Exalytics - Primer

“For the first time in financial history, machines can execute trades far faster than humans can intervene. That gap is set to widen.” 

said Andrew Haldane, a regulatory official with the Bank of England. This was in the context of high frequency trading and the need for high-speed networks connecting the financial districts. This comment gives an idea of the increasing use of technology in delivering near speed-of-thought experience(s).

And the trend is similar in the Analytics/Business Intelligence world too, wherein customers/users expect almost zero-to-negligible latencies. The world wherein the user waits after he keys in a set of parameters and waits for the report, no longer exists or is fastly diminishing.

So what do the customers expect of a business-intelligence/analytics application? Three things:

1. Extreme performance
2. Accurate results
3. Combination of the #1 and #2 to support critical decisions

Extreme workloads are something that many of our customers see on a day-to-day basis and this needs an equally powerful hardware+software combo. For example, one of our customers, Paypal, who has some of the most technically sophisticated requirements with very demanding workloads moved to Exadata, and saw the significant improvements in their flows, and all this migration happened in just a matter of 60 days. Also, downtimes are fastly becoming a things of the past - 99.9% SLA means that the application would be still be down for 'sometime' during the year. Amazon's and Google App Engine's recent outages are standing examples of outages even when apps are deployed on the cloud; you are not 'all-time-up' even if your applications are spread across multiple-availability-zones.

But lets not digress and try to understand what does Exalytics bring to the table.

At first i will try to quickly explain what is NOT Exalytics, as our competitors seem to conjure up extremely false notions about this simple (yet powerful) Engineered System solution concentrated at the Analytics scene.

Exalytics:
    - is NOT RDBMS
    - is NOT hardware *alone*
    - is NOT just some in-memory cache
    - is NOT rocket science(for that matter, only rocket science is rocket science)
    - is NOT many other things that has been falsely stated

So what IS Exalytics then? As always, Oracle has published a nice introduction to this product and i would recommend that you read it first, as i would not like to reproduce the content in here. The doc explains clearly the software, hardware, user-experiences, etc and gives an extremely simple and understandable introduction to Exalytics.

But, i will also try to quickly summarize the Exalytics offering. As we have seen, extreme workloads require equally powerful systems to process them and also monitoring mechanisms to take care of the entire setup. The Exalytics product-line is essentially:

• industry-standard hardware
• market-leading business intelligence software and 
• in-memory database technology (just to add, this is heuristic adaptive in-memory caching : what data is best stored in-memory for overall best performance, and adapts to changing workloads)

So, as a customer(i.e, IT guy), you might ask, 'what does this give me except for the user-experiences'? Well, this is what it offers:

• powerful compute 
• abundant memory
• fast networking
• kickass software

And as we know compute, memory, networking and the applications are the 4 pillars of the engineered systems arena; and Oracle is offering the best of the breed technology in here. Your Analytics-IT requirements are now easily taken care of by Exalytics (which runs OBIEE) while you concentrate on your actual niche - i.e, 'your business'. 

And all this is being offered by ONE vendor(namely Oracle), so that you don't have to run from pillar-to-post for any support or escalations. Understanding this is important (as we had seen in one of the earlier post on TCO), as you might very well be inclined to create your own server-class system either by purchasing components from different vendors and assembling them or running them on component PCs.

And the best part about all this is, you don't need to restructure or redesign or learn a new language to migrate your applications to Exalytics.

• If are an existing customer of OBIEE, then you can move the software seamlessly onto the Exalytics hardware and get-up-&-running in no time. Do not believe us? Check out this video by one of our customers who has moved to Exalytics in a matter of days, hence proving our claim that 'Exalytics requires no application redesign'.

• If you are not an existing customer of OBIEE, then i would recommend that you should take a peek at the Exalytics+OBIEE stack and actually do a TCO comparison of your existing system with Exalytics. OBIEE has been proven as an extremely powerful and successful BI product providing fast, interactive and on-target analytics. And with Endeca also being certified on Exalytics, now it becomes all the more easy to work on unstructured data. Check out why one of our customers chose Exalytics in the following video.
  
  

I will limit this post here, and let you explore other resources, customer stories and demos at http://www.oracle.com/exalytics

Oracle’s Engineered Systems - Features (Part 2)

In the earlier post, we looked at two of the most important features or motivation to move to Oracle's Engineered Systems and the value proposition offered. We saw how Lowered TCO and Manageability actually enhance the product offering and also help our customers in lowering their costs and reduce the overall administrative pain.

Oracle Engineered Systems, as we will see is not only about Extreme Performance. Though the pitch is "Extreme Performance at Best Cost", there are numerous other features which make it a compelling business solution.

Simplifying IT
By offering the Software in tune with the Hardware, and making it all manageable with an integrated Enterprise Management software, things become substantially easier for the IT teams. Installation, upgrades , patching and maintenance become extremely easily. A side effect of this simplification is also the fact that there is no new skill to be acquired and hence no training costs are involved in moving onto the Exa series. The existing solutions work as-is without any changes to the code, as we saw earlier - the only difference being the blazing fast performance. This is significantly better when compared to some other products which require you to learn a complete new framework and develop solutions for that range of products *alone*.

 

Easier Patching, Support and Maintenance

Exalogic supports Single File patches -  i.e, a single file which will take care of patching right from firmware to the operating system. The philosophy of 'Apply-and-Go' suits perfectly and reduces the downtime and the risks involved. Patching becomes extremely simplified and can be done during critical times of the year - i.e, MEC / QEC / YEC (month / quarter / year end closure) refresh schedules. Also, Platinum Support is offered to Engineered Systems which makes it even easier to work with Oracle and get the problem rectified.

Open Standards and Interfaces 

Oracle's Applications, Middleware, Operating System are all based on established Open Standards and Interfaces. Why is this important? Well, this is what Don Deutsch, Vice President for Standards, Strategy, and Architecture at Oracle had to say on this topic:  

“Open standards protect customer investments by reducing vendor lock-in. Building enterprise software around standard interfaces enables customers to easily extend those systems as their businesses evolve—without major retooling.”

For example, consider Fusion Applications : Using the latest technology and incorporating the best practices gathered from Oracle's customers, Oracle Fusion Applications is a suite of 100% open standards-based business applications that provide a new standard for the way businesses innovate, work and adopt technology. Delivered as a complete suite of modular, service-enabled enterprise applications, Oracle Fusion Applications works with Oracle's Applications Unlimited portfolio to evolve business to a new level of performance. Whether it is one module, a product family, or the entire suite, Oracle provides businesses with their choice of all advancements pioneered by Oracle Fusion Applications, at a pace that matches individual business demands. 

  

Private Clouds:

For customers who want to start off the cloud initiative by starting with in-premise clouds, the Exa series offers the perfect starting point. The best of the breed software coupled with hardware offers the resilence that cloud systems need. Also, it becomes extremely easy to setup in-premise private clouds by chaining a few of the Exalogic boxes, and if database is needed, Exadata machines can be connected via the high speed Infiniband technology which is certified.

Consolidation
The Exa series allows customers to consolidate their disparate systems onto one(or few) machines. Development, Testing, Stage, UAT, and Production systems no longer need to run on different set of hardware; all can benefit the extreme performance of the engineered systems. Also, since the systems would be identical, there will be no significant change between the different environments (would be almost nil infact).

Capacity Planning 

For customers who want to start off with a minimal configuration(i.e, not all the cores) and want to pay-as-they-grow, Trusted Partitions/Sub-Processor Licensing offers the flexibility in licensing the cores.  Though for products like Exalytics, wherein it makes more sense to use entire hardware for making the maximum out of the hardware, Oracle still presents this is an option.

Fast Balanced Hardware Configuration

The Exa line of products has been extensively tested and includes the state of the art hardware. Infiniband technology offers blazing fast data transfer rates that are extremely crucial for enterprise applications that often require minimum latency.  The components are chosen specifically for every business challenge and hence the different products in the Exa series. This shows Oracle's commitment in offering extremely specific solutions and not a generic pill which would solve 'all-ailments'.

Complete Stack
Oracle's Engineered Systems are a complete package, which means that the customers do not have to depend on multiple vendors for getting system up and running. Minimal Zero Configuration or Tweaking is needed as Oracle certifies the entire stack - from hardware, firmware to the applications on it.

Value Proposition

Having expatiated on numerous(but not limited to these alone) factors, i think the 'package' is one of the best, offering the customer the full freedom to choose from the different solutions in the Exa line which would help the customer fit his business needs and concentrate more on expanding his business.

If you have read through this post and Part-1 of this 2-part series, then the following video is a quick summary of  what Oracle's Engineered Systems truly are. It explains the value proposition of Oracle's Engineered Systems with a nice analogy which is quite easy to comprehend and appreciate; and underscores the importance of how Software Engineered for Hardware is beneficial to customers helping them get-on-board quickly and also maintain them easily during the usage of the product.

As we have seen, Engineered Systems are something more than the sum of the parts, or as the Exalogic PM Michael Palmeter states in this post, it is the

result of the productization of the integration and development work that our customers have been forced to do for years. Customers shouldn't ideally be developing the infrastructure or the platform from Disk to Applications, rather they should be concentrating on their core business.

Oracle’s Engineered Systems - TCO And Manageability (Part 1)

In 2009, something revolutionary happened : Larry Ellison, CEO of Oracle Corp, after having just acquired  Sun Microsystems, coined a new term which was to create a new era in the Enterprise Hardware/Software industry. The new term was to be a harbinger of a new world of innovation that the industry had to see and experience, and also adapt and keep pace with. This was not just a term to be used in marketing jargon, but Larry ‘actually’ presented the first ‘Engineered System’ – Exadata V2– Sun hardware running Oracle Database(V1 was on HP Hardware), thereby confirming Oracle’s dedication to new arenas of innovation and continuous delivery. Exadata V1 was mainly concentrated at Data Warehousing, whereas Exadata V2 became World's Fastest Machine for OLTP with an Extreme Performance for random I/O and was Fault tolerant.

Exadata was soon followed up with ExaLogic, Exalytics, Big Data Appliance and ZFS Storage to tackle various performance and business challenges and offer customers a seamless engineered system wherein all layers , right from the Operating System to the Application running on it was developed and provided by ONE VENDOR - i.e, Oracle – this is important – offering the complete stack by ONE vendor was something unprecedented. 

There are some very important strategic reasons for a customer to choose an Engineered System(and that too choosing a vendor who offers the whole stack) and in this blog I would like to highlight two such factors, which I think are extremely important and often go unnoticed while underscoring the other equally great features.

Total Cost of Ownership

While budgeting for the IT spends - mainly for new product or technology solutions, CIOs might look at software license costs, maintenance & support costs, install and upgrade costs and numerous other variables. The so called "hidden costs" of technology acquisition generally over-weigh the initial acquisition costs. Also, the importance of Return-On-Investment(ROI) cannot be stated less, as the investment should cause lucrative results for the organization.

Each of the costs mentioned in the below schematic represents substantial amount of time or money incurred by any organization. By looking at TCO as a whole, and hence factoring in all possible expenditures during the useable and depreciable life of the product is important while evaluating a product against the competing products.

Acquisition Costs	Operating Costs	Infrastructure Costs	Change Costs	Miscellaneous Costs
Planning and Research Costs	Design & Implementation Costs	Space Utilization	Decommissioning or Disposition costs	Compute loss/productivity loss while in training or downtime
Procurement Costs	Training Costs	Power or Energy Consumed	Depreciation Costs	Downtime, failures and outages
Licenses	Administrative Costs	Administrative Costs	Replacement Costs	Quality or User Acceptance
Installation/Deployment	Annual Subscription, Support & Maintenance	Insurance	Scalability(scaling up or down or out) expenses	Depreciation expense tax savings
Inspection Costs	Compliance Costs	Security		Open Standards and Interfaces
		Logistics Costs		Time value of money
		'Green' costs		Ownership costs
		Storage Costs
		Disaster Recovery

And this where Oracle's Engineered Systems offer one of the best solutions in the market. By offering the complete stack, right from the Hardware to Operating System and then up the stack till the Applications, Oracle is the *only* technology company which presents Lowest TCO for Engineered Systems. Lets look at an actual example of what Oracle provides and what is being provided by a Company which claims to be Oracle's competitor.

	From Oracle	A company which claims to be Oracle's Competitor
Applications	Fusion	X
Middleware	Fusion Middleware Weblogic	X
Database	Oracle / MySQL / BerkeleyDB / TimesTen	X
Management	Enterprise Manager
Operating system	Oracle Enterprise Linux / Solaris
Virtualization	Oracle VM
Server	X86/SPARC
Storage	ZFS/Exadata
Development	Java et al	X

Though there might be suspicions of vendor lock-in by looking at the above schematic, it should be noted that the actual 'value' of Engineered Systems lie in the fact that the TCO is reduced and also the customer need not run from vendor-to-vendor for any product issues, support or escalations. Also, there is a higher risk of running multiple vendors in the engineered system stack, as compliance and certification issues need to be suitably addressed. If one Vendor goes out of business in the 'diverse' stack, the customer may be in a soup. Oracle addresses all these concerns by offering a simple solution for different business challenges and hides the complexity of these systems from being exposed to the customers. Since, the stack is based on Open Standards and Interfaces, it becomes even more easier for the Customer not to fall into any trap.

Also, one of the most important things to note here is, there is not much training involved or skills to be learnt to get onto the Engineered Systems arena. Lets take the example of Exalytics - Oracle's In-Memory Analytics Machine. This takes the usual OBIEE suite and runs it on a much better hardware and utilizes the in-memory capabilities of TimesTen and makes the software run like a sprinter. Customers who are running OBIEE on component hardware can easily get on-board in a matter few days(or hours!). In the case of Exalogic, the processing powers of the compute nodes can be harnessed by moving your existing applications *as-is* onto Exalogic. Private clouds can easily be implemented with these Exa machine for solving various business problems.

Manageability

Monitoring the hardware  and the software installed is one of the biggest tasks of any IT/Admin team. With hundreds or thousands of servers running different versions of software in an enterprise, the administrators face many challenges like:

• health of the software and hardware, 
• patching, 
• performance of the applications, 
• changes in the configurations files,
• provisioning , 
• role based access to the applications,
• installing and upgrading software , 
• auditing, 
• managing incidents, 
• log diagnostics etc 

Many Enterprises use different tools for monitoring different components of the stack.Operating System, Middleware and Applications generally have their own class of monitoring tools and the administrators of respective departments are responsible for these disparate tools. User's role and responsibility again have to be taken care of on these dissimilar systems and also the same needs to be propagated to the applications. These only increase the headache of the administrators. There is a need for a 'single' monitoring solution which takes care of not only these but many other administrative challenges.

Oracle Enterprise Manager is the *only* comprehensive and integrated solution which can take care of the entire software and hardware stack. All the lifecycle aspects of the software installed are taken care of pretty easily with extremely helpful navigation and workflows. The incident management and the alert system notifies the administrator suitably when there is any hiccup in the system. Patching numerous servers in one-go or provisioning new systems becomes extremely easy with Enterprise Manager. The extremely rich feature set offered by Enterprise Manager coupled with equally great customization abilities offers one of of the best integrated management solution in the market now (personally, i do not know of any competitor's product which can even claim to be on par with the features offered by Oracle's Enterprise Manager).

The special and intuitive interfaces in EM for the Exa line of products, helps one to quickly identify the bottlenecks in the engineered systems and lets the administrator to suitably allocate resources based on the demand and also report to Oracle for any service-requests or assistance.

With the recent 12c release, Oracle Enterprise Manager provides extremely diverse set of tools for easier cloud management. Though, i can go on and on about the feature set(trust me, EM is an extremely powerful and BIG product with truck loads of useful features), i would restrict myself for now and let you explore more by looking at the various screen-casts and the whitepapers that are published in here. Since this blog is about Business Intelligence, we will look at some of the OBIEE specific features supported by EM in the later posts, especially, the OBIEE Management Pack and the TimesTen In-Memory Database plugin which offer some very interesting features for monitoring the Analytics stack. 

And if you thought Oracle Enterprise Manager was a place for monitoring only Oracle's product line alone, then you might want to change that perception by checking out the Extensibility Exchange site wherein different plugins are listed for managing different software components. This extremely useful community platform appreciates innovation and provides a means by which third party vendors can publish their plugins which can be included in Enterprise Manager.

In the next post, we will look at the other features offered by Engineered Systems which makes it a compelling choice for our customers.