the event of failure.
To optimize database performance, don’t hesitate to make adjustments to maintain fast response times. All these steps will help you get the most out of Exadata, while ensuring efficient management and continuous availability of your database.
Oracle Exadata for Cloud Computing
Faced with the rise of the Cloud, Oracle has chosen to adapt Exadata for integration into its own Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) offering.
This enables companies to leverage the benefits of the platform directly within a cloud environment, with flexible scalability and reduced operating costs.
In 2019, the firm announced Exadata Cloud Service enabling customers to run their databases on Exadata instances managed in Oracle’s cloud.
More recently, in September 2023, Oracle and Microsoft announced the launch of Oracle Database@Azure enabling customers to directly access Oracle database services running on OCI and deployed on Microsoft Azure data centers.
In this way, users can enjoy the performance, capacity and scalability of Oracle Database on OCI, combined with the security, flexibility and various Microsoft Azure services. These include AI services such as Azure OpenAI.
This alliance provides greater flexibility for workload execution, and a simplified purchasing and cloud management environment between Azure services and Oracle Database.
It’s a way of helping businesses accelerate their migration to the cloud, modernize their IT environments and leverage Azure infrastructure and tools.
According to Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, “we have a real opportunity to help enterprises bring their mission-critical applications to the cloud so they can transform all parts of their business with next-generation AI”.
Thanks to this partnership, Azure is now the only cloud provider to run Oracle’s database services.
For his part, Oracle CTO Larry Ellison points out that “many customers already use multiple clouds”. Together, the two giants therefore want to facilitate the connection between Azure services and Oracle technology.
The aim is to eliminate the main challenges in adopting a multi-cloud architecture, such as disjointed management, siloed tools and complex purchasing processes.
In addition to Exadata, users will also be able to access Oracle Autonomous Database and Oracle Real Application Clusters (RAC) services via Azure.
Conclusion
Much more than just a database management system, Exadata is a complete solution capable of adapting to a multitude of use cases.
The initial investment may seem high, but it delivers long-term benefits in terms of performance, productivity and reduced infrastructure costs.
This platform can literally transform database management within companies, which is why experts are in high demand.
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