The announcement of Oracle Database@AWS during last year’s Oracle CloudWorld came as quite a shock to many people. Recently, this new offering by Oracle and Amazon Web Services (AWS) became generally available. We had a comprehensive discussion with Oracle VP of Mission Critical Database Technologies Ashish Ray about what this offering means for Oracle, but more importantly also for joint AWS and Oracle customers. Is it a new milestone in cloud database architecture? And will it deliver on its promises of unprecedented performance and integration capabilities?
According to Ray, the amount of interest and enthusiasm for Oracle Database@AWS since it was announces was huge. The companies have many joint enterprise customers who have chosen AWS for their cloud strategy while maintaining mission-critical Oracle databases on-premises. Oracle Database@AWS addresses a fundamental challenge for those customers, according to Ray. How can they modernize IT infrastructure while maintaining the performance and reliability that mission-critical applications demand?
Ray emphasizes that this isn’t simply another database offering. He considers it to be a complete reimagining of database deployment that combines the best of both worlds: Oracle’s proven database technology with AWS’s cloud infrastructure and ecosystem.
Architecture and performance
Oracle Database@AWS delivers full Oracle Database 23ai functionality without restrictions, including Oracle Real Application Clusters (RAC) and complete Exadata capabilities. According to Ray, this means customers get highly performant environments: the latest Exadata X11M generation delivers database I/O latencies as low as 14 microseconds, measured under load from SQL.
The integration between Oracle and AWS is very fundamental too. That is, Oracle hardware physically resides in AWS data centers, with complete network integration between Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) and AWS. This deep integration enables features like zero-ETL data movement between Oracle Database and AWS Analytics services, eliminating complex data pipeline management.
The technical integration encompasses both hardware and software components. Oracle has engineered seamless network integrations that make Exadata platforms completely transparent to AWS customers. Users can manage their Oracle databases through familiar AWS tools like AWS Management Console and command-line interfaces, or alternatively use OCI dashboards and metrics.
Process integration includes unified procurement through AWS Marketplace, allowing customers to use existing AWS commitments and Oracle license benefits. Support experiences are unified, with customers able to file issues with either AWS or Oracle, backed by combined technical teams working together on solutions. Oracle Zero Downtime Migration, facilitating seamless transition from on-premises databases to AWS-hosted Oracle databases without application downtime is part of the offering too. Once migrated, customers can leverage native AWS integrations including AWS Identity and Access Management, CloudFormation, CloudWatch, Amazon VPC Lattice, and Amazon EventBridge.
Listen to and watch the conversation with Ashish Ray to learn much more about this important new offering for both Oracle and AWS. He concludes that “it’s an absolutely exciting time to in the database world”. We’re very curious if you agree with that statement.