We’re thrilled to have wrapped up Oracle Cloud World 2024, where we had the pleasure of connecting with Oracle Exadata’s valued customers and prospects. The event provided a fantastic platform to explore the latest advancements in Exadata core technologies, from foundational concepts to cutting-edge innovations unveiled in the past 12 months. Keep in mind that the Exadata core technologies support our on-premises product offering, as well as the OCI public cloud, Cloud at Customer, and now the multi-cloud environments.
We’re excited to share the insights and takeaways from the event and look forward to continuing the conversation with our community. The event featured the following Exadata core technologies sessions and a hands-on lab. See below a summary and click the title/link to access the presentations so you can explore them further:
Exadata Architecture and Internals Deep Dive [LRN3004]
This foundational presentation on Oracle Exadata provides a comprehensive overview of the technology’s unique capabilities and benefits, helping customers understand why Exadata stands out as the industry leader. About 65% of attendees did not have Exadata, and it is always rewarding to see customers understand for the first time how Exadata could help them unlock the full potential of their data.
Exadata Exascale Architecture and Deep Dive [LRN2955]
Exadata Exascale, the world’s only intelligent data architecture for the cloud, is a revolutionary technology leap that combines the best of Exadata and the best of the cloud. Exascale Storage includes database-aware, space-efficient clones that can be created in seconds, with active parents (actively being used and changed) and clones of clones using simple database commands. Exascale also enables the deployment of large numbers of Virtual Machines with practically unlimited VM storage. It was exciting to see customers already thinking and planning for this next-generation, hyper-elastic, multi-tenant software architecture which will let them handle mission-critical analytics, AI vector, JSON, and mixed Oracle Database workloads.
Extreme Performance and Availability in PayPal’s Hybrid Database Cloud [LRN3304]
PayPal is one of the largest Exadata customers who rely on the extreme performance and high availability that Exadata delivers. Existing customers and new prospects always want to hear from customers who are using the technology, and this was an exceptional session to hear directly from PayPal. With over 150 Exadata racks, 300 clusters, 2000+ Database Servers, 3000+ Exadata Storage Servers, databases exceeding 1 million SQL executions per second, and serving over 1 trillion service calls per day, the PayPal environment is truly massive. PayPal uses Oracle technology and Maximum Availability Architecture (MAA) best practices to deliver 99.997% availability for System of Record (SOR) databases, and 99.999% availability for read-only databases.
AI Smart Scan – Vector Search Innovations on Exadata [LRN3343]
At Cloud World 2024, AI-related sessions were in demand, and this session was no exception. We started with concepts of Exadata Smart Scans and how they differ from traditional scans. We discussed how unstructured objects can be represented as vectors and searched by semantic similarity. The session covered an introduction to converged database, vector data type, AI vector generation, storing, vector indexes (HNSW and IVF), top K algorithm using centroid and nearest neighbors, processing of Vectors with Exadata, distribution of vectors in the storage tier and results returned to the compute tier. The session also covered leveraging Exadata capabilities like Exadata RDMA Memory (XRMEM) and Flash Cache to expedite vector search in a multi-user environment. We also discussed use cases of AI Vectors and similarity search in real-world scenarios.
Maximum Availability Architecture Internals for Exadata On-Premises and Cloud [LRN3328]
Exadata systems are mainly deployed in mission-critical environments where high availability is paramount. As a result, our Maximum Availability Architecture (MAA) session for delivering high availability with Exadata was in high demand. In this session we also showcased the latest MAA enhancements in Exadata System Software 24ai, which further improve availability. Customers were particularly enthusiastic about Live Update, which enables them to address security vulnerabilities while minimizing downtime and reboots. Observability features that discussed exaCHK and the Exadata Storage Cache Statistics utility (ecstat) were also of interest to our audience.
Hands-on for High Performance with Exadata Exascale and Exadata 24.1 [HOL2962]
We introduced customers to Exadata features and capabilities through the hands-on lab, where customers can log in to an Exadata environment and learn about its core capabilities using Oracle LiveLabs. These capabilities span all Exadata deployment models, including on-premises, Cloud@Customer, OCI, and multi-cloud. The practice session covered labs on the usage of flash cache (queries without flash cache and with flash cache), effects of HCC, and Storage indexes. We also introduced Exadata Exascale exercises where customers were able to create full and thin provisioned pluggable databases. The lab also compared space usage of full clones and thin provisioned pluggable databases.
Go to Oracle LiveLabs – Oracle Exadata Platform Performance Features to try the features.
As we wrap up our coverage of Oracle Cloud World 2024, we’re already looking forward to next year’s event, where we’ll have the opportunity to share even more exciting updates and insights with our community. Until then, we hope you’ll continue to engage with us and stay up to date on the latest Exadata developments; visit the Exadata blogs page and follow us on LinkedIn to get the latest Exadata news.
See you at Oracle Cloud World 2025!