1. Administering Oracle Database Exadata Cloud at Customer (Gen 1/OCI-C)
  2. Getting Started with Exadata Cloud at Customer
  3. About Oracle Database Exadata Cloud at Customer

About Oracle Database Exadata Cloud at Customer

Note:

This is the administration guide for Gen 1 Exadata Cloud at Customer. Gen 1 is the first generation of Exadata Cloud at Customer, which is deployed in conjunction with Oracle Cloud at Customer using Oracle Cloud Infrastructure Classic (OCI-C).

If you are looking for Gen 2 Exadata Cloud at Customer, which is deployed in conjunction with Oracle Cloud Infrastructure, please use the latest documentation for Oracle Exadata Cloud@Customer.

Oracle Database Exadata Cloud at Customer enables you to apply the combined power of Exadata and Oracle Cloud inside your own data center. You have full access to the features and operations available with Oracle Database, but with Oracle owning and managing the Exadata infrastructure.

Each Exadata Cloud at Customer instance is based on an Exadata system configuration that contains some compute nodes (database servers) and Exadata Storage Servers, all tied together by a high-speed, low-latency InfiniBand network and intelligent Exadata software.

The following starter configurations are offered:

  • Base System: Containing two compute nodes and three Exadata Storage Servers. Previously known as an Eighth Rack, a Base System is an entry-level configuration that contains Exadata Storage Servers with significantly less storage capacity and compute nodes with significantly less memory and processing power than other configurations.

  • Quarter Rack: Containing two compute nodes and three Exadata Storage Servers.

  • Half Rack: Containing four compute nodes and six Exadata Storage Servers.

  • Full Rack: Containing eight compute nodes and 12 Exadata Storage Servers.

Each starter configuration is equipped with a fixed amount of memory, storage, and network resources. However, you can choose how many compute node CPU cores are enabled, up to a fixed maximum for each configuration. This choice enables you to scale a starter configuration to meet workload demands and only pay for the compute node resources that you need.

With Exadata Cloud at Customer, you can optionally add compute nodes or Exadata Storage Servers to create custom configurations up to the size of a Full Rack. This capability enables much greater flexibility so that you can scale your Exadata Cloud at Customer configuration to accommodate your workload requirements.

The Exadata Cloud at Customer compute nodes are each configured with at least one virtual machine (VM). You have root privilege for the Exadata compute node VMs, so you can load and run additional software on the Exadata compute nodes. However, you do not have administrative access to the Exadata infrastructure components, including the physical compute node hardware, network switches, power distribution units (PDUs), integrated lights-out management (ILOM) interfaces, or the Exadata Storage Servers, which Oracle administers.

Exadata Cloud at Customer is provisioned with database storage provided by Exadata Storage Servers. The storage is allocated to disk groups managed by Oracle Automatic Storage Management (ASM). You have administrative access to the ASM disk groups but no direct administrative access is provided, or required, for the Exadata Storage Servers. Exadata Cloud at Customer users seamlessly benefit from the intelligent performance and scalability of Exadata.

Subscription to Exadata Cloud at Customer can include all of the required Oracle Database software licenses, or you can choose to bring Oracle Database software licenses that you already own to Exadata Cloud at Customer. If you choose to use Oracle Database software licenses that are included with the Exadata Cloud at Customer subscription, then the included Oracle Database software licenses contain all of the features of Oracle Database Enterprise Edition, plus all of the database enterprise management packs and all of the Enterprise Edition options, such as Oracle Database In-Memory and Oracle Real Application Clusters (RAC). Exadata Cloud at Customer also comes with cloud-specific software tools that assist with automated backup, patching and upgrade operations.

Within each Exadata Cloud at Customer instance, you can create numerous database deployments. Apart from the inherent storage and processing capacity of your Exadata configuration, there is no set maximum for the number of database deployments that you can create.

When you provision a database deployment, it is configured according to best-practices, with your Oracle database already running, and with default backup jobs already scheduled. You have full administrative privileges for your database, and you can connect to your database by using Oracle Net Services. You are responsible for database administration tasks such as creating tablespaces and managing database users. You can also customize the default automated maintenance setup, and you control the recovery process in response to a database failure.