The HP Oracle Database Machine is a joint effort between the two vendors, with HP providing the hardware (as well as the hardware support and three year warranty) and Oracle providing the software (as well as the sales and support). The product ships in a single rack cabinet and consists of components that are especially tuned for use in Enterprise-class data warehousing deployments.

Key components of the platform include separate database servers, and Oracle Exadata Storage Servers; which are interconnected via InfiniBand switches supporting 20 Gb/sec communications (each DB and Storage Server itself includes a pair of InfiniBand ports). Each fully loaded Database Machine (each cabinet) includes 8 DB servers, 14 Exadata Storage Servers, and 4 24-port InfiniBand switches. The vendor states that full machines (full cabinets) can be incrementally expanded by connecting them to one another via InfiniBand interconnects; and that performance and capacity increase linearly as new cabinets are added. (Each cabinet includes four InfiniBand ports for connectivity from external servers.)

The DB Servers themselves are HP Proliant DL360 G5s with dual quad-core Intel Xeon 2.66 GHz processors and 32 GB of memory; while the storage servers are HP ProLiant DL180 G5s with the same dual quad-core processors and 8 GB of memory. The storage servers also each include 12 of the user's choice of 300 GB SAS or 1 TB SATA drives; for a total "user data capacity" of up to 14 TB for a fully loaded SAS-based cabinet and 46 TB for SATA cabinets. (The vendor defines user data capacity as that remaining after mirroring and the space taken for internal database structures is accounted for). The vendor notes that the system as a whole supports performance bandwidth of up to 14 GB/sec (SAS). Both the DB and storage servers feature redundant power supplies and are driven by Oracle Enterprise Linux; and the InfiniBand connections are additionally redundant (both at the server and switch level--i.e., the switches are redundant). Drives, of course, are hot-swappable.

Software wise, the DB servers themselves get loaded with Oracle Database 11g, Oracle Real Application Clusters, and Oracle Partitioning; while the storage servers are loaded with Oracle Exadata Storage Server software (all of these software components are separately priced from the Database Machine itself).

A key feature of the software is the storage server's ability to process SQL queries directly, such that only selected rows and columns are returned through the InfiniBand connections as opposed to entire tables. Additional features include automated storage mirroring such that both individual disk failures and entire storage server failures can be tolerated without loss of data and without aborting in-process queries; a 48-port Gig Ethernet switch for management; and KVM hardware.

The HP Oracle Database Machine is available now. Individual Oracle Exadata Storage Servers can be purchased separately if desired; though an Oracle Database 11g--11.1.0.7--DB is required to access data stored on it.

Visit the Oracle Web site for further information.