Exadata - The Gift the Keeps on Taking

If your work is in the Oracle environment you have no doubt heard about the Oracle Exadata and the whole EXA-proliferation. It seems there is a Exa for everything, Exalogic for the cloud, Exalytics for the BI folks, Exadata for every database ever conceived. Oracle has certainly put those Sun engineers they bought to use over the last few years. Since I don’t usually deal with the cloud (yet) and BI isn’t really my game let’s discuss the Exadata database machines.

Essentially they come in two flavors, the Exadata X2-2 series in quarter, half and full rack configurations and the Exadata X2-8 which comes as a full rack only.Let’s take a look at the published prices for these various configurations. Now, bear in mind, Oracle will no doubt heavily discount license costs to get you on the hook I can’t say what any actual prices will end up, after all, one can no more think like an Oracle salesman than one can a used car salesman. Chart 1 shows the various configurations and costs.

Chart 1: Oracle Exadata Configurations

Of course the important numbers are towards the right where you see total hardware cost, total software cost and total support cost. The total support cost is for each year after the first year.

Chart 2: Oracle Hardware and Software Costs

Now the costs shown in Chart 2 come from the most current Oracle price lists available on the Web, just do a google search for “Oracle Engineered Systems Price List” and “Oracle Software Price List” and you can do the math like I did. Don’t forget to apply the 0.5 multicore discount!

Several years ago when I was not as wise as I am now, I purchased a timeshare. It seemed a good idea at the time, the salesman showed how the cost was eliminated by all the savings I would have over the years going on vacations to their wonderful resorts. Of course he didn’t say how often those wonderful resorts would not be available and brushed little things like maintenance fees under the rug, so to speak. It ended up for each month I would pay over $400 in maintenance fees and these could go up several percent a year, forever. Needless to say I am divesting myself of that timeshare.

Why am I bringing this up? This is identical to the maintenance and upgrade fees you will be paying with the various Exadata setups.



Chart 3: Exadata Support Costs

Unless you really need those 128 CPUs in the X2-8 or the total number of Exadata Cells you need to purchase with the various configurations why pay a yearly fee forever for capacity you aren’t using? With the Oracle suggested configurations you will end up paying for 100% of the disks when you can only utilize about 33% or less of their capacity. Talk about unavailability! So we have seen the short term costs but what about down the road? One ROI is the three year cost, Chart 4 shows the projected 3 year costs for the various Exadata platforms. Again, these are with published, full price numbers, if your are smart you will never pay these amounts.

Chart 4: 3 Year Costs Now, if you are consolidating dozens or hundreds of databases, have a huge data warehouse with a simple design and lots of duplicate row entries, or just have a huge pot of money to spend, the Exadata platform may be the best fit. But for most of us the Exadata is too expensive now, and too expensive in future costs. Exadata, the gift that keeps on taking.