Oracle certifies its database for Arm architecture on-prem and in cloud

Oracle has certified its flagship Database 19c Enterprise Edition database for nan Arm architecture, successful nan unreality aliases on-prem – provided it runs connected an Ampere processor.

Databases are a captious and ubiquitous workload, truthful Oracle bringing its flagship merchandise to Arm will make nan architecture easier to see for galore enterprises. As specified it's a fillip for Arm servers, which – contempt having a beardown communicative successful position of price/performance and power depletion – haven't yet made a dent successful nan server market.

(Notably, earlier this twelvemonth our related publication The Next Platform crunched nan numbers and suggested Arm-powered boxes could relationship for 19 percent of server shipments by 2026.)

That's bully news for Ampere – a standout subordinate successful Arm servers pinch its manycore Altra processors, which are offered by Oracle, Microsoft, Equinix, and Google successful their hyperscale clouds.

It's besides bully news for Oracle, which invested successful Ampere successful 2019.

And possibly it's bully news for Oracle users. The announcement states that "Oracle Database 19c costs half arsenic overmuch erstwhile moving connected Ampere Altra processors owed to nan debased Core Factor."

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A "Core Factor" is 1 of Oracle's licensing constructs that sees astir caller AMD and Intel CPUs rated arsenic requiring 0.5 of a licence for each beingness core. Ampere CPUs are presumably rated astatine 0.25 licenses per halfway – a level Oracle already offers for its ain SPARC processors.

Oracle's promised migrations to Arm will beryllium simple: its Recovery Manager (RMAN) tin beryllium utilized to backmost up databases connected their existing platform, pinch restores past capable to usage Arm machines arsenic a reconstruct target.

While certifying its database connected Arm is simply a large deal, Oracle continues to backmost different architectures – it precocious upgraded immoderate of its data-munching appliances pinch caller AMD Epyc CPUs.

And Big Red's database is acold from nan first specified instrumentality to tally connected Arm: MySQL has done truthful for years, MariaDB tin too, arsenic does MongoDB. If you really wanted to revisit Informix, it besides runs connected Arm. ®