A Smarter Database System for SMB Clients

Oracle announces new Database Appliance – Exadata not included

Last week Oracle announced their new Oracle Database Appliance for small to mid-size businesses interested in a low cost, easy to deploy, integrated hardware and software database solution. While the new Database Appliance has gotten a lot of press, it is worth taking a closer look to see what it really costs, what is included, and just as important – to see what is not included.  In fact, the most interesting thing about this offering is what is not included. Specifically this new appliance does not include any of the Exadata technology or features that Oracle has been so heavily promoting. This means that there are no Exadata Storage Servers, no Flash Cache, no Smart Scan, no Hybrid Columnar Compression, no Storage Index, etc. Either the Exadata Storage Servers are overhyped, or Oracle has decided that the SMB market doesn’t need Exadata or can’t afford it.

What else isn’t included in the list price?

So what do you get for the $50,000 list price? You get two Sunfire 4370 M2 servers (total of 24 cores), with Oracle Linux, connected with gigabit ethernet, sharing a total of 20 600gb disk drives, providing 4TB of usable capacity after triple mirroring. Four 73GB SSD drives are also included, but these are only used for Oracle redo logs.

Oracle database software is not included in the purchase price. Oracle 11g Enterprise Edition must be purchased separately, and to take advantage of the two node cluster for high availability and performance, customers also need to purchase Oracle RAC licenses. Oracle is allowing customers to license a subset of the cores on the system, claiming to start with a minimum of 2 cores, although if both servers are used they require a minimum of 2 cores per server and both servers must be licensed for the same number of cores. The default number of cores is 24 (the maximum, of course).

Fully configured at 24 cores with Oracle 11gR2 Enterprise Edition and Oracle RAC, the price would be over $1 million: $50,000 for the hardware, $570,000 for Oracle 11gR2, $270,000 for Oracle RAC, $6,000 for 1st year hardware support, and another $186,120 for 1st year software maintenance! That is a steep price for small to mid-size businesses!

IBM Smart Analytics System – all the power at a fraction of the price

Also announced last week was the new IBM Smart Analytics System 5710 with a starting price of $55,000 to a maximum of $140,000. Unlike the Oracle appliance, this new IBM system includes the database software (InfoSphere Warehouse) in addition to Cognos 10 Business Intelligence software. The 5710 is based on the IBM x3630 server and is optimized for analytic workloads. It comes in 3 configuration sizes supporting from 1.5 to over 13 terabytes of user data. It is space saving at just 2U (small and medium configurations) or 4U (large configuration), and is shipped with all the software installed and optimized. Upon receiving the system, all the customer has to do is unpack it; connect power, monitor, keyboard, mouse and network (SAS cable required for large configuration; power on system and set hostname, IP address and passwords; and the system is then ready to start creating tables and loading data.

SMB customers interested in a complete database system for analytic workloads and want value for less than $140,000 ought to check out the new IBM Smart Analytics System 5710.