ExaScale – A Prime Example of Incremental Innovation

At Oracle CloudWorld, Exascale was announced as a new software architecture for Exadata. Since then, there have been details revealed through various platforms and product management. I’ve put a few links to these at the end of this mini-blog if you would like to read more.

As I reviewed the content there were a couple of key standout themes I saw emerging. The first one is a given with any Exadata announcement, is that it is going to be more powerful, more capable and will continue to optimise Oracle Database workloads. For example, they mentioned looking at 200Gb RoCE capabilities in the future. I’m not sure if Oracle is trying to keep up with customers or customers are trying to keep up with Oracle, that number is some serious throughput.

More interestingly, and for the purposes of this blog, ExaScale, the new software architecture, is a great example of Incremental Innovation. Exadata is trying to achieve mind-shredding database performance and simplification of software and hardware administration through a converged infrastructure. They have done this, in fact, they did this years ago with the Exadata turnkey solution. No longer did you have to discuss disk mounts and SAN configuration with the advent of ASM, Storage Cells etc etc. All good stuff.

But incremental innovation doesn’t stop. All the features highlighted in ExaScale speak to that in volumes. Previous Exadata allowed you to create Virtual Machines, but these have been limited to the generation, I think the max was twelve, well ExaScale will increase that. VMs are also tied to physical servers, while RAC enables you to have zero downtime patching, wouldn’t it be good if you didn’t have to compromise and continue running RAC while also undertaking maintenance?

As storage continues to evolve, DATA, RECO and Sparse disk groups have revolutionised storage management but there are still choices to be made about how to carve up your Exadata. Why? Incremental Innovation challenges that convention, why not just provide storage and let Exadata work out the best way to allocate it, it has all the data already 😉. Sparse cloning is another example, Read Only Test Masters will become obsolete and thin provisioned clones will be more tightly integrated to the database with less tooling required.  

The Incremental Innovation of ExaScale looks to further enhance database consolidation, VM management and overall administration and maintenance as a top-line headline that can only be a good thing.

Incremental Innovation is a series of small improvements or upgrades made to a company's existing products, services, processes or methods.

Oracle is investing billions into their products, innovating so you, we, everyone can benefit. Lean into it!

If you'd like to learn more about ExaScale or any of our Oracle Exadata Services, please don't hesitate to get in touch!

For more specific examples check out the details below:

https://blogs.oracle.com/exadata/post/exadata-2023-recap

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=irB7RsY8exc