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In line with my prediction from few days ago, Larry Ellison is announcing the new Database Machine — the new version is targeting OLTP workloads and is based on Sun hardware. Looks like I just got the date wrong. Oh well, now is the announcement, hype and demo is at the Oracle Open World and shipments are to start upon Oracle-Sun acquisition completion.

So what’s new in Exadata that I didn’t mention in the previous blog post? Ah, right — Sun FlashFire technology. It’s no surprise that the new OLTP version of Database Machine is boosting the IOPS (IO’s per second) capacity by introducing the flash drives. Nothing prevented Oracle to place flash disks into the original Exadata, not from technology perspective.

You should also know that Sun has been investing a lot in its Open Storage concept. This is very similar to what Oracle did with Exadata Server except that Sun initiative is a universal storage solution with ZFS in its core while Oracle Exadata is specialized for Oracle databases leveraging Oracle ASM. What does it tell me? Two leading companies have the opportunity to merge storage technologies. I’ll take that!

I might have underestimated Oracle on how quickly it can leverage Solaris SPARC for the database servers in the OLTP Database Machine (Mark, you might be right). SPARC platform has been an excellent fit for high throughput OLTP systems. Again, we already saw Larry’s commitment to develop SPARC technology so within a month, Sun customers’ mood should be rising higher and higher these days.

I will excuse myself for self-quoting from half a year ago:
… it does look like Sun failed to make money on a number of great technologies and products such as Solaris and Java. Why is another story — there were great deal of speculations from people who must know it much better than me. My conclusion is that IBM is a great money making machine while Sun is the technology making machine.

What about Oracle? Well, I think that so far they have excelled in both - money making and technology making. Isn’t that a wonderful combination?

I must say I’m excited to see that Oracle is picking up all the juicy pieces of Sun technologies and targets to make money on them and not sell them off in bits.

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OK. It’s not often that I make predictions these days but this was on my mind for a while so here we go. Mind you, I don’t have any confirmed insider information so it’s based on some assumptions, my perspective on Oracle-Sun acquisition and some vibes I can feel in the air.

The rumors are that Oracle Exadata v2 and Oracle Database Machine v2 are going to be announced within few weeks and my take is that it’s going to happen at the Oracle Open World. I don’t think it comes as a surprise to anyone that it will be configured with Oracle Database 11g Release 2.

Moving on to predictions and speculations…

Oracle Database Machine — beyond data-warehousing

Oracle Database Machine will not be targeting ultimately data warehouse environments — it will attack OLTP applications and marketed extensively for consolidated environments. “Old” HP Oracle Database Machine was an ideal consolidation vehicle but there were few design elements incompatible with OLTP and consolidated environments. For example, very thin communication pipe with the external world — no way enough traffic could enter (and leave). Have you paid attention to what Oracle did in 11g Release 2 with its Grid Infrastructure component and how well it now can truly manage the grid including database, storage and application tiers? 11g Release 2 delivered inside Oracle Database Machine v2 — this is the ultimate answer to data-center consolidation… the ultimate data-center consolidation appliance.

Oracle Database Machine — truly Oracle hardware

Did you see the title is missing something? You would if you compare it carefully with the year old entry — “HP” is missing! Yes, I believe that Oracle Database Machine v2 will be delivered on Sun hardware.

The exact figures are not published but Oracle claims that adoption of HP Oracle Database Machine is high. If Oracle makes Database Machine available for generic use and data-centers consolidation (those are very “popular” projects now for our customers) then demand will surge immensely and Oracle will need to meet supply. Of course, Oracle could let HP pocket quite a bit of cash but why not leave it all for themselves?

Oracle is committed to Sun hardware if you didn’t notice.

Why on earth would Oracle continue to use HP hardware for it’s Database Machine v2? This is rather highly improbable and the natural choice is… Sun Oracle Database Machine!

I reckon that Sun Oracle Database Machine (or simply Oracle Database Machine) will be still based on the same x86 architecture and not SPARC. Oracle Exadata software is generic and will run on Oracle Enterprise Linux on any x86 platform (it even runs inside a virtual machine if one wants to play with it). So the only work left is to polish and integrate components flawlessly as it’s been done with HP hardware.

The step to introduce SPARC platform is not huge — Solaris on SPARC is still one of the most stable platforms that Oracle Database runs on. What’s left is to make Solaris SPARC playing nicely with InfiniBand and Oracle’s DDP (Direct Data Placement) protocol. I don’t think Oracle could go as far as having it implemented it on SPARC platform already now but I think that database servers can easily be running on SPARC in the future as well as Linux x86_64 while Exadata Storage Server will most likely stay on Linux.

As a summary, I want to quote what I said back in April:
What Oracle intends to do now is to keep all those new acquired products, continue development while work heavily on integration solutions. Integration products and services is where Oracle will find its new direct revenue stream.

Comments are most welcome as usual.

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