Oracle Unveils Big Data Appliance

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Oracle has announced an updated version of its big data appliance called the X3-2. It is also releasing some new data center connectors to go with the appliance.

InformationWeek’s Doug Henschen reported, “Oracle on Monday announced second-generation releases of its NoSQL database and big data appliance, delivering the kind of user-driven, short-list upgrades that are typical when graduating from a 1.0 release. The high points of Oracle NoSQL Database Release 2.0 include auto-rebalancing, manageability and application programming interface (API) upgrades that address practical deployment and administrative concerns. The auto-rebalancing feature dynamically manages compute and storage capacity to maintain service levels even as processing demands fluctuate as the scale and throughput of data and the number of users varies. A new Web-based management console gives administrators access to all the tools and controls they need to deploy and monitor the database, according to Oracle.”

Chris Preimesberger from eWeek added, “Oracle, not one to be left behind in any data center trend, took a couple of steps forward Dec. 17 as a big data hardware and software supplier by unveiling a new Cloudera-powered big data appliance and some new data center connectors to go with it. Oracle Big Data Appliance X3-2 is the company’s latest engineered-together—read that “proprietary”—system of hardware and software that has been upgraded to include Intel’s newest processors and the latest release of Cloudera, which includes both Apache Hadoop and Cloudera Manager. It also includes a new Oracle Enterprise Manager plug-in to connect and orchestrate the appliance with servers in the base enterprise system.”

Pedro Hernandez from EnterpriseAppsToday noted, “On the hardware front, the Oracle Big Data Appliance portfolio is getting a big performance boost, beginning with the availability of Intel’s latest server processors. The new systems feature 8-core Intel Xeon E5-2600 chips, resulting in 33 percent more processing power (36 processors, 288 CPU cores) than its predecessor in an 18 compute and storage server configuration with 648 TB storage. Oracle also boasts that customers can expect 33 percent more memory per node with 1.1 TB of main memory and a smaller energy bill to boot. Thanks to more energy efficient internals, the system slashes power and cooling requirements by up to 30 percent.”

The Register’s Timothy Prickett Morgan observed, “Database giant Oracle is trying to keep the myriad NoSQL and alternative data stores and big data munchers like Hadoop at bay by commercializing and integrating a bunch of proprietary and open source software onto preconfigured x86-based servers that it sells in appliance fashion. Oracle has not talked about how well or poorly these machines are selling, but the company has upgraded the underlying iron in the machines and the NoSQL database that is at the heart of the software stack – and that’s a good indication that Oracle thinks the Big Data Appliance is worth continued investment.”