How Exadata Smart Scan Works

A Database Machine is a massively scalable and fault tolerant piece of hardware (CPUs, RAM, discs, and networking: all perfectly balanced) combined with the Exadata smart storage software. A really powerful database server, with a disc subsystem that understands the database and take over a huge proportion of the data processing workload. This is the “offload processing” feature: no other platform can do this.

Experience shows that porting a database to a DB Machine is easy – but actually getting the benefits is harder. Before making the investment (a huge investment) in a DB Machine you will do a POC that shows that the applications work. That doesn’t mean they work as well as they could. Offload processing is more elusive than one might think, and to achieve it you may need to reconfigure your data structures and adjust your code. This is a non-trivial task that goes far beyond the usual SQL and segment tuning activities: it is a whole new layer of optimization.

We believe that the real ROI will come only from extensive work after the migration, as the application and the database are tuned to the capabilities of the Exadata platform. Yes, you will get an immediate performance boost – but you should be getting much more.

Let Oracle Certified Master DBA John Watson teach you what Exadata is and demonstrate how it works!