Oracle Database Exadata Cloud Service enables you to apply the combined power of Exadata and Oracle Cloud. You have full access to the features and operations available with Oracle Database, but with Oracle owning and managing the Exadata infrastructure.

Each Exadata Cloud Service instance is based on an Exadata system configuration that contains some compute nodes (database servers) and Exadata Storage Servers, all tied together by a high-speed, low-latency InfiniBand network and intelligent Exadata software.

The following configurations are offered:

• Quarter Rack: Containing two compute nodes and three Exadata Storage Servers.

• Half Rack: Containing four compute nodes and six Exadata Storage Servers.

• Full Rack: Containing eight compute nodes and 12 Exadata Storage Servers.

Each Exadata Cloud Service configuration is equipped with a fixed amount of memory, storage, and network resources. However, you can choose how many compute node CPU cores are enabled, up to a fixed maximum for each configuration. This choice enables you to scale an Exadata Cloud Service configuration to meet workload demands and only pay for the compute node resources that you need.

The Exadata Cloud Service compute nodes are each configured with at least one virtual machine (VM). You have root privilege for the Exadata compute node VMs, so you can load and run additional software on the Exadata compute nodes. However, you do not have administrative access to the Exadata infrastructure components, including the physical compute node hardware, network switches, power distribution units (PDUs), integrated lights-out management (ILOM) interfaces, or the Exadata Storage Servers, which Oracle administers.

Exadata Cloud Service is provisioned with database storage provided by Exadata Storage Servers. The storage is allocated to disk groups managed by Oracle Automatic Storage Management (ASM). You have administrative access to the ASM disk groups but no direct administrative access is provided, or required, for the Exadata Storage Servers. Exadata Cloud Service users seamlessly benefit from the intelligent performance and scalability of Exadata.

Subscription to Exadata Cloud Service can include all of the required Oracle Database software licenses, or you can choose to bring Oracle Database software licenses that you already own to Exadata Cloud Service. If you choose to use Oracle Database software licenses that are included with the Exadata Cloud Service subscription, then the included Oracle Database software licenses contain all of the features of Oracle Database Enterprise Edition, plus all of the database enterprise management packs and all of the Enterprise Edition options, such as Oracle Database In-Memory and Oracle Real Application Clusters (RAC). Exadata Cloud Service also comes with cloud-specific software tools that assist with automated backup, patching and upgrade operations.

Within each Exadata Cloud Service instance, you can create numerous database deployments. Apart from the inherent storage and processing capacity of your Exadata configuration, there is no set maximum for the number of database deployments that you can create.

When you provision a database deployment, it is configured according to best-practices, with your Oracle database already running, and with default backup jobs already scheduled. You have full administrative privileges for your database, and you can connect to your database by using Oracle Net Services. You are responsible for database administration tasks such as creating tablespaces and managing database users. You can also customize the default automated maintenance setup, and you control the recovery process in response to a database failure.