Exadata Database Machine: The Data Sheets Are Inaccurate! Part – I.

Yes, the title of this blog entry is a come-on. I am ever-so-slightly apologetic (smiley face).

This post follows the longest dry spell in my blogging over the last five years. I haven’t posted since early January and thus I am quite overdue for the next installment in my series regarding the Oracle Database 11g Direct NFS clonedb feature. I set out to make the next installment yesterday but before doing so I visited the analytics for my blog readership to see what’s been happening. I discovered that essentially nobody comes to this blog through Exadata related search terms anymore. That surprised me. Indeed, for the first—what—two or so years after Exadata went into general availability the first page worth of Google search results always included some of my posts. I can’t find any of my Exadata posts in the first several pages Google spoon-feeds me now when I google “Exadata.” This isn’t a wounded-soul post. I do have a point to make. Humor me for a moment while I show the top twenty search terms that have directed readers to my blog since January 1, 2011.

kevin closson	417
oracle performance	320
oracle 11g	290
oracle linux	200
oracle on flash SSD	188
oracle nfs clonedb	182
intel numa	133
oracle on nfs	122
oracle fibre channel	115
huge pages allocated	104
oracle orion	99
real application clusters	92
automatic memory management	82
oracle xeon	80
oracle i/o	78
oracle file systems	75
oracle numa	73
_enable_NUMA_support	73
greenplum versus exadata	70
oracle exadata	69

So, as far as search terms go there seems to be a lack of traffic coming to this site for Exadata-related information. The page views for my Exadata posts are high, but the search terms are lightly-weighted. This means folks generally read Exadata-related material here after being directed for a non-related search term. Oh well. I’d ordinarily say, “so what.” However, it is unbelievable to me how many people ask me questions each and every day that would be unnecessary if not for a quick read of one of the entries I posted before Oracle Open World 2010. That post, entitled Seven Fundamentals Everyone Should Know Before Attending Openworld 2010 Sessions might be better named You Really Need to Know This Little Bit About Exadata Before Anyone Else Tries to Tell You Anything About Exadata. Folks, if you get a moment and you care at all about Exadata, please do read that short blog entry. It will enhance your experience with your sales folks or any other such Exadata advocates. Indeed, who wants to be introduced to a technology solution by the folks trying to sell it to you. Now, don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying Exadata sales folks are prone to offering misinformation. What I’m trying to say is your interaction with sales folks will be enhanced if you don’t find yourself in such remedial space as the very definition of the product and its most basic fundamentals. That leads me to point out some of the folks who have taken the helm from me where  Exadata blog content is concerned.

Oaktable Network Members Booting Up Exadata Blogging
Fellow Oaktable Network member Kerry Osborne blogs about Exadata, in addition to his current efforts to write a book on the topic. I’ve seen the content of his book in my role as Technical Editor. I think you will all find it a must-read regarding Exadata because it is shaping up to be a very, very good book. I have the utmost of respect for fellow Oaktable Network members like Kerry. In addition to Kerry, Fritz Hoogland (a recent addition to the Oaktable Network) is also producing helpful Exadata-related content.  Oracle’s Uwe Hesse blogs frequently about Exadata-related matters as well. So, there, I’ve pointed out the places people graze for Exadata content these days. But I can’t stop there.

We Believe the Oracle Data Sheets
The content I’ve seen in blogs seems to mostly confirm the performance claims stated in Oracle Data Sheet materials. Let me put it another way. We all know the latest Exadata table/index scan rates (e.g., 25 GB/s HDD full rack or 70GB/s combined Flash + HDD).  We’ve seen the Data Sheets and we believe the cited throughput numbers. I have an idea—but first let me put on my sarcasm hat.  I’m going to predict that the next person to blog about Exadata will start out by blogging something very close to the following:

My big_favorite_table has many columns and a bazillion rows. On disk it requires 200 gigabytes of storage but with mirroring it takes up 400 gigabytes. When I run the following query—even without Exadata Smart Flash Cache—it only takes eight seconds on my full-rack Exadata configuration to get the result:

 
SQL> select count(*) from big_favorite_table where pk_number < 0;
COUNT(*)
----------
0

Don’t get me wrong. It is important for folks to validate the Data Sheet numbers with their own personal testing. But folks, please, we believe the light-scan rates are what the marketing literature states.  I’m probably not alone in my desire to see blogs on users’ experience in solving particularly complex analytical data analysis problems involving vast amounts of data stored in Exadata. That sort of blogging is where social networking truly ads value—you know, going “beyond the Data Sheet.”

In Closing
So what does all this have to do with the infrequent nature of my blogging? Well, I’ll just have to leave that for a future entry. And, no, the Data Sheets on Exadata Database Machine are not inaccurate.