Oracle Introduces Cloud-Tuned Databases

Oracle took some big steps forward on its corporate journey into cloud systems and services on 30 September, the opening night of its annual OpenWorld 2012 conference in San Francisco.

Chief executive and co-founder Larry Ellison introduced two new products and two new cloud services before about 6,000 mostly quiet attendees at Moscone Centre on the first night of the five-day conference. About 50,000 people in all will be visiting the conference for at least one day this week.

Cloud deployments targeted

The products Ellison previewed in his 50-minute keynote address are the new Oracle 12C (“You guessed it, the ‘C’ is for cloud,” he said) parallel database software expressly designed for cloud computing deployments. The other is a revamped version of the Exadata hardware in-memory database and analytics server called the X3.

Ellison said the 12C database is optimised for multitenant workloads becoming prevalent in cloud computing environments in which software runs on several machines and in disparate locations as needed.

“Before this, if you wanted to run multitenant services on one database, you had to do it at the application level, and there are all kinds of problems that can come up in that situation – security being the main one,” Ellison said. “The 12C makes all of that just go away.”

The new cloud-based services are Oracle’s version of IaaS (infrastructure as a service) and a new private cloud system, which runs on the company’s Exadata and Exalogic servers and will compete directly with Amazon’s market-leading web services-on-demand product.

The Oracle Private Cloud, Ellison said, gives users the advantages of a public-cloud service but run on Exadata and/or Exalogic servers that reside in a customer’s data centre. They could be managed by Oracle employees, if that be the customer’s choice. Such a private cloud deployment also could run inside Oracle’s own data centres, depending upon the needs of the client, Ellison said.

Set up for regulation

“Regulated sectors, like financial services, health care and government, have to have their data on site and behind their own firewalls, so our cloud can be run that way, if needed,” Ellison said. “These systems are absolutely the same all the way through – mirror images of each other. The only difference is whose floor they are located on.”

Ellison added that the private cloud service would be identical to Oracle’s existing public cloud service, in which Oracle owns, manages and operates the hardware in its own data centre and sells its computing power as a pay-as-you-go service.

The Exadata database machine can run multiple databases – all the while keeping the data separate and secure – that enterprises in the past have had to run on separate dedicated servers with separate storage, networking and security.

The new Exadata server runs databases in up to 26TB of solid-state random-access memory, which delivers micro-second-fast response times.

“You virtually never have to use the hard disk drives,” Ellison said. “Everything is in semiconductor memory. All your data is migrated off old mechanical spinning disk drives and into memory. You can’t get any faster than that.”

The Exadata also uses high-end compression on the database to make better use of storage capacity. “Some applications will require a huge amount of capacity, and in some cases you can buy a much smaller machine,” Ellison said.

All the new products and services will become available in 2013, Ellison said.

Oracle OpenWorld continues through 4 October.

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