Oracle Corp. is updating its powerful Exadata database server appliance that’s used by companies to run its Autonomous Database and cloud applications.

The Oracle Exadata Database Machine X8, made generally available today, brings with it some “unique machine learning capabilities” that help to improve performance and monitoring. It’s the latest update of a computer that was introduced more than a decade ago.

“Today, we are improving the performance and capacity of the platform, and adding a broad range of capabilities based on artificial intelligence and machine learning to further increase Exadata’s advantages,” said Juan Loaiza, executive vice president of Mission-Critical Database Technologies at Oracle.

Analyst Holger Mueller of Constellation Research Inc. said the real value of Exadata X8 is that Oracle offers it not just for customers running its database on-premises, but also those who opt for the cloud version of its Autonomous Database deployed on Oracle Cloud Infrastructure.

“The 100% identical hardware in both private and public cloud deployments sets Oracle apart from the competition,” Mueller, who wrote a review of the appliance, told SiliconANGLE. “Exadata X8 is the platform for Oracle’s “chip to click” stack, which is its strategy to build an integrated technology stack all the way from the silicon in the CPUs to user clicks in a software-as-a-service application.”

Digging in a little further, the new machine learning capabilities include an Automatic Indexing function that learns from customer usage patterns in order to fine-tune the Oracle Database to ensure peak performance. The new feature means there’s no need for engineers to waste precious hours manually tuning Oracle’s database themselves, the company said.

Also powered by machine learning are the new automated performance monitoring capabilities. What this feature does is detect performance-related issues that may crop up, and determine their cause without the need for human intervention.

International Data Corp. analyst Carl Olofson said another key benefit of Exadata X8 is it helps enterprises to lower their costs. That’s because it’s powered by Intel Corp.’s latest Xeon computer processors and PCIe NVME flash storage technology, which help to deliver a 60% increase in I/O throughput for flash storage, and a 25% increase in IPOS per storage server, compared with the previous-generation Exadata X7 appliance.

“Each Exadata X8 storage server now features 60% more cores to offload Oracle Database processing and 40% higher capacity disk drives to support massive data growth and database consolidation strategies,” the company said, adding that there’s no price increase for these new enhancements.

In addition, Oracle is offering a reduced-cost extended storage server for infrequently accessed, older or regulatory data.

“At Hadoop/object storage prices, all customer data now receives the benefits of the Exadata scale-out architecture and Oracle Database storage,” the company added.

In addition to Exadata X8, Oracle also announced the availability of its latest Oracle Zero Data Loss Recovery Appliance X8, which as the name suggests is a separate appliance enterprises can use to safeguard against data loss when problems occur.

Oracle said the new data recovery appliance enables data to be recovered 10 times faster than conventional data deduplication appliances, and it comes with 30% greater storage capacity than its previous-generation machines.

Image: Oracle