Re: DB Appliance
Date: Tue, 28 Feb 2012 18:00:25 -0600
Message-Id: <6FA3ACC3-04FD-40C2-9BE9-BA7342678CC0_at_enkitec.com>
The SE vs EE issue is something that I've been intrigued by since the announcement of the ODA. It seems like it's just begging for somebody to file a lawsuit, because there shouldn't be anything preventing you from running SE on the box other than Oracle refusing to sell it with an SE license. I think that with an SE license, the box would sell really well. As for the hardware pricing, when I ran the specs through a configuration from Dell, it was almost $95,000 list price for similar hardware:
MD3220/1220 with 20x600GB disk drives
2x poweredge r510 servers that match the ODA's internal guts
As for the original question, it is amazingly simple to install and configure. Building out and testing a RAC system at many sites takes weeks. It takes about 2 hours from pulling the ODA out of the box to having it up and running. It definitely cuts down some of the complexities of RAC installations, which reduces the overall migration time. With that simplicity come some challenges. You only have ~4TB of space between your DATA and RECO diskgroups. It's not supported to add external disks through iSCSI. NFS is supported, but only for backups. Currently, the ODA only allows for one Oracle home, which really annoys me. On the bright side, the product team is listening to some of these concerns and has already announced future support for multiple homes (when 11.2.0.3 is certified), and the performance is pretty solid.
We've done quite a few tests with the box, and it is resistant to many potential failure scenarios. It is HA in a single box with regard to power, disk, and network. There is redundant power, ASM high redundancy, and bonded network. For disaster recovery, you would need either a second ODA or some other system to run your standby database, but you would need that regardless of your hardware decision.
Andy Colvin
Principal Consultant
Enkitec
andy.colvin_at_enkitec.com
http://blog.oracle-ninja.com
On Feb 28, 2012, at 4:55 PM, Allen, Brandon wrote:
> I just checked the numbers and I came out with different values than Niall (details below, maybe I made some different assumptions), but still the same conclusion - you could save a lot of money by running Standard Edition on similar hardware if you don't really need the Enterprise Edition features, but if you do need EE, then the ODA looks like a reasonable value.
>
> Regards,
> Brandon
>
> Details (scroll down for references):
>
> Looking at the current U.S. price list it shows Oracle Standard Edition is $17,500 per processor and if we use the .5 multi-core factor given for the Intel 56XX series, then that means the total would be $17,500 x 12 if you ran a similar custom built machine with 24 cores. That comes out to $210,000, which equals £132,191 if Google's calculator is correct.
>
> The cost for Oracle EE is $47,500/CPU + $23,000/CPU for RAC so if you multiply that out across 12 cores after the .5 multi-core factor it comes to $846,000 (which equals £532,544). The price for the ODA "Large" configuration with RAC across all 24 cores is $896,000, so it looks like they are charging $50,000 for the hardware, pre-installation, Appliance Manager and whatever other extras are included. It looks like they still charge extra for the management packs though if you want to add those.
>
>
> References:
> http://www.oracle.com/us/corporate/pricing/technology-price-list-070617.pdf
>
> http://www.oracle.com/us/corporate/contracts/processor-core-factor-table-070634.pdf
>
> https://shop.oracle.com/pls/ostore/f?p=dstore:2:77602628425989::NO:RIR,RP,2:PROD_HIER_ID:114335456219731897011227
>
> http://www.oracle.com/us/products/database/oracle-database-appliance-ds-495410.pdf
>
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: oracle-l-bounce_at_freelists.org [mailto:oracle-l-bounce_at_freelists.org] On Behalf Of Niall Litchfield
>
>
> <snip>
>
>> Also, from licensing point of view, you pay as you grow. You can start >> with licensing 2 cores and then as you need you can license more. >> Miximum is 24 cores. >>
>
> This is probably my biggest beef with the whole setup. If you build an equivalent system yourself (and I'll take Oracle's word for it that their hardware pricing is pretty good) then the cost of licensing SE which allows you RAC and the full power of the box is in English money a shade over £50k. The price of licensing the required software for a 2 core per node ODA is by my reckoning 2CPU licenses of EE and RAC which comes in at, er just under £100k. To use all the cores *like you would in the roll your own system* would cost the best part of £400k. The triple redundancy means that you are limiting the database and recovery area (assuming they are on the same appliance) to 4tb which is pushing, but not unreasonable for, SE.
>
> <snip>
>
>
> ________________________________
>
> Privileged/Confidential Information may be contained in this message or attachments hereto. Please advise immediately if you or your employer do not consent to Internet email for messages of this kind. Opinions, conclusions and other information in this message that do not relate to the official business of this company shall be understood as neither given nor endorsed by it.
> --
> http://www.freelists.org/webpage/oracle-l
>
>
-- http://www.freelists.org/webpage/oracle-lReceived on Tue Feb 28 2012 - 18:00:25 CST