Exalogic is a

computer appliance A computer appliance is a home appliance with software or firmware that is specifically designed to provide a specific computing resource. Such devices became known as ''appliances'' because of the similarity in role or management to a home ap ...

made by Oracle Corporation, commercially available since 2010. It is a

cluster may refer to: Science and technology Astronomy * Cluster (spacecraft), constellation of four European Space Agency spacecraft * Asteroid cluster, a small asteroid family * Cluster II (spacecraft), a European Space Agency mission to study t ...

x86-64 x86-64 (also known as x64, x86_64, AMD64, and Intel 64) is a 64-bit version of the x86 instruction set, first released in 1999. It introduced two new modes of operation, 64-bit mode and compatibility mode, along with a new 4-level paging ...

-servers running

Oracle Linux Oracle Linux (abbreviated OL, formerly known as Oracle Enterprise Linux or OEL) is a Linux distribution packaged and freely distributed by Oracle, available partially under the GNU General Public License since late 2006. It is compiled from Red ...

or Solaris preinstalled. Its full trade mark is ''Oracle Exalogic Elastic Cloud'' (derived from the SI prefix '' exa-'' and ''-logic'', probably from

Weblogic Oracle WebLogic Server is a Java EE application server currently developed by Oracle Corporation. Oracle acquired WebLogic Server when it purchased BEA Systems in 2008. Application Server versions * WebLogic Server 14c (14.1.1) - March 30, 2020 ...

), positioned by the vendor as a preconfigured clustered application server to use for

cloud computing Cloud computing is the on-demand availability of computer system resources, especially data storage ( cloud storage) and computing power, without direct active management by the user. Large clouds often have functions distributed over mu ...

with elastic computing abilities.

History

Oracle Corporation announced Exalogic at the Oracle OpenWorld conference in

San Francisco San Francisco (; Spanish for " Saint Francis"), officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the commercial, financial, and cultural center of Northern California. The city proper is the fourth most populous in California and 17th ...

in September 2010. The company presented it as a continuation of the Oracle-engineered systems product-line which had started in 2008 with Exadata (preconfigured database cluster). Exalogic is a factory assembled

19-inch rack A 19-inch rack is a standardized frame or enclosure for mounting multiple electronic equipment modules. Each module has a front panel that is wide. The 19 inch dimension includes the edges or "ears" that protrude from each side of the equ ...

of 42 rack units, completed with servers and

network equipment Networking hardware, also known as network equipment or computer networking devices, are electronic devices which are required for communication and interaction between devices on a computer network. Specifically, they mediate data transmission ...

. There are 4 configurations, at different prices, depending on what fills the rack. The weight of the full rack is about 1 ton (more than 2000 lbs), a quarter rack weighs half as much.

Hardware

The hardware component of the X2-2 appliance consisted of: a group of 1-unit

Intel Xeon Xeon ( ) is a brand of x86 microprocessors designed, manufactured, and marketed by Intel, targeted at the non-consumer workstation, server, and embedded system markets. It was introduced in June 1998. Xeon processors are based on the same arc ...

servers, each equipped with two six-core 2.93 GHz processors and two

solid-state drive A solid-state drive (SSD) is a solid-state storage device that uses integrated circuit assemblies to store data persistently, typically using flash memory, and functioning as secondary storage in the hierarchy of computer storage. It is a ...

s for operating system and swap space; a common

storage area network A storage area network (SAN) or storage network is a computer network which provides access to consolidated, block-level data storage. SANs are primarily used to access data storage devices, such as disk arrays and tape libraries from ser ...

; and a set of

InfiniBand InfiniBand (IB) is a computer networking communications standard used in high-performance computing that features very high throughput and very low latency. It is used for data interconnect both among and within computers. InfiniBand is also use ...

and

Ethernet Ethernet () is a family of wired computer networking technologies commonly used in local area networks (LAN), metropolitan area networks (MAN) and wide area networks (WAN). It was commercially introduced in 1980 and first standardized in 1 ...

switches. A full rack contains 30 server nodes, a half rack, 16, a quarter rack, 8, and an eighth rack, 4. Each server node has installed 96 GB of RAM, four

10 Gigabit Ethernet 10 Gigabit Ethernet (10GE, 10GbE, or 10 GigE) is a group of computer networking technologies for transmitting Ethernet frames at a rate of 10 gigabits per second. It was first defined by the IEEE 802.3ae-2002 standard. Unlike previous ...

interfaces, and a double InfiniBand port. The

for all configurations is similar, with 40 TB of raw space. The vendor's specifications and advertising content usually indicate the total parameters (360 processor kernels and 2.9 TB RAM for full rack). An X3-2 model was announced in 2012 with newer processors and more memory. Since late 2013 an X4-2 model is commercially available, it has yet more processor cores and four times as large capacity of solid-state drives.
The latest version of Exalogic compute nodes have two Intel E5-2699v3 2.3 GHz Xeon (18-core) processors and eight 32 GB DDR4 2133 MHz RAM for a total of 256 GB per node. Two 400 GB SSDs (RAID1) and redundant power supplies

Software

Two 64-bit operating systems run on the server nodes of the appliance:

version 5.5 or

Solaris 11 Solaris may refer to: Arts and entertainment Literature, television and film * ''Solaris'' (novel), a 1961 science fiction novel by Stanisław Lem ** ''Solaris'' (1968 film), directed by Boris Nirenburg ** ''Solaris'' (1972 film), directed by ...

. All servers have an installed cluster configuration of

Oracle WebLogic Server Oracle WebLogic Server is a Java EE application server currently developed by Oracle Corporation. Oracle acquired WebLogic Server when it purchased BEA Systems in 2008. Application Server versions * WebLogic Server 14c (14.1.1) - March 30, 2020 ...

and distributed memory cache Oracle Coherence. To run Java applications on a machine there is a choice of HotSpot or

JRockit JRockit was a proprietary Java virtual machine (JVM) originally developed by Appeal Virtual Machines, acquired by BEA Systems in 2002, and became part of Oracle Fusion Middleware as part of acquisition of BEA Systems in 2008. The JRockit code ba ...

. Management of the appliance is available in the

Oracle Enterprise Manager Oracle Enterprise Manager (OEM) is a set of web-based tools aimed at managing software and hardware produced by Oracle Corporation as well as by some non-Oracle entities. Releases Oracle Enterprise Manager includes three releases: Oracle Enterpri ...

toolset, which is also pre-installed in the appliance. A transaction monitor

Tuxedo Black tie is a semi-formal Western dress code for evening events, originating in British and American conventions for attire in the 19th century. In British English, the dress code is often referred to synecdochically by its principal element ...

is optionally supplied.

Customers

Exalogic is deployed by the

University of Melbourne The University of Melbourne is a public research university located in Melbourne, Australia. Founded in 1853, it is Australia's second oldest university and the oldest in Victoria. Its main campus is located in Parkville, an inner suburb no ...

Food and Drug Administration The United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA or US FDA) is a List of United States federal agencies, federal agency of the United States Department of Health and Human Services, Department of Health and Human Services. The FDA is respon ...

(FDA) in the United States,

Amway Amway (short for "American Way") is an American multi-level marketing (MLM) company that sells health, beauty, and home care products. The company was founded in 1959 by Jay Van Andel and Richard DeVos and is based in Ada, Michigan. Amway and it ...

, the Hyundai Motor Group, Bank of Chile,

Haier Haier Group Corporation () is a Chinese multinational home appliances and consumer electronics company headquartered in Qingdao, Shandong. It designs, develops, manufactures and sells products including refrigerators, air conditioners, washin ...

, and

Deutsche Post DHL The Deutsche Post AG, operating under the trade name Deutsche Post DHL Group, is a German multinational package delivery and supply chain management company headquartered in Bonn, Germany. It is one of the world's largest courier companies. T ...

, Public Authority of Minors Affairs (PAMA) in Kuwait .

Criticism

Mark Benioff, founder of

Salesforce.com Salesforce, Inc. is an American cloud-based software company headquartered in San Francisco, California. It provides customer relationship management (CRM) software and applications focused on sales, customer service, marketing automation, a ...

, presumes that any appliance principally lacks scalability for the end-user compared with the infrastructure, supplied as service, and notes that the Exalogic approach is actually a rollback to the obsolete mainframe computer concept. Also, commentators have expressed concerns about the appropriateness of placing the word "elastic" in the name, because, despite the ability to load balance, there are obvious computing limits of the box, and those limits cannot be transcended like they should be in a true elastic environment; the same criticism applies to all solutions designed for private cloud computing, in particular, it applies to

EMC Corporation Dell EMC (EMC Corporation until 2016) is an American multinational corporation headquartered in Hopkinton, Massachusetts and Round Rock, Texas, United States. Dell EMC sells data storage, information security, virtualization, analytics, clo ...

and Hewlett-Packard products. However, any computing environment is a collection of servers, and since many Exalogic machines can be combined, it is not limited to the single box capacity, which may be considered as merely a building block.

References

External links

* {{Oracle Cloud applications Exalogic Exalogic