Oracle Autonomous Database: Features & Pricing

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Bottom Line:

Oracle has been setting the pace in the enterprise database market for years – its the original names in databases. Along with Microsoft, it leads the RDBS market. On the other hand, it trails Amazon, Microsoft and others in the cloud – and this is a cloud offering. 

The Oracle Autonomous Database is changing that. With so many long-term large customers used to enterprise-class database features, Oracle is well respected on product capabilities, performance, availability, security and OLTP. Thus it has the chance to fend off competition from other cloud-based DB platforms.

Existing Oracle customers are likely to favor it, but it will be tough for Oracle to lure those already invested in Microsoft, Google or Amazon cloud databases. Service and support are further issues to address with: it rated poorly by users in these areas. So for anyone already using Oracle databases and considering the move to the cloud, it would be wise to evaluate Oracle Autonomous Database before jumping to a non-Oracle platform like Amazon or Azure.

Description:

Oracle Autonomous Database is a database cloud service that can automatically manage, tune, and patch itself. Users pay only for what they use. It enables users to run all their Oracle databases in the cloud with high levels of availability, performance, and security. It can hold up to 128 TB of relational and/or json data.

Oracle recently extended the capabilities of the autonomous database to offer more deployment options. Users can choose to deploy it on Dedicated Exadata Cloud Infrastructure for workload isolation to enable greater security and reliability for mission-critical workloads. Alternatively, Oracle Autonomous Database Cloud at Customer is for those who choose not to move to a public cloud because of regulatory requirements but want the benefits of Oracle Autonomous Database in their own data center.

It can function as a data warehouse, for online transaction processing, as a relational database and deal with json data. However, it can’t hold unstructured data. Implementation requires a subscription to Oracle Cloud universal credits, or an existing Oracle Database perpetual license that you bring to the cloud. Oracle Object Storage Service for Backup archives.

Type:

Relational.

“We were able to migrate from Oracle Cloud Database Service to Oracle Autonomous Data Warehouse very easily. Our visualization tool worked on top of OADW without an issue and we were excited to take advantage of the Exadata technology stack supporting OADW,” said a Vice President of Application Development in the media industry.

Performance: 

Autonomous Services run on Exadata Database infrastructure can run millions of IOPS with latency response in the nanoseconds.

Scalability:

From 1 to 128 OCPU (equivalent of Intel Core with hyper threading enabled) and from 1 to 128 TB of block storage.

“The Oracle Autonomous Data Warehouse is high quality, easy to use, flexible and scalable. Economically, it is also very good as we scale down or turn off when little or no use,” said a Data Architect in the energy and utilities industry.

Additional features:

All Oracle Exadata features including: Transparent Data Encryption, Hybrid Columnar Compression, Oracle Database In-Memory, Database Vault, Real Application Clusters, Active Data Guard, Exadata tiered Flash/SSD/Spinning Cell Storage, Infiniband Cluster Connect, Automated and Manual Backups, Automated Patching, Workload Optimization – Auto-Indexing, Auto SQL Plan Management.

Core markets:

  • Enterprise relational database users looking to better utilize administrators
  • Startups who may lack in-house DBA skills

“The Oracle licensing model is stifling our ability to deploy on a virtualized environment without paying excessively for the cores we have no intention to use, and which are dedicated to completely different workloads,” said a Systems Manager in government.

Pricing:

Users can trial Oracle Autonomous Database for free up to 3,300 hours.

Users can Bring their Own Oracle Enterprise Edition licenses

Users can subscribe to Pay-As-You-Go based on TB per month and per OCPU per hour.

Users can buy Oracle Universal Cloud Credits and consume them for this service.

Example pricing for Oracle Autonomous Data Warehouse – Extreme Performance Edition: $2.5202 pay as you go per OCPU Per Hour or $1.68 with credits.

Oracle Autonomous DB
Type Relational
Performance Millions of IOPS
Features Encryption
Compression
In memory
Clusters
Threat prevention
Backup
Patching
Core Markets Enterprise RDBMS users, Oracle on-premise DB users, Startups who lack DBA skills
Pricing Extreme Performance Edition: $2.5202 pay as you go per OCPU Per Hour or $1.68 with credits
Key Differentiator Leading name in databases
Drew Robb
Drew Robb
Drew Robb is a contributing writer for Datamation, Enterprise Storage Forum, eSecurity Planet, Channel Insider, and eWeek. He has been reporting on all areas of IT for more than 25 years. He has a degree from the University of Strathclyde UK (USUK), and lives in the Tampa Bay area of Florida.

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