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These are the key benefits of moving your on-premises Exadata workloads to Exadata in the cloud.

Exadata has been recognized for over a decade as the industry standard for Oracle Database workloads requiring the fastest performance, highest availability, and most robust security. If you are considering moving your Exadata workloads to the cloud, either public or hybrid, you’ll want to continue to leverage the Exadata advantages critical to your applications, while adding the benefits of the cloud.

The cloud offers superior economics with pay-per-use consumption and reduced administration through cloud automation and Oracle-managed infrastructure. Let’s discuss how you can simplify operations, lower costs, and modernize your database infrastructure by migrating your on-premises Exadata workloads to Exadata in the cloud.

Deploy Anywhere With No Data Model or Application Changes

Exadata in the cloud offers the same innovative technology as Exadata on-premises with 100% compatibility between deployment models, for seamless database migration and minimal disruption. Exadata in the cloud has the same performance and availability of Exadata on-premises, while also offering the same Oracle Database, regardless of location.

Exadata in the cloud has three deployment choices:

1. Exadata infrastructure in Oracle’s public cloud (Oracle Cloud Infrastructure), or
2. Hybrid cloud in your data center with Exadata Cloud@Customer, or
3. Exadata infrastructure as part of a multicloud solution with Oracle Database@Azure (Exadata will also be available in the future with Oracle Database@Google Cloud).

Multicloud solutions run Exadata in OCI co-located within either Azure or in the future within Google Cloud providing Azure and Google Cloud applications native low-latency access to databases running on Exadata.

Reduce Infrastructure Costs and Management

When you migrate your workloads to either Exadata in the public cloud or Cloud@Customer, the Exadata infrastructure is the same as your on-premises deployment. You have the flexibility to elastically size your compute and storage resources for your current workloads and dynamically add compute and/or storage in the future so you pay only for the infrastructure you need. Exadata is also available with Exascale infrastructure, which lowers the entry cost for Exadata in the public cloud with a smaller minimize size so workloads at any scale can benefit from Exadata.

When deploying Exadata in the public cloud, you can test your applications and pay only for what you use without any long-term commitment to the infrastructure. Deploying infrastructure on-demand without long-term commitments enables you to take advantage of new hardware performance improvements by simply migrating to the latest generation when you are ready. In addition, in the public cloud, elastically expanding compute and/or storage capacity to accommodate business spikes is significantly easier compared to the hardware procurement process necessary for on-premises, which inevitably cause delays.

Moving your workloads to either Exadata in the public cloud or Cloud@Customer also eliminates the burden of managing infrastructure. Exadata infrastructure is managed by Oracle experts using sophisticated automation that reduces risk. Eliminating the responsibility of infrastructure maintenance from your administration teams frees your resources to focus on core organizational objectives.

As part of infrastructure maintenance, Oracle updates Exadata servers, switches, and other infrastructure components. Although Oracle is responsible for managing the infrastructure, you can still control the timing of maintenance activities to minimize any disruption to your end users.

Reduce Your Administration Costs

Autonomous Database and Exadata Database Service are the two Oracle Database services that run on Exadata, both in the public cloud and on Cloud@Customer. Autonomous Database is a fully-managed service whereas Exadata Database Service is a co-managed service with responsibilities shared between you and Oracle.

With the fully-managed Autonomous Database, Oracle manages both the infrastructure and databases through autonomous operations, allowing you to simply use the databases for your applications. Under the covers, Autonomous Database leverages all Oracle Database capabilities including advanced features such as Real Application Clusters (Oracle RAC) and Data Guard. Autonomous Database automatically provisions, secures, tunes, and scales your databases. It has an array of features that simplifies modern development of cloud native applications and is built on the most advanced database technology running on the industry-leading Exadata platform.

Exadata Database Service is co-managed by you and Oracle, where Oracle manages the infrastructure, and you manage the databases using robust cloud automation for common lifecycle management tasks. Automation ensures best practices are not only incorporated into the configuration, but also properly followed when you create, update, backup, and scale your databases. It makes it easy for you to lift and shift on-premises applications to the cloud while offering more flexibility and control over your database environments.

Automation eliminates the need to research technical briefs and documentation to deploy databases with the best performance, availability, and security. For example, database provisioning is automated to ensure Oracle RAC databases are configured according to best practices. Activities such as database updates, creating a Data Guard standby and conducting a switchover are done for you with Autonomous Database or with just a few clicks or API calls in Exadata Database Service. Leveraging automation for time-consuming tasks allows your administration teams to focus on value added functions rather than managing systems and databases.

While both services reduce the operational costs compared to on-premises deployments, customers have different requirements for isolation, control, and customization. The management choices offered by these database services allow you to select the solution that best aligns with the operational needs for your databases. The services on dedicated infrastructure are not mutually exclusive so you can run Autonomous Database and Exadata Database Service on the same infrastructure. Autonomous Database is also available on serverless Exadata infrastructure in the public cloud. In addition, Exadata Database Service can be deployed in the public cloud on shared Exascale infrastructure. This flexibility allows you to modernize any Oracle Database environment on your schedule, with some applications migrated to the cloud using a simple lift and shift approach where you retain control with Exadata Database Service, while others are modernized to benefit from the fully-managed Autonomous Database.

Reduce Your Oracle Database Licensing Costs

Oracle Database can be licensed with a choice of two cost-effective licensing models that you can leverage to meet your business needs.

The License Included model for Exadata in the cloud includes entitlement for all Oracle Database Enterprise Edition options. This model is ideal for customers without sufficient existing Oracle Database licenses, or customers seeking to use Oracle Database features beyond those currently licensed. The value of License Included is enhanced as the adoption of database options increases.

The Bring Your Own License (BYOL) model is ideal for customers who already own Oracle Database Enterprise Edition and Database Option software licenses they want to use in the cloud. It’s designed to maximize the value of your existing software investments while reducing support costs. The BYOL Enterprise Edition Database License includes entitlement to use Transparent Data Encryption (TDE), Diagnostic & Tuning Packs, Real Application Testing, and Data Masking & Subsetting free of charge, giving you more functionality without any additional cost. With BYOL you are also provided Oracle Support Rewards that applies a 25% credit of your cloud spend to your on-premises support bill.

Pay-Per-Use database licensing in Oracle Cloud is based on the compute resources you use for running your database workload and the licensing model you select. With Exadata Database Service you can dynamically scale compute cores allocated to your database environments up and down, paying only for what you use. With Autonomous Database, compute scaling is done automatically for you as workload demands change. The ability to only pay for the compute resources you need can provide substantial savings, especially for environments that must be able to handle workload peaks, but typically run well below those peaks.

Both licensing models are applicable for Exadata Database Service and Autonomous Database in the public cloud, on Exadata Cloud@Customer, and with multicloud environments.

Reduce Migration Downtime and Effort

Since Oracle Database is 100% compatible across all deployments, you simply move the data to migrate to Exadata in the cloud. With Oracle Database you can use familiar migration methods, such as backup and recovery, provided you can tolerate some downtime. Since downtime can be a problem for critical databases that typically run on Exadata, Oracle offers an automated solution using Zero Downtime Migration (ZDM) to simplify your physical or logical database migration. ZDM can be used to deploy a replica database in Oracle Cloud, synchronized with your production database on-premises. Once you are ready, you switch your applications to the cloud database to complete your cloud migration.

Key Takeaways

Exadata in the cloud combines all the benefits of Exadata on-premises with the cloud’s economic and operational advantages.

1. Only Exadata in the cloud matches Exadata on-premises performance and availability. Running Oracle Database on other cloud infrastructure may lead to a substandard application experience. When moving to the cloud, you’ll want to ensure that cloud runs Exadata.
2. Exadata in the cloud reduces costs. Exadata cloud subscriptions can be dynamically aligned to actual usage so you pay only for the what you consume. Incentives for transferring on-premises licenses or extending applications with new database options further reduce licensing costs. Oracle also manages your infrastructure, freeing your administrative staff to work on projects with higher value-add. And of course, migrating to Oracle Cloud eliminates the cost of maintaining your own data centers.
3. Exadata in the cloud provides the latest Exadata generations and leading-edge technology innovations such as Autonomous Database in your choice of deployment model. You can choose:

• Exadata infrastructure in Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI), or
• Exadata Cloud@Customer, the only hybrid cloud that supports Oracle Database, or
• Exadata infrastructure in a multicloud environment with Oracle Database@Azure and in the future with Oracle Database@Google Cloud

Exadata in the cloud enables you to realize substantial cost savings, but also meet your operational service levels and policies. With Exadata performance, availability, and security, cloud economics and simplicity, and 100% compatibility with your on-premises Oracle databases, there’s no better way to take that step to cloud.

Exadata in the cloud is your future – what are you waiting for?

For more information, explore the What’s New section of the documentation for the Oracle Database services that run on Exadata in the cloud.

Documentation Links

• What’s New in Oracle Autonomous Database Serverless
• What’s New in Exadata Database Service on Exascale Infrastructure
• What’s New in Oracle Autonomous Database on Dedicated Infrastructure
• What’s New in Oracle Exadata Database Service on Dedicated Infrastructure
• What’s New in Oracle Autonomous Database on Cloud@Customer
• What’s New in Oracle Exadata Database Service on Cloud@Customer