#OOW19: Top Announcements and Main Takes

21 November 2019

It was a very interesting Oracle Open World this September in San Francisco.
Here are my main takes on the various keynote announcements, sorted according to importance.

Support ending for non-CDB architecture
1. The Oracle Database non-CDB architecture will be de-supported from Oracle Database 20c onwards. This is quite the wake-up call for organizations reluctant to make the switch to multi-tenancy up until now.
Oracle Autonomous Linux
1. Oracle Linux has been rebranded as Oracle Autonomous Linux, with the following reported capabilities:
  - Auto provisioning
  - Auto scaling
  - Auto tuning
  - Auto online patching and updating
  - Auto security monitoring and remediation
2. It is said to be 100 percent compatible with IBM Red Hat – obviously to attract Red Hat customers to migrate their databases to the “new” OS.
New cloud offering: Oracle Data Safe
1. The unified database security control center has the following reported capabilities:
  - Security configuration assessment
  - User risk assessment
  - User activity auditing
  - Sensitive data discovery
  - Data masking
Gen 2 Exadata Cloud@Customer
1. Private cloud has been rebranded as “Cloud@Customer,” now offering Gen 2 Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) for on-prem customers
2. Looks exactly like Oracle Database running in the public cloud
3. Said to have easier installation than Gen 1
4. Fully autonomous database at customer coming in 2020
Two new Exadata X8 models
1. Adopting market trend NVMeoF (non-volatile Memory (PCI) Express over Fabrics) and no longer using InfiniBand! (Mellanox’s cumbersome driver stack was a big drawback.)
  - Faster RDMA over Converged Ethernet (RoCE) over 100Gbps Ethernet lines
2. Exadata X8M model (M = memory)
  1. Said to have super low latency
  2. Also implements Intel’s new 3D XPoint persistent memory technology:
    https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/architecture-and-technology/intel-optane-technology.html
3. Both models are running Oracle Linux 7. Exadata HW and firmware teams have finally made the transition to Red Hat 7.x.
VMware cooperation
1. New hybrid cloud strategy named “Oracle Cloud VMware” will allow customers to run VMware workloads over Oracle Cloud.
2. No doubt that this is a win-win for both VMware (which can establish a cloud presence in a Linux KVM based cloud virtualization world) and Oracle (which can attract high-end VMware-based on-prem implementations to its public cloud).
Oracle Database offerings
1. Database on-premises
  - Customer data center
  - Purchased
  - Customer managed
2. Database Cloud@Customer
  - Customer data center
  - Subscription
  - Oracle managed
3. Database in public cloud
  - Oracle Cloud
  - Subscription
  - Oracle managed
20 new Oracle Cloud regions (to be launched until EOY 2020)
1. New Israeli multi-data center Oracle Cloud region
Oracle 19c upgrade requires Linux 7

For more info you can contact me directly at: ortal.bashan@axxana.com
Ortal Bashan is VP Architecture at Axxana, a global leader in providing continuous availability and zero data loss over any distance over existing replication lines.