Oracle To Sell Hardware

Oracle Is Going To Start Selling HP Hardware

Sep. 29, 2008 01:15 AM

Oracle is going to start selling HP hardware. The world’s second-biggest software company has never sold hardware before.

Rivals like Netezza and Teradata sell data warehouse appliances but now there is something called the HP Oracle Database Machine, a dual-branded system designed for extreme data warehouses that’s supposed to deliver 10x faster performance than Oracle’s current data warehouses. (Gee and HP has its own Neoview.)

Oracle has previously developed data warehousing appliances with other the other OEMs – and this one may even be similar – but it never sold the stuff directly.

Anyway, the Database Machine consists of a grid of Oracle database servers and a grid of new so-called Oracle Exadata Storage Servers packaged in a single rack ordered as a complete system from Oracle.

The widgetry, announced Wednesday by Oracle CEO Larry Ellison and HP CEO Mark Hurd, has reportedly been in development for the last three years.

The Exadata Storage Servers are supposed to break the performance bottleneck between database servers and conventional storage by shipping less data through larger pipes.

Oracle says no changes have to be made to existing queries or BI applications to deliver extreme performance for large Oracle data warehouses.

The Exadata product family consists of Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition tools and Real Application Clusters. Complete configurations can be ordered from Oracle, with hardware support by HP.

The Database Machine, which should run $1.5 million all told, includes a grid of eight database servers featuring 64 Intel cores, Oracle Enterprise Linux and a grid of 14 Oracle Exadata Storage Servers that include up to 168TB of raw storage and 14 GB/s data bandwidth to the database servers.

Exadata Storage Servers can be ordered separately if customers have an existing data warehouse and merely require storage enhancements.

Each Exadata server has two Intel processors, up to 12TB of raw storage and InfiniBand connectivity delivering 1 GB/s data bandwidth per server.

Oracle says the Exadata server uses a massively parallel architecture to speed up Oracle data warehouses by shifting the data-intensive part of query processing away from Oracle database servers and closer to the data.

They reportedly have unlimited I/O scalability and provide mission-critical availability and reliability.

Oracle is handling support; HP, which won’t be selling the widgets, is responsible for hardware delivery and service.

Published Sep. 29, 2008— Reads 781
Copyright © 2008 SYS-CON Media. All Rights Reserved.

About Maureen O'Gara
Maureen O'Gara is the Virtualization News Desk editor of SYS-CON Media. She is the publisher of famous "Billygrams" and the editor-in-chief of "Client/Server News" for more than a decade. One of the most respected technology reporters in the business, Maureen can be reached by email at maureen(at)sys-con.com or paperboy(at)g2news.com, and by phone at 516 759-7025.

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