Autonomous Database Dedicated and Exadata cloud infrastructure

 Introduction

This post presents information from a variety of sources regarding Oracle® Autonomous Database Dedicated and Exadata® cloud infrastructure.

According to the [Oracle Autonomous Database Technical Overview, "Oracle Autonomous Database combines the flexibility of cloud with the power of machine learning to deliver data management as a service." The document later adds, "The Oracle Autonomous Database includes the full set of products found in Oracle Exadata, and the Exadata Cloud Service, but all [the] components are operated autonomously." To put this into perspective, Oracle Autonomous Database is built on the following components:

• Oracle Cloud Infrastructure
• Exadata Servers & Storage
• InfiniBand Networking
• Exadata Storage Server Software
• Oracle Virtual Machine
• Oracle Grid Infrastructure
• Oracle Real Application Clusters
• Oracle Database Enterprise Edition

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According to Oracle Autonomous Database Technical Overview, "All the above components are managed automatically in the Autonomous Database, including initial configuration, changes in response to scale up/down demands, and during service
deletion. This section outlines how customers can view management actions that have been taken by Oracle or are scheduled to be executed. This section also outlines the management control that customers have over the service." 

According to Oracle Autonomous Database for Dummies, "Oracle Autonomous Database offers two deployment choices-;Serverless or Dedicated."

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In her blog post, Maria Colgan shares the following details:

Autonomous Database Serverless: "Oracle automates all the aspects of the infrastructure and database management for customers including provisioning, configuring, monitoring, backing up and tuning. Users simply select what type of database they want (Data Warehouse or Transaction Processing), which region in the Oracle Cloud they want the database deployed, and the base compute and storage resources. Oracle automatically takes care of everything else for them. Once provisioned, the database can be instantly scaled either through the UI, APIs, or automatically based on the customer workload fully online."

Autonomous Database Dedicated: "Allows customers to implement a Private Database Cloud running on dedicated Exadata Infrastructure within the Oracle Public Cloud. Making it an ideal platform to consolidate multiple databases regardless of their workload type or size or to offer a database as a service within an enterprise. Dedicated infrastructure provides complete isolation from other tenants and provides an opportunity to customize operational policies, such as software update schedules, availability, and density, to match your business requirements.

"With Autonomous Database Dedicated, customers get their own Exadata infrastructure in the Oracle Cloud. The customer's administrator specifies the size, region, and availability domain where they want their dedicated Exadata infrastructure provisioned. They also get to determine the update or patching schedule if they wish. Oracle automatically manages all the patching activity but with Autonomous Database Dedicated service, customers have the option to customize the patching schedule. You can specify which month every quarter you want, which week in that month, which day in that week and which patching window within that day. You can also dynamically change the scheduled patching date and time for a specific database if the originally scheduled time becomes inconvenient. 

"Once the Autonomous Exadata Infrastructure is provisioned, the administrator can then partition the system into the desired number of clusters and or Container Databases (CDB). Each CDB can have a different update strategy, backup retention, availability, and density. By default, only one CDB is necessary, and all user created database will be created within that container and inherit its update strategy, backup retention, etc."

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Colgan continues: "Alternatively, the administrator can create separate CDBs for different lines of business or for different use cases. For example, one Container Database could be created as the TEST system to keep the test workload separate from the production database. The TEST CDB would always be patched to the latest Release Update (RU) and would not have a standby database. While the WEB STORE CDB would contain production databases and would have a remote standby. It would also take a less aggressive patching strategy by using Release Update Revisions (RUR). The MANUFACTURING CDB would also house the production database but since they belong to a different line of business, they will go into separate CDBs."

Why Autonomous Database Dedicated?
In Autonomous Database - Dedicated Exadata Cloud Infrastructure, Colgan offers the following answers to this question:

Complete Isolation 

"With Autonomous Database Dedicated (ADD), the level of security and performance isolated can be easily tailored for each workload. "You get Exadata Infrastructure fully dedicated for your use. The network path is through a virtual cloud network (VCN) and subnet defined by the Exadata infrastructure hosting the database. 

"By default, this subnet is defined as private, meaning that there is no public Internet access to the databases. This ensures only your company can access your Exadata Infrastructure and your databases."

 Customizable Operational Policies

"Oracle automatically provisions configures, manages, and monitors the Autonomous Database for you. But you have the opportunity with Autonomous Database Dedicated to customize the operational policies to best suit your business needs. 

"You can customize the software update / patching policy. For example, you can choose to deploy new software versions on your development and test databases first before you deploy it on production.

"Another possible level of customization is customizing the availability policies for different Container Databases (CDBs). For each CDB you can specify the level of availability and disaster recovery you need. You can also define the backup retention policy."

 Conclusion

Colgan concludes: "Oracle Autonomous Database is built on the Oracle Cloud Infrastructure, which keeps systems constantly updated with the latest fixes and security patches, giving developers immediate access to the latest innovations in the Oracle database. Autonomous Database is built on Oracle's Exadata Database Machine which delivers the high performance and cost-effective operation customers required for the most demanding and mission-critical applications." And a
Neosoft blog post, Here's everything you need to know about Oracle Autonomous Database Cloud adds, "Users that want to rethink their IT strategy and care about things like patching schedules, software versions, workload isolation, and want to be involved in" selecting these should opt for the Dedicated option.