Oracle Executive Webcast - Oracle Database Appliance

The Oracle Executive Webcast announced the new Oracle Database Appliance.  Oracle ventured into the hardware space in just the last few years with the introduction of their Exadata database machine.  The Exadata, however, is a very large box intended for very large companies with very large applications (and has a price to match).  The new Oracle Database Appliance is somewhat of an Exadata-lite intended for the SMB and departmental applications.

The appliance itself is a self contained unit with 24 processing cores, 192 Gb of RAM and 12 Tb of storage.  It also has Oracle Database 11g, Oracle Real Application Clusters, Oracle Enterprise Manager and other management pre-installed on Oracle Linux and configured in a dual server configuration.  It also has what Oracle is calling a 'phone-home' feature that can automatically, and proactively, contact Oracle support even before the customer realizes they have an issue.

Software licensing is what Oracle is calling 'Pay-as-you-grow' licensing which means that you can buy the appliance with as little as 2 of the cores enabled and, as needs grow, can upgrade the license to more cores that take little more than a system reboot to enable.   You can also transfer existing licenses to the appliance.

Obviously, one of the advantages of this appliance is the ability to essentially buy the system, plug it in, connect a network cable and turn it on and thus eliminate a bunch of pain acquiring hardware and downloading, installing and configuring software.  One of the quotes in the webcast that stood out for me was that the statement that Oracle is looking for other opportunities to deliver products on an appliance.  Note to Oracle: I think both an Oracle EPM appliance and an Essbase appliance, preconfigured with an Oracle database as the repository, would be very popular!

The appliance is available now.  More information is available on the Oracle website at http://www.oracle.com/us/products/database/database-appliance/index.html.