Go Big and Go Fast
New Oracle engineered systems deliver big data
and high-speed visual analytics.
According to Gartner, big data, next- generation analytics, and in-memory
computing are three of the top strategic
technologies for 2012. To help enterprises
stay ahead of the curve, Oracle introduced
two new systems at Oracle Open World
2011 that focus strategic technologies on
some of today’s most daunting information
processing challenges. The first product,
Oracle Big Data Appliance, is built to
acquire, organize, and load large volumes
of unstructured data; the second, Oracle
Exalytics In-Memory Machine, uses
in-memory database software and an
optimized business intelligence platform to
provide extremely fast visual data analytics.
ORACLE BIG DATA APPLIANCE
Andy Mendelsohn, senior vice president
of database server technologies at Oracle,
introduced Oracle Big Data Appliance during
his Oracle Open World general session on big
data. Mendelsohn began his presentation by
describing three characteristics of big data:
massive volumes, high velocity or frequency,
and datasources that are varied and often
unstructured (such as e-mail, sensor data,
and smart meter readings).
Oracle Big Data Appliance is engineered to
address those characteristics: it acquires
unstructured data,
organizes and
filters it to discover
the most-valuable
nuggets of information, and loads the
result into a data
warehouse for analysis and decision-making. Its hardware
is a robust rack of
18 Sun Fire X4270
M2 servers totaling
216 processor cores, 864 GB of memory, and
432 TB of storage. InfiniBand interconnects
are used to integrate these components
and connect Oracle Big Data Appliance with
Oracle Exadata Database Machine and Oracle
Exalytics In-Memory Machine.
The software included with—and tuned
for—Oracle Big Data Appliance includes an
open source distribution of Apache Hadoop,
for handling data-intensive applications;
Oracle NoSQL Database, Enterprise Edition,
a scalable key-value database; Oracle’s data
integrator application adapter for Hadoop,
which simplifies data integration from
Hadoop; and Oracle Loader for Hadoop,
which provides an easy way to load data from
a Hadoop cluster into Oracle Database or
Oracle Exadata Database Machine.
With these hardware and software components, engineered to work together, Oracle
Big Data Appliance provides a complete solution for handling big data’s volume, velocity,
and variety, and helps companies derive
value from that data, Mendelsohn said.
“Oracle is the first vendor to offer customers
a complete and integrated set of products
to address critical big data requirements,
unlock efficiencies, simplify management,
and create data insights that maximize business value,” he explained.
ORACLE EXALYTICS IN-MEMORY MACHINE
In his opening keynote at Oracle Open World,
CEO Larry Ellison introduced Oracle Exalytics
In-Memory Machine, the industry’s first engi-
neered system for analytics. Oracle Exalytics
combines Oracle’s Sun hardware; an opti-
mized version of Oracle Business Intelligence
foundation with enhanced data visualization
and performance capabilities; and a version
of Oracle Times Ten In-Memory Database
optimized to run business analytics. Oracle
Exalytics can access data from any Oracle
or non-Oracle relational, online analytical
processing, or unstructured data- source and provide visual analytics at
the speed of thought. “There’s nothing faster
than this thing,” Ellison said.
Fred Sandsmark is a regular contributor to
Oracle Magazine.
NEXT STEPS
LEARN more about
Oracle Big Data Appliance
bit.ly/omagbigdata
Oracle Exalytics In-Memory Machine
bit.ly/omagexalytics
SEE Gartner’s list of strategic technologies
for 2012
bit.ly/omaggartner
JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2012 ORACLE.COM/ORACLEMAGAZINE
