Just another Oracle blog
Just a quick note to let you know that I updated the presentations section of my blog. Most of the talks I’ve done over the last 3 years, including Hotsos Symposium, RMOUG Training Days, Oracle Open World, UKOUG Conference and Enkitec Extreme Exadata Expo (E4) are now on the site.
Just a quick note to point out that the official white paper version of the TCO study I talked about in a previous post (Exadata vs. IBM P-Series) is now available on the Oracle web site here:
Cost Comparison – Oracle Exadata Database Machine vs. IBM Power Systems
The most interesting part of the study (in my opinion) is the quotes from the participants that are using Exadata. These quotes provide some insight into how people feel about the platform after having systems in production for a while (note that all the interviews were done prior to the release of the X3-2). I should also point out that these customers are not typical Oracle reference customers. They were interviewed by a third party and promised anonymity as part of the study.
Here’s a link to a video of Mogens Norgaard discussing the upcoming OakTable World conference (click on the picture of Mogens below). Note that the name of the conference has been changed from Oracle Closed World to OakTable World.
Fellow Enkitecies Karl Arao and Tanel Poder will both be presenting at the event along with a bunch of other well known OakTable members. I may even do a 10-15 minute TED style talk at lunch time on Monday. Hope to see you there.
It’s been about two and a half years since Enkitec took delivery of our first Exadata. (I blogged about it here: Weasle Stomping Day) Getting our hands on Exadata was very cool for all of us geeks. A lot has changed since then, but we’re still a bunch of geeks at heart and so this week we indulged our geekdom once again with the delivery of our Big Data Appliance (BDA). In case you haven’t heard about it, Oracle has released an engineered system that is designed to host “Big Data” (which is not my favorite term, but I’ll have to save that for some other time). The Hadoop ecosystem has taken off in the last couple of years and this is Oracle’s initial foray into the arena. The BDA comes loaded with 18 servers, each sporting 36 Terabytes of storage for a whopping total of 648 Terabytes. It also comes with Cloudera’s distribution of Hadoop (and software from various other open source projects that are part of the Hadoop ecosystem). We’re very excited to start working with Cloudera and Oracle in this exciting new approach to managing large data sets. Anyway here’s a few pictures:
The rack’s pretty heavy with all the disk drives. One of the delivery guys said he had a full rack of EMC drives that actually fell through the floor of the office building they delivered it to (no one was hurt). Fortunately we didn’t have any mishaps. And at a couple of thousand pounds, we will not be moving it around to see how it looks next to the coffee table (like we do with slightly less heavy pieces of furniture at home).
This is me and my buddy Pete Cassidy (Oracle Instructor Extraordinaire) messing around.
Another picture of me and Pete. Not as good as the other one, but I love the shoes!
Tim Fox loves the big power cables.
The BDA also has a handy beer shelf (this is the top secret new feature).
The BDA cabinet has a lock and of course the key’s were in a well label plastic bag. I had Andy Colvin hold up the label so I could take his picture. I called the shot “DoorKeyAndy”. – seemed appropriate ;)
The 2012 Enkitec Extreme Exadata Expo is behind us now. Our video guy (Bob) has been working diligently for the last week or so to get the presentations edited. They will be made available to the attendees shortly. We have already posted a video of the opening session. It is me interviewing Cary Millsap about his impressions of Exadata. One of the things I have found most interesting about Exadata is how it makes very experienced Oracle performance guys re-think things. It’s fun watching them being exposed to Exadata in an intimate way (not just Power Point). The reactions are interesting. There is usually a desire to try to break it although it’s generally harder than it appears, at least initially. I got to watch Cary for a few days (along with several of his Method-R guys) when he had his first exposure and we talk about that during the video. Cary made a profound impact on me and my career and I think his insight into the Exadata architecture is worth watching. Hopefully the fact that I have a great face for radio will not deter you (too much). The video has the obligatory Enkitec logo and endless loop, non-descript music intro, but other than that, I certify it as marketing free! ;)
Be sure and check out enkitec.tv for other videos too.
