Oracle Exadata, or About the Benefits of Engineered Systems (Part 1)
I want to start this article with a link to an important study that was made four years ago by PAC Consulting for Compuware. The results of the study can be found here , it concerned the performance of solutions based on SAP systems. Analysts interviewed the management of 588 companies in Belgium, the UK, Germany, Spain, Italy, the Netherlands, the United States and France and found that 43% of users of the SAP web portal were unhappy with its performance. Of the large companies (with more than 2 thousand users), a third are dissatisfied, and among the rest - 48%. Many said unsatisfactory application performance is a serious potential financial risk for enterprises.

Just don’t think that I am writing this to cast a shadow over SAP. Oracle and SAP have been collaborating in the IT market for over 20 years, since 1988. The largest number of installations of SAP applications for large customers in the world is made using the Oracle database.
So, first of all, the technological infrastructure on which they are executed affects the performance of SAP applications. Compuware notes that SAP software works appropriately on a stable and reliable IT infrastructure — which includes computers, the database, and network connections. This means that it is extremely important that someone produces a stable and reliable IT infrastructure for which applications will work.
Oracle has continuously developed functionality to improve the speed, security and reliability of enterprise systems. In 1992, the first release of SAP R / 3 for Oracle appeared, and in 1999 the companies signed a commercial and service partnership agreement, which was extended in 2010. When Oracle acquired Sun in 2009, it transferred its Exadata hardware and software systems for business intelligence, database consolidation, and online transaction processing to the Sun platform. Just two years later, the Oracle Exadata software and hardware version for SAP appeared, followed by Oracle Exalogic and Oracle SuperCluster.

What is (oracle) engineered systems ?
The idea behind the (oracle) engineered systems concept is that modern software and hardware are very complex, and no matter how thorough the research your company experts will do before purchasing the equipment, there is no guarantee that they will have enough qualifications to choose the optimal and at the same time scalable configuration. It is difficult for customers themselves to build optimal IT infrastructures, it takes a long time to look for the right solution from the point of view of storage systems, from the point of view of network equipment, from the point of view of computing resources, to build a cluster configuration by trial and error, etc.
In fact, the customer wants to buy not hardware and software, but a solution to their problems. And if the customer is going to purchase Oracle software, then the choice of the most efficient hardware configuration for Oracle and Oracle-based solutions should also be entrusted to Oracle.

Your server room BEFORE and AFTER the appearance of (oracle) engineered systems .
How (oracle) engineered systems are developed? Hardware and software are designed, tested, and debugged together. And if you know which applications on which equipment will work, then you can achieve the highest performance, while there is less chance of “surprises” from incompatibility of components, and, of course, it becomes easier to provide support. Customers do not have to select and optimize components - servers, disks, processors, network components, memory, etc. Install and configure software, test the performance of each server, engage in their subsequent update, etc. also do not have to. Maintenance of IT infrastructure is greatly simplified.
Today, all Oracle hardware and software systems are certified for working with SAP applications and are ready for cloud computing, for example, for organizing a private cloud - and if we are talking about implementing solutions on a software and hardware platform for SAP applications, then it’s most likely relevant private cloud.
Oracle offers a complete solution stack, starting with operating system virtualization hardware and a database layer for SAP applications built on best practices Oracle has. Over three decades of global practice, Oracle has accumulated a large knowledge base in which all the problems that customers may have are consolidated. Having analyzed all this huge knowledge base, Oracle has developed a ready-made, balanced, pre-configured, configured software and hardware solution suitable for operation for hosting databases on the platform from Oracle.
Oracle Exadata complexes are designed to organize Oracle database services. Oracle Exalogic is a machine for application servers, including Oracle Applications, SAP ERP and others. Oracle Database Appliance complexes are designed to deploy Oracle database services with an application — for example, with the central SAP ERP authority. Oracle Virtual Compute Appliance allows you to deploy all the necessary services, this software and hardware complex is certified, including by SAP. Next, I will dwell on the Oracle Exadata solution for SAP.
Finally, Oracle SuperCluster M6-32 is created on the SPARC platform, and in all respects it is one of the most powerful machines available on the market today - 32 processors, 384 cores, 3072 threads; 140 thousand SAP users, the official test result - 793 930 SAPS. Details about Oracle SuperCluster are in the following article.
The junior configuration of Oracle Exadata is Oracle Exadata Eights Rack. It includes two computing modules on the Intel X86 platform, two database servers. Most customers use classic storage systems and classic Fiber Channel servers with 10 or 16 Gigabyte data transfer rates for switching, but this solution is fraught with serious response latency when scaling, so Oracle uses a high-speed InfiniBand network with 40 Gigabytes for switching. Infiniband has minimal latency and provides minimum response time for a large number of users.
The storage system used in Oracle Exadata is called the Exadata Storage Server, and is significantly different from classic solutions. Briefly, the Exadata Storage Server feature is that the system “understands” that it works with the Oracle database, optimizes the transfer of blocks from the storage system level to the database level, and ensures the execution of some database operations, including SQL queries, at the level storage systems. Thus, the Exadata Storage Server reduces traffic from the storage system to the database level, and provides the highest overall system performance.

The Exadata Storage Server uses an X4-2 server with two 6-core processors, 96 GB of memory, a PCI Flash Card for I / O acceleration, and 1.2 TB or 4 TB hard drives for long-term data storage.

Exadata Database Server has two 12-core processors, the amount of RAM - 256 or 512 GB. All interfaces: both network and InfiniBand, are duplicated.

The higher configuration of the Oracle Exadata Database Machine than the Oracle Exadata Eighth is the Oracle Exadata Quarter, Oracle Exadata Half, and Oracle Exadata Full Rack. At the initial stage, the client can purchase Eighth or Quarter, and then, as necessary, scale the configuration to any more powerful one in a standard way, without having to think about network capacities, providing server access to the storage system, etc., all this is decided in advance , the client only needs a classic Ethernet network.
In Russia, the most popular solution is Oracle Exadata Quarter, which includes two database servers (48 cores in total), 512 GB or 1 TB RAM, duplicated InfiniBand, three storage systems, 9.6 TB PCI Flash Cash, and file storage databases with a useful capacity of 19 TB (fast disks) to 63 TB (high-capacity disks), taking into account duplication, reorganization of RAID groups, etc.
Performance is what it was all about, so it deserves a separate discussion.
Let us dwell on the Oracle Exadata Quarter. Let's imagine that we have only regular drives and no SSDs and PCI Flash Cash. In this case, 50 thousand I / O operations is a complete disk enclosure. PCI Flash Cash provides 570 thousand reads and 420 thousand write operations per second.
How is this achieved? The fact is that modern SAP application databases, as a rule, do not exceed 15 TB in volume. Such a base almost entirely fits in a fast cache. But even if the database takes up 50 terabytes, almost all of its working part gets into PCI Flash Cash - because the average system updates less than 10% of the data, and the highly loaded, as a rule, no more than 20% of the data.
These are the most general information about Oracle Exadata that I wanted to share with you. In the next article, we will dwell a little more on how Exadata works, talk about the maintenance and technical support of Exadata, talk a little more about Oracle SuperCluster and dwell on real system implementations.

Just don’t think that I am writing this to cast a shadow over SAP. Oracle and SAP have been collaborating in the IT market for over 20 years, since 1988. The largest number of installations of SAP applications for large customers in the world is made using the Oracle database.
So, first of all, the technological infrastructure on which they are executed affects the performance of SAP applications. Compuware notes that SAP software works appropriately on a stable and reliable IT infrastructure — which includes computers, the database, and network connections. This means that it is extremely important that someone produces a stable and reliable IT infrastructure for which applications will work.
Oracle has continuously developed functionality to improve the speed, security and reliability of enterprise systems. In 1992, the first release of SAP R / 3 for Oracle appeared, and in 1999 the companies signed a commercial and service partnership agreement, which was extended in 2010. When Oracle acquired Sun in 2009, it transferred its Exadata hardware and software systems for business intelligence, database consolidation, and online transaction processing to the Sun platform. Just two years later, the Oracle Exadata software and hardware version for SAP appeared, followed by Oracle Exalogic and Oracle SuperCluster.

What is (oracle) engineered systems ?
The idea behind the (oracle) engineered systems concept is that modern software and hardware are very complex, and no matter how thorough the research your company experts will do before purchasing the equipment, there is no guarantee that they will have enough qualifications to choose the optimal and at the same time scalable configuration. It is difficult for customers themselves to build optimal IT infrastructures, it takes a long time to look for the right solution from the point of view of storage systems, from the point of view of network equipment, from the point of view of computing resources, to build a cluster configuration by trial and error, etc.
In fact, the customer wants to buy not hardware and software, but a solution to their problems. And if the customer is going to purchase Oracle software, then the choice of the most efficient hardware configuration for Oracle and Oracle-based solutions should also be entrusted to Oracle.

Your server room BEFORE and AFTER the appearance of (oracle) engineered systems .
How (oracle) engineered systems are developed? Hardware and software are designed, tested, and debugged together. And if you know which applications on which equipment will work, then you can achieve the highest performance, while there is less chance of “surprises” from incompatibility of components, and, of course, it becomes easier to provide support. Customers do not have to select and optimize components - servers, disks, processors, network components, memory, etc. Install and configure software, test the performance of each server, engage in their subsequent update, etc. also do not have to. Maintenance of IT infrastructure is greatly simplified.
Today, all Oracle hardware and software systems are certified for working with SAP applications and are ready for cloud computing, for example, for organizing a private cloud - and if we are talking about implementing solutions on a software and hardware platform for SAP applications, then it’s most likely relevant private cloud.
Oracle offers a complete solution stack, starting with operating system virtualization hardware and a database layer for SAP applications built on best practices Oracle has. Over three decades of global practice, Oracle has accumulated a large knowledge base in which all the problems that customers may have are consolidated. Having analyzed all this huge knowledge base, Oracle has developed a ready-made, balanced, pre-configured, configured software and hardware solution suitable for operation for hosting databases on the platform from Oracle.
Oracle Exadata complexes are designed to organize Oracle database services. Oracle Exalogic is a machine for application servers, including Oracle Applications, SAP ERP and others. Oracle Database Appliance complexes are designed to deploy Oracle database services with an application — for example, with the central SAP ERP authority. Oracle Virtual Compute Appliance allows you to deploy all the necessary services, this software and hardware complex is certified, including by SAP. Next, I will dwell on the Oracle Exadata solution for SAP.
Finally, Oracle SuperCluster M6-32 is created on the SPARC platform, and in all respects it is one of the most powerful machines available on the market today - 32 processors, 384 cores, 3072 threads; 140 thousand SAP users, the official test result - 793 930 SAPS. Details about Oracle SuperCluster are in the following article.
Oracle Exadata
The junior configuration of Oracle Exadata is Oracle Exadata Eights Rack. It includes two computing modules on the Intel X86 platform, two database servers. Most customers use classic storage systems and classic Fiber Channel servers with 10 or 16 Gigabyte data transfer rates for switching, but this solution is fraught with serious response latency when scaling, so Oracle uses a high-speed InfiniBand network with 40 Gigabytes for switching. Infiniband has minimal latency and provides minimum response time for a large number of users.
The storage system used in Oracle Exadata is called the Exadata Storage Server, and is significantly different from classic solutions. Briefly, the Exadata Storage Server feature is that the system “understands” that it works with the Oracle database, optimizes the transfer of blocks from the storage system level to the database level, and ensures the execution of some database operations, including SQL queries, at the level storage systems. Thus, the Exadata Storage Server reduces traffic from the storage system to the database level, and provides the highest overall system performance.

The Exadata Storage Server uses an X4-2 server with two 6-core processors, 96 GB of memory, a PCI Flash Card for I / O acceleration, and 1.2 TB or 4 TB hard drives for long-term data storage.

Exadata Database Server has two 12-core processors, the amount of RAM - 256 or 512 GB. All interfaces: both network and InfiniBand, are duplicated.

The higher configuration of the Oracle Exadata Database Machine than the Oracle Exadata Eighth is the Oracle Exadata Quarter, Oracle Exadata Half, and Oracle Exadata Full Rack. At the initial stage, the client can purchase Eighth or Quarter, and then, as necessary, scale the configuration to any more powerful one in a standard way, without having to think about network capacities, providing server access to the storage system, etc., all this is decided in advance , the client only needs a classic Ethernet network.
In Russia, the most popular solution is Oracle Exadata Quarter, which includes two database servers (48 cores in total), 512 GB or 1 TB RAM, duplicated InfiniBand, three storage systems, 9.6 TB PCI Flash Cash, and file storage databases with a useful capacity of 19 TB (fast disks) to 63 TB (high-capacity disks), taking into account duplication, reorganization of RAID groups, etc.
Performance
Performance is what it was all about, so it deserves a separate discussion.
Let us dwell on the Oracle Exadata Quarter. Let's imagine that we have only regular drives and no SSDs and PCI Flash Cash. In this case, 50 thousand I / O operations is a complete disk enclosure. PCI Flash Cash provides 570 thousand reads and 420 thousand write operations per second.
How is this achieved? The fact is that modern SAP application databases, as a rule, do not exceed 15 TB in volume. Such a base almost entirely fits in a fast cache. But even if the database takes up 50 terabytes, almost all of its working part gets into PCI Flash Cash - because the average system updates less than 10% of the data, and the highly loaded, as a rule, no more than 20% of the data.
These are the most general information about Oracle Exadata that I wanted to share with you. In the next article, we will dwell a little more on how Exadata works, talk about the maintenance and technical support of Exadata, talk a little more about Oracle SuperCluster and dwell on real system implementations.