New Oracle Exadata X6 Database Machine Delivers Next-Generation Flash Performance, Massive Storage Capacity, and Real-Time OLTP

Oracle released the Oracle Exadata X6 Database Machine, introducing game-changing performance, capacity and availability, all at no additional cost. Oracle Exadata continues to lead the industry with breakthrough technology that delivers extreme performance and the best price/performance for online transaction processing (OLTP), analytics and consolidated database workloads.

Oracle Exadata X6 features the latest, fastest Intel Xeon processors, ultra-fast InfiniBand networking, scale-out Oracle Exadata Storage Servers with all-flash or disk plus flash storage, and Oracle Exadata’s exclusive Storage Server Software. Since its 2008 debut, Oracle Exadata has redefined the integration of hardware, software and cloud, introducing dozens of breakthroughs that are unmatched by any other database, systems or cloud vendor.

“Oracle Exadata is used by four of the five biggest banks, telcos, and retailers in the world because it delivers dramatically better OLTP, analytics and mixed workloads,” said Juan Loaiza, senior vice president of systems technologies, Oracle. “The new Oracle Exadata X6 delivers flash performance that rivals DRAM performance, and much faster and more reliable OLTP. The same leading-edge Oracle Exadata technology is now available as a cloud service to enable the most effective database cloud service in the world.”

Memory Level Performance with Shared Flash

Oracle Exadata X6 is the first and only database platform that combines leading-edge 3D V-NAND flash with database intelligence in storage to achieve near DRAM level throughput from shared flash. It achieves over 300 gigabytes per second of data throughput per rack, which is more than 10 times faster than competitors’ all-flash storage arrays. Oracle Exadata X6 enables in-memory performance at one-tenth the cost of pure in-memory platforms.

Oracle Exadata Breaks the Petabyte Barrier

The High Capacity variant of Oracle Exadata X6 uses state-of-the-art helium-filled eight terabyte (TB) disks to deliver more than 1.3 petabytes of disk capacity per rack. In addition, integrated intelligent flash caching delivers the performance of flash with the economics of disk capacity.

The Extreme Flash (all-flash) variant of Oracle Exadata X6 delivers more than 358 TBs of state-of-the-art NVMe flash per rack. This flash capacity exceeds the maximum capacity of competitors’ all-flash storage arrays available in the market today. Oracle Exadata can scale to more than six petabytes of flash with multiple racks.

Oracle Exadata’s industry-best Hybrid Columnar Compression technology is able to increase storage capacity by an average factor of 10X, providing dramatically better price-capacity for large data warehouses and consolidated database workloads.

Real-Time, All-the-Time OLTP

Oracle Exadata X6 breaks all barriers to real-time OLTP at any scale. Traditionally, OLTP scaling has been limited by random I/O bottlenecks, but Oracle Exadata X6 achieves over 5.6 million I/O operations per second per rack, easily outperforming competitors’ all-flash storage arrays.

Another barrier to OLTP performance has been inter-node server coordination. New Oracle Exadata InfiniBand-based algorithms such as the Direct-to-Wire protocol and Smart Fusion Block Transfers increase the speed of OLTP messaging by up to a factor of three.

All-the-time OLTP is supported through Oracle Exadata’s unique full-stack integration for instant detection of failures, sub-second redirection of I/O around failing devices, and fast problem resolution. Unique Database In-Memory fault-tolerance adds an additional layer of protection for the most performance-sensitive mixed workloads.

Oracle Exadata Database Machines are frequently used for database consolidations and mixed-workload applications. To help eliminate “noisy neighbor” interference with OLTP workloads, Oracle Exadata uniquely prioritizes critical workloads end-to-end from CPU, to network, to storage.

Exadata on the Cloud

In addition to purchasing the Oracle Exadata X6 for deployment on premises, Oracle now offers the option of using Exadata via the Oracle Database Exadata Cloud Service.  Oracle experts deploy and manage the Oracle Database Exadata Cloud Service.  The service offers all of the Oracle Database Enterprise Edition features and options and is available via metered or subscription licensing.

Oracle also recently announced Oracle Cloud at Customer, which enables customers to run Oracle Cloud services on their premises.  All of the Oracle Database Cloud Services, including the Oracle Exadata Database Cloud Service will be available via this offering.

Additional X6 Engineered Systems

In addition to the Oracle Exadata X6, Oracle is announcing X6 upgrades for two additional Engineered Systems:

• Oracle’s Zero Data Loss Recovery Appliance incorporates the new X6 technologies to further enhance Oracle Database protection featuring completely automated recovery, restore, backup, and logging; sub-second RPO to eliminate data loss exposure; and increased database performance by offloading backup processing.
• Oracle SuperCluster M7, integrated with Oracle Exadata X6 storage servers, is an ideal platform for Oracle Database and application consolidation solutions, allowing customers to maximize the performance and availability of both databases and applications in a single engineered system.