Join Jia Shi and Gavin Parish for an informal chat about all matters related to Exadata X8M. Learn about Persistent Memory (PMEM) and RDMA over Ethernet (RoCE) and how they integrate into Exadata’s architecture.

0:11 Welcome
1:17 Gavin Parish introduction
1:29 Jia Shi introduction
1:55 Why X8M is a leap in technology
2:15 RDMA over Ethernet (RoCE) in X8M
2:42 InfiniBand and RoCE compared
3:10 Why RoCE replaces InfiniBand in Exadata
3:25 -- Why Exadata adopted InfiniBand
4:30 -- Now Ethernet / RoCE caught up
5:06 -- Cloud factors favoring Ethernet
5:44 -- RoCE advantages summarized
6:32 Benefits of RoCE for Exadata
6:58 -- Context: Exadata vision
7:26 -- RoCE is key to scaling Exadata's shared storage architecture
8:23 -- How RoCE supports shared storage architecture
8:41 -- 3 things that make a good network:
8:46 -- -- (1) low latency (for OLTP)
9:23 -- -- (2) high bandwidth (for Analytics workloads)
10:09 -- -- (3) low latency, high bandwidth but at low/no cost
10:22 -- -- originally only InfiniBand RDMA avoided a lot memory copies, kernel calls, etc.
12:29 Why use RDMA and internal network to communicate with storage
12:44 -- Smart Scan's required RDMA, ruling out storage protocols and plain Ethernet
15:08 RoCE Internal Network Fabric - simple OSI stack, application level uses same RDMA verbs
15:35 Moving to RoCE preserves code and benefits from InfiniBand - and stability!
17:56 Exadata delivers leading edge of technology - not the bleeding edge
21:45 Persistent Memory (PMEM) in Exadata X8M
22:08 -- What PMEM is and
22:45 -- How PMEM fits in the storage hierarchy
24:12 -- PMEM is a new storage tier in Exadata
24:36 -- PMEM is new silicon, not RAM, not Flash
24:54 -- PMEM between RAM and Flash in capacity, performance, and price
25:41 How RoCE and PMEM together lower latency dramatically
27:20 -- in the context of Exadata's architecture
35:17 Putting PMEM as a tier in (shared) storage instead of in disk form factor
36:02 Software is key to Oracle's PMEM technical leadership
36:40 How PMEM and DRAM are used in Exadata Storage Servers
39:34 How would others enable PMEM use / benefits?
41:30 Exadata's architecture adopts and evolves with new technology
41:57 -- adding PMEM is a significant change in the architecture
42:11 -- this is possible because Exadata is database-aware at all levels
42:45 -- for example, storage knows that a write is database log write
43:26 How are Exadata releases done? Why name this X8M and not X9?
45:03 InfiniBand and future versions of Exadata -- we maintain continuity
48:36 -- Same network at the application level
49:06 -- Oracle's own cloud runs multiple generations of Exadata
49:50 End and thanks