[Editor Dec. 6, 2010 Update:  At the time this article was originally written in January, 2009, the only product in this server class was the HP Oracle Database Machine.  As of December, 2010, Oracle now offers a second-generation server: the Oracle Exadata Database Machine X2-8.  All statements about E-Business Suite compatibility made below apply equally to both hardware generations.]

Picture of HP Oracle Exadata Storage Server

Like every sysadmin I know, I yearn for bigger, beefier servers for my E-Business Suite environments.  I’ve been dreaming about the new HP Oracle Database Machine
since its unveiling at OpenWorld 2008. 

In case you missed that announcement, this is a server with mainframe-class street cred: up to 14 GB/second in raw I/O bandwidth, which translates to up to 50 GB/second when handling compressed data.  Storage scales up to petabytes when combined
with the HP Oracle Exadata Storage Server.  This machine is optimized for handling huge Oracle databases, so it’s inevitable that EBS customers with large databases have
shown interest in this hardware. 

The Database Machine runs Oracle Database 11gR1 11.1.0.7 and Real Application Clusters on Oracle Enterprise Linux 5.1.  We’ve just certified Oracle
E-Business Suite Release 11i with the 11gR1 11.1.0.7 database release, so it’s now possible to run Apps 11i on this hardware. 

Coming Up:  Oracle E-Business Suite Release 12

Once we certify Oracle E-Business Suite Release 12 on the 11g 11.1.0.7 Database, you’ll be able to run Apps R12 on this server, too.   As usual, I don’t have specifics that I can publish about that particular certification, but you’re welcome to monitor or
subscribe to this blog for updates, which I’ll post as soon as soon as they’re available.  

If you’ve been lucky enough to get your hands on this hardware for some E-Business Suite benchmarking, our Applications Performance and Applications Platforms groups would love to hear from you.

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