What is Exalytics?
The Oracle
Exalytics In-Memory Machine is a “engineered in-memory analytics machine”
that delivers no-limit, extreme performance for Business Intelligence and
Enterprise Performance Management applications.
What is
Engineered Systems?
Hardware and
software designed to work together.
- Best-in-class enterprise BI platform, in-memory analytics software, and hardware optimized to work together
- Advanced data visualization and exploration to quickly provide actionable insight from large amounts of data
- Fastest solution for business intelligence, modeling, forecasting, and planning applications
- Access to all Oracle and non-Oracle enterprise data sources
- No limits on users, data, or applications
Is
a memory-optimized relational database that empowers applications with the
responsiveness and high throughput (speed, performance).
Oracle
“TimesTen” In-Memory Database and “IMDB Cache” deliver real-time performance by
changing the assumptions about where data resides at run time. By managing data
in memory and optimizing data structures and access algorithms accordingly,
database operations execute with maximum efficiency, achieving dramatic gains
in responsiveness and throughput, even compared with a fully cached, disk-based
relational database management system (RDBMS). Following the standard
relational data model, you can use SQL, JDBC, ODBC, PL/SQL and Oracle Call
Interface (OCI) to access TimesTen and IMDB Cache databases.
In
a conventional disk-based RDBMS, client applications communicate with a
database server process over some type of IPC connection, which adds
performance overhead to all SQL operations. An application can link TimesTen
directly into its address space to eliminate the IPC overhead and streamline
query processing. This is accomplished through a direct connection to TimesTen.
Traditional client/server access is also supported for functions such as
reporting, or when a large number of application-tier platforms must share
access to a common in-memory database.
Exalytics Hardware
Architecture
Exalytics hardware is delivered
in units of a single 3RU rack-mountable server that is optimally configured for
in-memory analytics for business intelligence workloads. Multiple Oracle
Exalytics machines can be clustered together to expand available memory
capacity and to provide high availability. Oracle Exalytics includes powerful
compute capacity, abundant memory, and fast networking options and is capable
of direct attached storage options.
All network interfaces support
failover and can be used to setup a cluster without a single point of failure.
Oracle Exalytics also includes redundant hot-swappable power supplies and fans.
It includes a high-performance
direct attached storage system including a high-performance RAID HBA and 3.6TBs
of raw disk capacity. Optionally, clusters of these machines can leverage
network attached storage for storing shared metadata and configuration data.
It includes a complete server
management infrastructure with Oracle Integrated Lights Out Management (ILOM).
Oracle ILOM provides complete management and administration of the server
hardware via remote (SSL, HTTPS) and serial connectivity.
Exalytics Software Overview
Exalytics
runs the Oracle Business Intelligence Foundation along with Oracle TimesTen
In-Memory Database. Both have been specifically enhanced to work together and
have been optimized to provide exclusive features on Exalytics hardware.
- a. Oracle Business Intelligence Foundation
The
Oracle BI Foundation provides comprehensive and complete capabilities for
business intelligence, including enterprise reporting, dashboards, ad hoc
analysis, multi-dimensional OLAP, scorecards, and predictive analytics on an
integrated platform.
- b. Oracle TimesTen In-Memory Database for Exalytics
TimesTen
stores all its data in memory optimized data structures and supports query
algorithms specifically designed for in-memory processing. Using the familiar
SQL programming interfaces, TimesTen provides real-time data management that
delivers blazing-fast response times, and very high throughput for a variety of
workloads.
- c. Columnar Compression:
TimesTen
In-Memory Database for Exalytics supports columnar compression that reduces the
memory footprint for in-memory data. Compression ratios of 5X are practical and
help expand in-memory capacity. Analytic algorithms are designed to operate
directly on compressed data, thus further speeding up the in-memory analytics
queries.
- d. Oracle Essbase
Essbase
on Exalytics has a number of optimizations for in-memory operation including
improvements to overall storage layer performance, enhancements to parallel
operations, enhanced MDX syntax and a high performance MDX query engine.
Essbase on Exalytics provides up to 16X faster query execution as well as up to
6X reduction in write-back and calculation operations, including batch
processes.
e. Clustering
Exalytics
In-Memory Machine also supports clustering to provide scalability and high
availability. It supports both active-active and active-passive configurations.
A cluster configuration also can be configured to pool the available memory
resources to accommodate larger data sets in-memory.
f. In-Memory Analytics
Exalytics
includes two in-memory analytics engines that provide the analytics capability
- Oracle TimesTen In-Memory Database for Exalytics and Oracle Essbase with
in-memory optimizations for Exalytics.
