Oracle Exadata Features
Oracle Exadata is an all-in-one hardware platform consisting of a Database Machine and an Exadata Storage Server at its core. The core software running on Exadata is the Oracle Database and Exadata Cell software, which corresponds to the ORACLE 11g software, and the storage management software, respectively.
Oracle Exadata improves on all three of these areas accordingly:
First, Exadata itself comes with a separate CPU and memory, and operating system (Oracle Enterprise Linux), and is in fact a server. It provides an important feature: Smart Scan. Smart Scan consists of the database server passing query commands to Exadata, which first sifts the data in storage and then transfers the sifted results to the database server's memory, which is a significant departure from the traditional approach. The processing of the query is transferred to the storage system, which can greatly reduce the amount of data sent to the server.
Second, Exadata is modular, with each Exadata module called a storage unit. As the number of storage units increases, so does the throughput of the entire cabinet storage, and it is even possible to connect multiple cabinets of storage together to provide even higher throughput. It is a high-capacity, parallel storage grid, and adding "storage units" increases the number of transport pipes.
Again, Exadata's transport interface is InfiniBand ---- an interconnect technology standard that Oracle is proud to offer that is up to 10 times faster than traditional Fibre Channel. That's like having transmission pipes that are 10 times wider.
Oracle Exadata Version 2 is available in four configurations: full rack (8 database servers and 14 storage servers), half rack (4 database servers and 7 storage servers), 1/4 rack (2 database servers and 3 storage servers), and base system (1 database server and 1 storage server). The above 4 Exadata configurations are available immediately. With the addition of wires only, Sun Oracle Database Machine can be expanded to 8 racks of database machines to meet various application scenarios of users.