2024 was a landmark year for Oracle Database services in the cloud. We expanded our multicloud initiatives with the launch of Oracle Database@Google Cloud, followed by the exciting introduction of Oracle Database@AWS. We also unveiled Exadata Exascale, introducing a revolutionary intelligent data architecture. Lastly, we launched Oracle Database 23ai, featuring native Vector search, enhancing your business data with AI-driven similarity searches. On top of these Oracle Database benefits, Autonomous Database went globally distributed thanks to the launch of Globally Distributed Autonomous Database a game-changing service that redefines how enterprises manage and process distributed data to achieve the highest possible levels of scalability and availability.
As we approach the end of 2024, it's a great time to reflect on seven years of innovation since the introduction of Autonomous Database at Oracle and see how our service had an impact on our customers' needs. This year has seen remarkable developments across Autonomous Database on Dedicated Exadata Infrastructure and Cloud@Customer (ADB-D/ADB-C@C). Significant enhancements in Security, High Availability and Disaster Recovery, Connectivity, Observability, and Developer Tools were delivered, marking another milestone in our journey. Let's briefly recap these key innovations as we prepare for an even more groundbreaking 2025, with ADB expanding across multiple cloud providers and continuing to deliver more powerful tools for our customers.
Security Enhancements
- Bring Your Own Keys (BYOK) on Oracle Public Cloud deployments: Customers can now import their own encryption keys into the Vault service, enhancing data sovereignty and security (Customer-managed keys in Oracle Key Vault (OKV) also available)
- Ability to create and manage Key Stores: You can easily create and manage Key Stores directly through the Oracle Cloud Infrastructure console. This new functionality allows for seamless integration of your on-premises Oracle Key Vault with the cloud, giving you full control to create and oversee your master keys.
- Zero Trust Packet Routing (ZPR) for ADB-D: We introduced intent-based security policies to protect sensitive data from unauthorized access, further enhancing our commitment to secure database environments.
- Rolling rotation of database SSL certificates: This update ensures that your existing database SSL certificate remains valid for two weeks after a new certificate rotation, providing a smoother transition without disrupting your database connections.
- Wallet-less connections: You can link your database applications or tools directly without the need for a wallet. This walletless connection, supported by TLS (Transport Layer Security), ensures robust security for both authentication and encryption. The security is seamlessly enforced through a security certificate trusted by your client's operating system.
High Availability and Disaster Recovery Capabilities
- Globally Distributed Autonomous Database: We launched a fully automated distributed cloud database that helps customers meet data residency requirements, provide survivability for business-critical applications, and deliver cloud-scale database performance (while providing data sovereignty features).
- OCI Full Stack Disaster Recovery (FSDR): The support of Full Stack Disaster Recovery now allows entire application stacks to be quickly recovered, minimizing downtime and ensuring continuity.
- Cross Tenancy Autonomous Data Guard: We added the ability to create an ADB-D standby database in a different tenancy, enhancing disaster recovery capabilities across regional or global deployments.
- Enable Autonomous Data Guard and add a standby database in existing containers: This powerful capability allows you to add a standby Autonomous Container Database (ACD) to your existing ACDs, ensuring continuous operation and data protection. Autonomous Data Guard is your safeguard against unplanned downtime and data loss, automatically handling failovers to the standby database without user intervention.
- Cross tenancy cloning support: Now, you can clone an Autonomous Database - Dedicated instance or its backup from one tenancy to another, whether within the same region or across different regions. This feature supports both full and metadata cloning, giving you greater flexibility in managing your database environments.
Enhanced Connectivity
Observability Features
- Dynamic Performance Views for ACD: New performance views have been introduced to monitor real-time and historical performance metrics at the Autonomous Container Database (ACD) level, helping optimize database management and operational efficiency. In the meantime we keep working ton expanding observability features with tools like Enterprise Manager and services like the OCI Monitoring Service.
- Observability platform in Kubernetes via Oracle Database Operator (OraOperator): The integration of all ADB flavors with OraOperator is not only ensuring seamless management of database lifecycle within Kubernetes ecosystems, enhancing automation, and reducing manual overhead, but is also now adding automatic deployment of a Grafana based observability platform (since OraOperator v.1.1.0).
Artificial Intelligence
- 23ai Database Support: The launch of the 23ai database variant has brought cutting-edge AI capabilities directly into the ADB-D, particularly enhancing AI-driven development.
- AI Vector Search in Oracle Database 23ai: AI Vector Search is a groundbreaking feature that simplifies and accelerates app development by enabling complex searches across multiple data types within a single database.
- Select AI support: Enables using LLMs to query the database with seamless integration with OCI Generative AI, allowing for the generation of SQL from natural language prompts. This support enhances the ability of businesses to interact with their databases more intuitively and efficiently.
Developer Tools and Services
- Free developer database instances: This exciting opportunity allows developers to freely access Autonomous Database for Developers instances to build, test, and innovate new applications. These instances provide a sandbox environment where you can experiment with the latest Autonomous Database – Dedicated features at no cost. While these instances are equipped with limited resources and are not intended for large-scale testing or production, they are perfect for development and proof-of-concept work. If your projects grow or you require more robust capabilities, you can seamlessly upgrade your resources by transitioning your developer database into a fully-fledged Autonomous Database.
- Connect to ADB using JDBC with or without a build tool: We've made it easier for you to connect your Java applications to the Oracle Autonomous Database, offering flexibility and security with our Oracle JDBC driver. Whether you prefer one-way TLS or require the enhanced security of mutual TLS (mTLS), we've got you covered. Use popular IDEs like Eclipse or IntelliJ, leveraging Maven or Gradle for seamless integration. For those who prefer a straightforward approach, manual connections without a build tool are also supported.
Billing
- Elastic Pools support: Elastic Pools allow you to consolidate multiple Autonomous Database instances, seamlessly managing their compute resources in a more cost-effective manner. Whether you're managing fluctuating workloads or looking to streamline your database infrastructure, Elastic Pools provide the flexibility and scalability your business needs.
Expanding Oracle ADB-D Across Multiple Cloud Platforms
As we look to the future, we’ll keep expanding the reach and capabilities of Autonomous Database Dedicated (ADB-D) across multiple cloud platforms. Our journey into multi-cloud environments is set to solidify ADB-D's presence within the ecosystems of leading cloud providers like Azure, Google Cloud, and AWS. This expansion is particularly beneficial for organizations whose information security policies limit them to specific cloud providers. With ADB-D available across most major cloud providers, these barriers are effectively removed, offering organizations unparalleled flexibility and strategic advantage.
The power of multi-cloud allows businesses to leverage the distinct strengths of various cloud providers under a single cohesive Oracle framework. This strategy not only prevents vendor lock-in but also enhances disaster recovery capabilities and compliance with regional regulations by utilizing multiple cloud infrastructures.
In 2025 and beyond, Oracle plans to intensify integration efforts, ensuring that ADB-D seamlessly interacts with other cloud services. This will facilitate a more unified and streamlined user experience, where customers can enjoy the robust capabilities of Oracle's database services while taking full advantage of the unique offerings of each cloud provider. This multi-cloud approach is not just about enhancing Oracle's technological ecosystem; it’s about empowering our customers to innovate, optimize, and scale in ways that best suit their individual needs.
Stay tuned for more updates as we continue to innovate and push the boundaries of what's possible in cloud database management across multiple platforms. Oh, and if you’re interested in the Exadata Database Service, you might also want to check the “2024 Year in Review – Exadata Database Service and Base Database Service Announcements You Might Have Missed” blog post.
Happy Holidays!!!
German Viscuso
Director of Community - Autonomous Database / Dedicated
I have experience fostering developer communities at scale. I have a software development background and previous experience with database systems (mostly OODBs and NoSQL). I'm a techie and believe that rather sooner than later we'll be surpassed by AI. You can follow me via Twitter: @germanviscuso
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