Databases Reference
In-Depth Information
Time to system delivery is essentially the time from system order to delivery and in‐
stallation, typically about four to six weeks. This becomes especially important if delivery
of the system will enable new business usage that drives revenue growth or cost savings,
since the sooner these occur, the sooner return on investment can be reached. The
packaging of multiple nodes and storage in single frames often reduces overall power
consumption and floor space footprint in the data center. System management cost (and
time to make changes) is reduced when database administrators take on the role of
managing these systems via Enterprise Manager, including managing the Oracle Data‐
bases, operating system, and storage. As Oracle supports the entire footprint, time to
problem resolution is also reduced, enabling an organization to better meet or exceed
service level agreements.
An interesting aspect of the engineered systems that contain CPUs in
both the server nodes and Exadata Storage Server cells is how Oracle
prices Oracle Database licenses. Only CPU cores on the server nodes
count in the pricing equation. Of course, Exadata Storage Server soft‐
ware is priced separately, but many organizations find the trade-offs
in license pricing and performance to be in their favor when compar‐
ing this model to their traditional commodity servers and storage.
A cost-benefit analysis is frequently part of the process of justifying the purchase and
deployment of a new engineered system. Some or all of the potential benefits we just
mentioned can lead to justification. However, your analysis should also include cost
associated with change management and training that is common when moving to a
new platform. It is likely that this process will go a long way toward determining whether
an engineered system makes sense for your initiative.
