The News: Oracle introduced the latest generation of the Oracle Exadata platforms, the X10M, delivering performance and availability advances for all Oracle Database workloads. Starting at the same price as the previous generation, these platforms support higher levels of database consolidation with more capacity and are designed to deliver greater value than previous generations. Read the full Press Release from Oracle here.
Oracle and AMD Go All Out in Powering New Competitive Advantages with Exadata X10M Debut
Analyst Take: Oracle debuts the Exadata X10M using the latest processors, networking, and storage technologies as well as numerous optimizations to the system hardware, Exadata system software, and Oracle Database software to deliver performance breakthroughs and enhanced value for online transaction processing (OLTP), analytics, machine learning (ML), and mixed workloads.
Exadata’s scale-out architecture, fused with the scale-up capabilities delivered by fourth-generation AMD EPYC processors that power Exadata X10M, are targeted at enabling organizations to meet their intricate data requirements throughout public cloud, hybrid cloud, or on-premises environments.
Exadata X10M platforms include the Exadata Database Machine X10M and the Exadata Cloud@Customer X10M. Notably, Exadata Cloud@Customer uses the same architecture, software, and infrastructure as the Exadata Database Machine to enable customers to run Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI), automated Oracle Exadata Database Service, and fully managed Oracle Autonomous Database in their data centers to gain OCI automation and economics benefits.
By offering an Exadata X10M quarter rack at the equivalent price as an Exadata X9M, along with a significant increase in consolidation capabilities and OLTP and analytics performance improvement, I see Oracle directly addressing fast-growing enterprise demand for greater value in their database investments, including building out AI/ML capabilities. As a result, the new Exadata X10M enhancements are primed to drive reduced infrastructure spending, streamline database administration, and reduce energy consumption in comparison to Exadata X9M platforms.
Oracle Once Again Delivers Competitive Advantages with Exadata X10M
In my view, Oracle has consistently excelled at demonstrating price performance and scalability competitive advantages with its database portfolio launches and updates. The Exadata X10M unveiling is no exception.
Across key selection criteria I see organizations giving top priority, such as analytics performance, Oracle is demonstrating a compelling competitive edge. Specifically, for on-premises throughput, Oracle Exadata X10M registers 1020 GB/second, providing 45x more throughput than Pure Storage FlashArray//XL at 22 GB/second and 5x more throughput than Dell Power Max 8500 at 175 GB/second. For cloud throughput, Oracle Exadata Database Service X10M delivers 630 GB/second, providing 63x more throughput than AWS RDS at 10 GB/second and 30x more throughput than Azure SQL at 21 GB/second.
The same competitive advantages are sharply displayed in delivering higher performance and lower latency read input/output operations per second (IOPS). Oracle Exadata X10M generates 25.2 million of read IOPS per rack, providing 33x more IOPS than Pure Storage FlashArray//XL at only 0.76 million of read IOPS per rack and Dell Power Max 8500 at 7.5 million of read IOPS per rack.
Likewise, Oracle X10M read latency is only 17 microseconds, providing 8.8x lower latency than Pure Storage FlashArray//XL at 150 microseconds and 3.5x lower latency than Dell Power Max 8500 at 60 microseconds. Notably, on a single system, per rack basis, Exadata X10M can scale up to 14 racks, whereas Dell PowerMax scales up to only two racks.
Taken together, I find that the Oracle X10M offering is clearly delivering competitive advantages across key criteria that IT decision makers will most likely value and prioritize.
Oracle Exadata 10XM Provides Dramatic Improvements over Exadata X9M
Through the AMD EPYC processors, Oracle Exadata X10M gains a wide range of price performance improvements in relation to X9M in key areas such as threefold higher transaction throughput and up to 3.6x faster analytics queries on database servers.
Exadata X10M database servers each provide threefold the number of cores of Exadata X9M database servers as well as newly-attained 1 TB/second of memory bandwidth. Now with each database server core in Exadata X10M running OLTP workloads faster than their equivalents in the prior X9M generation, customers can attain up to threefold the total OLTP throughput.
With X10M, High Capacity storage servers can now hold 22% more data, while all-flash Extreme Storage Servers now bring 2.4X the capacity of previous systems. As such, database servers support 50% higher memory capacity enabling more databases and larger memory-intensive workloads to run on the equivalent X9M system.
Moreover, Exadata X10M storage servers each deliver 2.8 million 8K read I/Os per second, a sizable 21% increase over X9M. Using DDR5 DRAM in intelligent storage servers, Exadata RDMA Memory (XRMEM) read latency drops from 19 microseconds to 17 microseconds with Exadata X10M. Of key importance, the Exadata X10M performance metrics are end-to-end database workload numbers, not low-level I/O metrics using small-sized test workloads that can limit getting the full picture on performance capabilities.
Moreover, analytics workloads gain a considerable performance boost as Exadata X10M boosts the number of processing cores in each storage server to 64, enabling greater parallelism for analytics queries. Smart Scan throughput offloads SQL processing to the Exadata Intelligent storage servers, topping the 1 TB/second threshold in a single rack.
I see database consolidation on Exadata decreasing the overhead and complexity of running more and huger databases. The massive increase in the number of cores and memory in Exadata database servers, flash & hard drive capacity, and SQL processing cores in Exadata storage servers enables customers to run more Oracle databases on less Exadata Infrastructure at breakthrough capabilities. Plus, higher consolidation densities can directly reduce capital expenditures (CapEx) and oversight as well as improve energy efficiency that enable more efficient operation of the Oracle Database fleet and advancing the fulfillment of organization-wide sustainability objectives.
Further strengthening the X10M launch is Oracle’s prior launch of Exadata System Software in March 2023. In addition to supporting X10M hardware, 23.1 adds several features to Exadata, including an operating system upgrade from Oracle Linux 7 and UEK 5 to Oracle Linux 8 and UEK 6. Now Exadata Database Machin supports new features that capitalize on using unique algorithms that I anticipate can robustly improve performance, availability, and scalability for essential workloads such as AI/ML, OLTP, analytics, IoT, blockchain, and financial systems.
Key Takeaways: Oracle X10M Debut
Overall, my assessment is that Exadata X10M redefines what a cloud database platform should truly deliver. Trying to run Oracle Database on any other platform than Exadata X10M is basically equivalent to running the software in degraded mode on un-optimized, subpar infrastructure—which can produce inferior business results. Plus, organizations can run Autonomous Database on Exadata Cloud@Customer X10M, which brings levels of ML and AI-powered automation and innovation that simply are not available from other cloud database providers. Exadata X10M represents a material leap forward for Oracle and for Oracle Database customers.
Disclosure: The Futurum Group is a research and advisory firm that engages or has engaged in research, analysis, and advisory services with many technology companies, including those mentioned in this article. The author does not hold any equity positions with any company mentioned in this article.
Analysis and opinions expressed herein are specific to the analyst individually and data and other information that might have been provided for validation, not those of The Futurum Group as a whole.
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Author Information
Ron is an experienced, customer-focused research expert and analyst, with over 20 years of experience in the digital and IT transformation markets, working with businesses to drive consistent revenue and sales growth.
Ron holds a Master of Arts in Public Policy from University of Nevada — Las Vegas and a Bachelor of Arts in political science/government from William and Mary.
