Oracle To Sell Database Hardware

qazsedcft writes "In a move the company is billing as its first foray into the hardware business, Oracle Corp. said Wednesday it will begin selling server computers that come with its database software pre-installed."

Comments

Core business

[qoncept]

I don't see Oracle being successful moving in to areas that aren't it's core business (hardware vs software), especially one that's already saturated. The insurance company makes a lot of acquisitions, and the first step is always unloading everything the new company does that isn't insurance, no matter how profitable they've been.

Actual Information

[fm6]

It would be nice if submitters took a moment to find some actual information, instead of just submitting the first (usually content free) blurb that they see. A tiny amount of Googling would have turned up this Oracle product page with full technical specs.

It's worth mentioning that this product is not a computer. It's a 42U rack stuffed 8 dbms servers, 14 storage servers, and 4 switches. Which means a lot of low-end 1U servers. Not exactly a lot of computer power. One or two 4U dbms servers and 3 or 4 4U storage servers (like Sun's X4600 and X4500 boxes) would seem more to the point.

Re:Actual Information

[More_Cowbell]

Which means a lot of low-end 1U servers. Not exactly a lot of computer power.

You could have gone one step further and actually read the specs before deriding them...

8-HP Proliant DL360 G5 database servers, with
2 quad-core Intel Xeon Processor E5430 (2.66GHz)
32GB memory
1-HP InfiniBand Dual Port HCA
4-146GB SAS 10K hard disk drives
4-24-port InfiniBand switches

14-HP Exadata Storage Server Hardware--each is an HP ProLiant DL180 G5, with
2 quad-core Intel Xeon Processor E5430 (2.66GHz)
8GB memory
1-HP InfiniBand Dual Port HCA
12-300GB SAS or 12-1TB SATA disk drives

Now I won't argue that Sun doesn't put out more robust hardware (for that matter HP does, the DL line is far from their top end), but this is not exactly 'low end' computing power here...

Re:No Surprise

[fm6]

RTFA. There's no "Oracle machine." This is a cobranded HP/Oracle product.

Except it's not really their first foray

[tlambert]

Except it's not really their first foray:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NCUBE

This was the company that Larry invested in to build massively (for the time) parallel machines to run Oracle better. He even relocated them to Foster City to get them loser to Oracle corporate headquarters.

A company where I worked (Whistle Communications, and, after they were acquired, IBM) shared the same building with them. When they closed the Foster City office 2002 (after Larry stepped down as CEO), they dumpstered a large number of 19" racks full of interesting hardware.

-- Terry

Re:No Surprise

[cerberusss]

Why wouldn't Oracle just throw in the hardware with the costs of the license?

That's pretty funny. Maybe the hardware you use at home is cheap. And maybe you even have a couple of throw-away Supermicros in a datacenter. But the Sun and/or EMC kit that, say, a publisher buys is not cheap. Just a couple of 16-way Sun servers with a decent SAN with backup possibility starts around 250K. After negotiating, that is. Now, you can say that this doesn't matter when your Oracle licenses run up to 2,500K but it still isn't pocket change like you're making it sound like.

Re:It's about time!

[Anonymous Coward]

No, it's the stupid fucking Java-based installer that they insist on using that runs like shit on every system I've ever seen it on, no matter how beefy a box it is. Fuck those fucking fuckers in their fucking asses.

Re:It's about time!

[Colin Smith]

I can tell you have vast Oracle experience...

 

What about the nCube?

[tramm]

Oracle had a previous venture into the database hardware business, the nCube. They bought the parallel computer company and attempted to build a database / video-on-demand server from it.

There is more to it than launching runInstaller

[Stone316]

Yes, installing Oracle is simple.. You could even install Oracle's E-Business Suite easily. The hard part is configuring it and its even harder to configure it for performance.

Behind an environment built for performance is network, SAN and OS. If the admins for theses services aren't familiar with your application or databases then chances are its not configured optimally. You wouldn't believe how many arguments I have had with OS and SAN admins who believe that they can use the same generic configuration that they use for any other server.