ECPUs are the standard billing metric for Autonomous Database. Introduced in early 2023, an ECPU is based on the number of cores per hour elastically allocated from a pool of compute and storage servers. ECPUs replace the prior OCPU metric. At their introduction, ECPUs provide similar or better price-performance than OCPUs for a given Autonomous Database workload. Over time, ECPUs will continue delivering continuous improvements in price performance.
So what’s the big thing here, then?
Well, it’s good that we’re talking about this. The big thing is that with ECPUs, the entry-level configurations for development and testing are becoming significantly cheaper than with the old OCPU and terabyte-based pricing model. The rough, conservative price-based sizing suggested a 1 OCPU system has roughly the same price as a 4 ECPU system. The entry-level price point is significantly reduced since you can now provision an environment with as little as 2 ECPUs and 20GB of storage.
Here is the minimum configuration for an Autonomous JSON Database using the OCPU model:
And here’s a small, sample development environment that requires roughly 100GB and that should be recoverable for one day
As you can see, the new ECPU model will reduce the monthly price for this development envrionment from $358.41 to $134.08, an approximately 60% price reduction. And you get everything you’re used to and expect from a functional perspective: Oracle’s fully managed Cloud Service specialized for developing NoSQL-style applications, including the Oracle Database API for MongoDB.
Needless to say, you will get a different performance from a 2 ECPU development environment than from a 1 OCPU environment if you want to put these environments to the limit, but that’s not the purpose of a development environment. In many such environments, you will not experience a measurable impact. If you want to see how much money you can save here, go to the Oracle Cloud Cost Estimator yourself and check out your own personal situation.
Already have Autonomous JSON Database development environments using the OCPU model? No worries, you can upgrade them to adopt the new ECPU model very easily, too. Actually, with the click of one button. Almost literally. See for yourself.
That’s about it folks. If you want to know more about Oracle’s ECPU model, please consult the Autonomous Database FAQ or the documentation. Aaah, and the same is true for APEX development, which adopted the ECPU billing model today as well. Almost forgot to mention this …
Happy developing!