how to build your own exadata

Exadata (2)  is a new product ( less than 1 year ).

The key of its performance is the Sun Flash Accelerator F20 PCIe Card  ( 4x96GB =384GB flash cache per each exadata storage server ( a.k.a cell ) ) and level 2 SGA cache from 11Gr2



The same pcie flash cache can be found for up to 5000 US dollars ( 96GB ). https://shop.sun.com/store/productsa/8918e5c7-9e61-11de-9d26-080020a9ed93 . It can also be shipped with a sun fire server ( http://www.oracle.com/us/products/servers-storage/servers/x86/index.html )

In order to utilize its full power, you have to install oracle 11Gr2 on linux ( only in this version it appears this concept of a second layer of SGA ) .

Imagine a x64 server, with 72 GB memory for operating system ( 36GB for SGA - level 1 of cache ) and 384 GB flash cache , for level 2 of SGA. A normal-size database can be fully loaded into flash cache.

You could expect to see about the same exadata performance ( 500 000 IOPS ) , but with a less price  ( less than 30000 US dollars per server ). And there is no RAC, so no more expensive licenses.