Oracle’s Exadata X11M: Revolutionizing AI, OLTP, and Analytics Database Performance
In the ever-evolving landscape of digital transformation, Oracle has once again set a new benchmark with the introduction of its latest Exadata platform, the Oracle Exadata X11M. This cutting-edge platform is designed to enhance the performance of Oracle Database, including the Oracle Autonomous Database, offering a significant leap in speed and efficiency over previous Exadata systems. Whether deployed in the cloud, multi-cloud environments, or customer data centers, the X11M is engineered to meet the high demands of modern enterprises.
Running Oracle Database on general-purpose servers is possible, but achieving the performance, scale, and efficiencies offered by the Exadata X11M would be a formidable challenge. The X11M’s design is a testament to Oracle’s deep expertise in database development, with a seamless integration between the database software and the hardware optimized to support it. Oracle’s unique ability to optimize the performance of Oracle Database at the source-code level introduces net incremental capabilities such as AI Smart Scan, RDMA-based IOs, and In-Memory Columnar Compression.
Benefits for Enterprise Database Customers
The Exadata X11M is built on Oracle’s engineering prowess to address the evolving needs of database customers. It provides a robust platform that supports high-demand workloads such as artificial intelligence, online transaction processing (OLTP), and analytics.
- Performance Improvements: The X11M features data-optimized hardware components and data-intelligent software enhancements, enabling quicker transaction processing, accelerated analytics, and AI workloads that can achieve up to a 30 times speedup, according to Oracle.
- Scalability: The platform can be configured to match current operational needs and scaled elastically as those needs grow, ensuring customers can optimize their infrastructure investments over time.
- Cost Efficiency: By consolidating more workloads onto fewer systems, customers can save on costs. New power-saving features and optimized resource usage contribute to reduced operational expenses.
Key Platform Enhancements
The Oracle Exadata X11M introduces a range of technical enhancements that deliver exceptional performance, scalability, and efficiency for Oracle Database workloads. These advancements reinforce Exadata’s position as the leading database platform for AI, OLTP, and advanced analytics workloads.
The new X11M is powered by the latest generation of AMD EPYC processors, supporting up to 96 cores and driven by Exadata System Software. Oracle promises up to 25% faster per-core performance over previous generations, with a 33% increase in memory bandwidth, which is critical to its overall performance improvements.
Exadata’s intelligent storage architecture has always been a key differentiator. Oracle has enhanced its implementation with its storage servers, enabling a 21% reduction in RDMA read latency. Flash throughput has more than doubled to 100 GB/s, and combined flash and memory throughput for analytic scans reaches up to 500 GB/s per storage server.
Enhanced AI Capabilities
Oracle’s Exadata X-series database machines were initially designed for analytics and OLTP workloads, where the platform continues to set the bar for performance and reliability. Over the past several years, however, AI has grown to equal prominence. The X11M and the new AI-targeted capabilities in recent Oracle Database releases recognize this expansion.
The X11M accelerates AI workloads by offloading complex vector processing to storage servers, reducing data transfers and improving efficiency. AI queries are up to 32 times faster using binary vector formats, while optimized vector distance functions reduce CPU usage and improve query performance by up to 4.6 times.
AI workloads using hierarchical navigable small-world (HNSW) indexes see performance improvements of up to 43%, while inverted file flat indexing on storage servers delivers up to 55% faster query execution. These are remarkable numbers.
OLTP and Analytics Updates
Oracle isn’t ignoring the needs of its traditional OLTP and analytics customers. The Exadata X11M supports up to 1.25 times more concurrent transactions, with up to 21 percent lower SQL 8K I/O read latency — now only 14us, achieving up to 1,000,000 write IOPS on storage servers to increase the throughput for transactional workloads.
For analytics, Exadata X11M uses faster processor cores, memory, and flash in storage servers to increase overall analytic query performance by 25%. Enhanced Exadata System Software also enables Oracle’s Smart Scan technology to scan data in both flash and RDMA memory, enabling analytic SQL throughput of up to 500 GB/s per storage server and multiple TB/s in even small configurations.
Sustainability and Efficiency
Sustainability is top-of-mind for nearly every enterprise, which Oracle addresses in the X11M with its new intelligent power-saving features. These features can cap CPU power consumption, adjust CPU usage based on workload demands, and reduce energy consumption during periods of low activity. Unused processor cores can also be turned off to conserve power, lower operational costs, and enhance sustainability.
Exadata X11M’s extreme performance levels also allow customers to consolidate workloads further, reducing their hardware footprint and operational overhead, enabling organizations to achieve even greater cost and environmental efficiencies.
Day One Cloud Integration
Oracle’s strategy for deploying Exadata has shifted over the past several years to keep up with the evolving requirements of its enterprise customers, who increasingly rely on cloud services for business-critical applications.
Oracle initially brought Exadata to its own Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI). More recently, they surprised many industry watchers by making the platform natively available on OCI within the data centers of its competitors, Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud, and Amazon Web Services.
The new X11M solution is available at launch across all of its deployment options: public cloud partners, its own Oracle Cloud Infrastructure, its Oracle Cloud@Customer as-a-Service offering, and traditional on-prem deployments.
Competitive Environment
The database and cloud infrastructure market remains highly competitive, with CSPs like AWS, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud each offering robust solutions. AWS provides services like Amazon Aurora and Amazon RDS that are designed for scalability and ease of use. Microsoft Azure’s SQL Database and Synapse Analytics integrate data processing with a focus on analytics and machine learning. Google Cloud’s BigQuery is widely recognized for its high-speed analytics and pay-per-use pricing model.
Oracle Exadata X11M combines data-optimized hardware and data-intelligent software engineered with Oracle Database to support all workload types. Unlike competitors who provide general-purpose solutions, Exadata X11M is tailored for high-demand Oracle Database workloads like AI, OLTP, and analytics processing.
For example, compared to AWS, Oracle’s solution provides deeper database-specific optimization to reduce latency and improve throughput for mission-critical applications. Compared to Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud, Exadata X11M offers superior integration of AI capabilities and database performance enhancements, making it a compelling choice for enterprises focused on complex and high-performance database operations.
Analyst’s Take
Being available on leading public cloud providers at launch lets the X11M meet customer demands where they operate. Enterprises can now leverage Oracle Database and Exadata capabilities within their chosen cloud ecosystems, optimizing costs and simplifying IT infrastructure.
The flexibility to run Exadata in multi-cloud configurations enables organizations to balance workload demands, manage data sovereignty requirements, utilize existing cloud service commitments, and access data in Oracle databases more easily from their chosen cloud applications. This powerful approach makes the Exadata X11M affordable to nearly every enterprise and Oracle Database customer.
The Oracle Exadata X11M is a significant step forward in database technology, delivering performance and scalability that meet the demands of modern enterprises. It offers customers flexibility and operational efficiency while supporting the continuing strategic shift by enterprises toward hybrid and multi-cloud architectures. For database customers seeking to optimize workloads and future-proof their operations, the Exadata X11M presents the perfect solution.
This may sound like hyperbolic praise, but once you look at what’s under the hood of the new X11M, you’ll see that Oracle has earned it. Running Oracle Database on anything other than the Exadata platform means you’re not getting the optimal business results for your organization. Your business-critical AI, OLTP, and analytics applications deserve better. After all, Oracle just delivered the fastest database machine ever made — again.
Disclosure: Steve McDowell is an industry analyst, and NAND Research is an industry analyst firm, that engages in, or has engaged in, research, analysis and advisory services with many technology companies; the author has provided paid services to every company named in this article in the past and may again in the future. Oracle provided technical fact-checking for this article. Mr. McDowell does not hold any equity positions with any company mentioned.
Originally Written by: Steve McDowell
