History Of Exadata

Exadata was first launched in the year 2008 and it was names as Exadata V1. Since then Exadata has undergone many significant changes.

In this article I will give a quick overview of Exadata history and changes made in each of the model.

•         V1

–     First Exadata model released in 2008

–     It was a combination of HP hardware + Oracle Software

–     Exclusively for Data Warehouse workload

–     There were too many hardware failures noticed in this model

–     Working with Hardware issues was not easy as it involved multiple vendors

–     There was no Flash in this version

–     Major problem with V1 was the cabinet gets overheated. You can fry Eggs on the cabinetJ

•         V2

–     V2 was released in 2009

–     Combination of Sun hardware and Oracle Software

–     Flash Cache was introduced for the first time in V2

–     Caches data intelligently on Flash Cache

–     Faster components and used solid state disks

–     More than just Data Warehouse

    •         X2

–     X2 is the third version of Exadata and it was released in 2010

–     This time the naming changed to X series

–     Introduced two variants X2-2 and X2-8

–     Introduced Exadata Storage Expansion for addition storage capacity

–     Faster components and increased capacity (CPU, memory and disk)

•         X3

–     X3 was released in 2012

–     Named as “In-Memory Database machines”

–     Introduced Exadata Eight Rack configuration

–     Increased Flash cache

–     Introduced write back flash cache

–     Faster components and increased capacity

–     Increased High Capacity disk Size from 2TB to 3TB
–     Introduced new Software feature Write-Back Flash Cache

•         X4

–     It was released in 2013

–     Introduced Xeon processors

–     Physical memory can be expanded up to 512GB on Compute nodes

–     Doubled Flash Cache

–     Increased High Performance disk size from 600GB to 1.2TB

–     Increased High Capacity disk size from 3TB to 4TB

–     Introduced Active/Active Infiniband network connection

  

•         X5

–     It was released in 2015

–     Uses 2-socket CPU

–     Physical memory can be expanded up to 768GB on Compute nodes

–     Introduced OVM

–     Introduced Extreme Flash Cache servers

–     Introduced Elastic Exadata configuration

–     High performance disk are removed in favor of Extreme Flash Cache servers

–     Doubled flash cache and used NVMe

•         X6

–     X6 was released in 2016

–     Increase Flash cache

–     Faster components and increased capacity

–     Also available in Public Cloud

–     Ideal for DBaas

The diagram below gives you an overview of the Exadata hardware evolution.

Conclusion

In this article we have learned the history of Exadata. We have seen how Exadata has undergone significant changes since it’s launched in the year 2008.