Exadata Hardware - Oracle Exadata Recipes: A Problem-Solution Approach - page 2

Chapter 1

Exadata Hardware

The Exadata Database Machine is a pre-configured, fault-tolerant, high-performing hardware platform built using
industry-standard Oracle hardware. The Exadata hardware architecture consists primarily of a compute grid, a
storage grid, and a network grid. Since 2010, the majority of Exadata customers deployed one of the four Exadata
X2 models, which are comprised of Oracle Sun Fire X4170 M2 servers in the compute grid and Sun Fire X4270-M2
servers running on the storage grid. During Oracle Open World 2012, Oracle released the Exadata X3-2 and X3-8 In
Memory Database Machines, which are built using Oracle X3-2 servers on the compute and storage grid. In both
cases, Oracle runs Oracle Enterprise Linux or Solaris 11 Express on the compute grid and Oracle Linux combined
with unique Exadata storage server software on the storage grid. The network grid is built with multiple high-speed,
high-bandwidth InfiniBand switches.
In this chapter, you will learn about the hardware that comprises the Oracle Exadata Database Machine, how to
locate the hardware components with Oracle's Exadata rack, and how the servers, storage, and network infrastructure
is configured.

■ Oracle Exadata X3-2, introduced at Oracle Open World 2012, contains Oracle X3-2 servers on the compute
node and Oracle X3-2 servers on the storage servers. The examples in this chapter will be performed on an Oracle
Exadata X2-2 Quarter Rack, but, when applicable, we will provide X3-2 and X3-8 configuration details.

Note

1-1. Identifying Exadata Database Machine Components
Problem
You are considering an Exadata investment or have just received shipment of your Oracle Exadata Database Machine
and have worked with Oracle, your Oracle Partner, the Oracle hardware field service engineer, and Oracle Advanced
Consulting Services to install and configure the Exadata Database Machine, and now you would like to better
understand the Exadata hardware components. You're an Oracle database administrator, Unix/Linux administrator,
network engineer, or perhaps a combination of all of the theseand, before beginning to deploy databases on Exadata,
you wish to become comfortable with the various hardware components that comprise the database machine.

Solution
Oracle's Exadata Database Machine consists primarily of a storage grid, compute grid, and network grid. Each grid,
or hardware layer, is built with multiple high-performing, industry-standard Oracle servers to provide hardware
and system fault tolerance. Exadata comes in four versions—the Exadata X2-2 Database Machine, the Exadata X2-8
Database Machine, the Exadata X3-2 Database Machine, and the Exadata X3-8 Database Machine.