Oracle Database Appliance (ODA) is in many ways similar to an Exadata quarter rack: they both use two similar compute servers in an engineered system configuration, with shared storage and flash storage. But in other ways, especially networking and storage, they differ significantly. In particular:
- Storage connectivity: ODA uses SAS direct attachment, while Exadata uses an InfiniBand backbone connected to dedicated storage servers
- Flash memory: Exadata has significantly more flash memory than ODA does. While both can store ASM diskgroups in flash, Exadata also has flash cache capability. ODA’s default configuration uses flash to store redo logs; this helps compensate for ODA’s lack of
battery-backed disk write cache in the latency-sensitive redo write workload. - Expandability: ODA currently comes in a single 2-server, 12TB configuration. An Exadata quarter-rack configuration has
2 compute servers and a minimum of 21TB raw storage. Both compute capacity and storage are expandable virtually without limit, given sufficient number of racks and network backbone.
The chart below summarizes the similarities and differences:
| ODA | Exadata X2-2 | |
| Number of compute servers | 2 | 2 |
| Server type | X4370 M2 | X4170 M2 |
| Compute node expansion | None | Exadata half rack |
| OS | OEL 5.5 | OEL 5.5 |
| Flash size | 292G | 1152G |
| Flash type | MLC | SLC |
| Flash usage | ASM diskgroup | Flash cache or ASM diskgroup |
| Database version | 11gR2 | 11gR2 |
| Cluster interconnect | 2xGigE using Oracle Redundant Interconnect | InfiniBand, active-passive |
| Raw speed | 2gbps | 40gbps |
| External connectivity (per server) | 2x10GigE, 4xGigE | 2x10GigE, 4xGigE |
| Drive type | 600G SAS | 600G or 2TB SAS |
| Number of drives | 20 | 36 |
| Raw shared disk capacity | 12TB | 21.6TB (high speed) or 72TB (high capacity) |
| Storage expansion | None | Exadata half rack or additional storage servers |
| Local storage | 2x500G SATA | 4x300G SAS |
| RAM | 96 GB/server | 96 GB/server |
| CPU | 2xX5675 3.06Ghz/server | 2xX5675 3.06Ghz/server |
| Cores | 6/processor | 6/processor |
| Storage access | SAS | Oracle IDB over InfiniBand |
| Battery-backed write cache | None | 512m/storage server |
6 Comments. Leave new
Exadata X2-2 has 3,06 Ghz Cpu for some weeks, look at the updatet spec sheets. That was a silent update :)
Keeping up with the Joneses I guess. Good catch and specs are updated.
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Does anyone know if ODA will require ZFS on the filesystem ? I have been researching this for awhile, and can locate the answer to this question. I would appreciate if anyone could answer this. Thanks.
ODA does not use ZFS. So not only it doesn’t require ZFS, it does not have capabilities.
If you are looking to mount strorage from a ZFS appliance to ODA and network attached storage (NFS) then it can be done.
I raised an SR to Oracle Support to enable the “Automatic Service Request” for the ODA storage , and they are insisting that I should configure it through ZFS. !!! Actually I do not have any idea about ZFS and tried to convince them that No ZFS in ODA but no way.