Oracle Exadata list pricing
The figures in this post have now been updated. There’s a new spreadsheet at that link as well.
I’ve been trying to figure out how much Oracle Exadata actually costs. My first cut comes up with prices of $58-190K/TB (user data), based on a total system price of $5,322,000, and user data figures of 28 and 92.4 TB for the two available sizes of disk drive. But of course there are a lot of uncertainties in these figures. You can use this spreadsheet (Edit: That’s the old one) to see where the final numbers come from, and to modify the estimates as you see fit. Difficulties include:
- The Oracle Exadata package has two parts — a storage cluster and a RAC server cluster. It’s not certain what the proper balance between the two is …
- … unless one uses the configurations in the actual HP Oracle Database Machine. But that comes in only two sizes, 14 and 46.2 terabytes of uncompressed user data.* Presumably, smaller configurations would wind up costing a little more per terabyte, due to a higher server/storage cost ratio.
- It’s not clear which options to include. I just went with RAC (Real Application Cluster), Partitioning, and Advanced compression, but your mileage may vary. For example, if you want Oracle Spatial, there’s a hefty additional cost. Ditto some of the security options. Basically, my plan was to go light on the options, because many of them represent features that either other vendors don’t usually bundle for free (Teradata may be an exception to that rule).
- Translating nominal to actual user data is always tricky. I used the low end of Oracle’s stated 2-3X compression range, because rival vendors use conservative compression figures in that aspect of their marketing as well.
- Oracle offers two sizes of disk — 300 MB (15,000 RPM) and 1 TB (7,200 RPM). The system price for either one is the same, which means the price/terabyte can vary by a factor of 3.3
- The whole list price discussion is a bit beside the point anyway, as discounting is rampant.
*Oracle cites figures of 1 TB and 3.3 TB of uncompressed user data on its systems that have 12 x 300 MB and 12 x 1 TB of spinning disk respectively. That’s a 1:3.6 ratio, vs. the 1:8 ratio Greenplum quotes. Differences include 4% of Greenplum’s disks being used for hot spares (Oracle’s configuration doesn’t appear to include those, but I could be wrong) and another 4% being used for the actual software (Oracle provides other disks for that). Beyond that, there seems to be a basic 2X difference because Greenplum has an extra level of mirroring.
So how does Oracle’s Exadata pricing compare with other vendors’? It’s hard to be very precise. Besides all the other caveats above, appliance vendors have very different hardware configurations from each other, while software-only vendors can run on multiple different hardware set-ups. But all that said — and to a very rough first approximation — Oracle’s high-end price/TB figure is in the same ballpark as Teradata’s, while the lower-end figure is in Netezza range.
How Exadata’s query speed, throughput, and administrative effort compare to the competition’s of course remains to be seen.
So did I make any egregious errors? Do you think I picked the wrong options? Please say what you would have done differently in the comment thread, and suggest your own price numbers!
Oracle references used
- http://www.oracle.com/corporate/pricing/exadata-pricelist.pdf
- http://www.oracle.com/corporate/pricing/technology-price-list.pdf
- http://www.oracle.com/corporate/pricing/sig.pdf
- http://www.oracle.com/solutions/business_intelligence/docs/database-machine-datasheet.pdf
Comments
10 Responses to “Oracle Exadata list pricing”
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The link to the spreadsheet is broken (500 Internal Server Error).
Bence,
I hope that was just a temporary glitch. It tests OK in two browsers right now.
Thanks,
CAM
Curt, Oracle’s Exadata technical paper also recommends the Enterprise Manager Diagnostics and Tuning packs. See page 8. Those are $3500/CPU apiece, kicking the price up another $224k.
Unfortunately I still get the same error.
Even pasting the link (http://www.monash.com/Oracle-Exadata-pricing-estimates-1.xls) either to Firefox or IE fails with 500 Internal Server Error.
I sent the error screen to your e-mail address.
Bence,
Thank you for staying with this. I can’t explain the error.
I’m emailing you the spreadsheet.
Later on, I’ll update it things to reflect Anonymous’ comments, and hope that changing the spreadsheet’s URL magically solves the problem.
CAM
I found the mistate, I believe.
You have two links in the first paragraph. The one in the first line (titled ‘Oracle Exadata’) links correctly to the spreadsheet, meanwhile the second (titled ‘this spreadsheet’) gives the error.
Thanks!
I just found that error myself, and was about to embarrassedly post it. Fixing now!
CAM
[…] cited below received “half” an Oracle Database Machine. As I previously noted, an Oracle Database Machine holds either 14.0 or 46.2 terabytes of uncompressed data. This suggests the 220 TB customer listed below — LGR Telecommunications — got […]
[…] to do with RAC that I’m wondering what RAC does to justify its >10% share of overall Oracle Database Machine pricing. In particular, different CPUs generally do not share RAM or cache when doing what Oracle refers to […]
Anonymous,
Right you are. The link is http://www.oracle.com/technology/products/bi/db/exadata/pdf/exadata-technical-whitepaper.pdf
While the phrasing specifically mentions EDWs, those indeed seem like standard parts of the configuration.