You are currently viewing Exadata X11M: Engineered for Speed, Elasticity, and Enterprise Security (Part 1)

Exadata X11M: Engineered for Speed, Elasticity, and Enterprise Security (Part 1)

With a vision to offer extreme scalability and high availability at high performance and lower costs, Exadata Database Machine (Exadata) is engineered as of Oracle databases. Known for modernized cloud-enabled architecture with scale-out high performant database servers, exceptional intelligent storage servers with state-of-the-art PCIe flash, RDMA accessible memory, and cloud-scalable RDMA over converged ethernet (RoCE) internal fabric, Exadata is a future-ready database that handles workloads of any scale.

As part of Oracle’s reinventive strategies, Exadata X11M becomes the super intelligent and most dominant database ever as it upbrings next-level intelligent database architecture. Exadata X11M optimizes and safeguards your critical components of databases. It can be leveraged for on-prem workloads and owned by using a subscription model. Enterprises also have the advantage of deploying X11M workloads over Oracle Cloud Infrastructure, Cloud@Customer in a hybrid model, or Multicloud (AWS, Azure, or Google Cloud) with everything managed by Oracle.

Fast and Reliable Deployment Reflects Engineering Excellence

Exadata Database machine outweighs your business from the rest as it becomes the most cost-efficient and highest-performance platform for running Oracle Databases. Exadata and its servers (database, storage, and network) can handle even the most critical workloads as these servers are pre-configured, tuned, and tested by Oracle experts and led by INFOLOB expertise. We ensure performing end-to-end testing and validation so that you experience smooth operations for increased dependencies on database software, operating system, hypervisor, drivers, and firmware. All these make Exadata a star of infrastructure as your enterprise have a promise of no single points of failure.

INFOLOB enables customers to deploy Exadata X11M wherever the business logic dictates, ensuring high availability, low latency, and governance compliance.

  • On-Prem: Ideal for workloads requiring data residency, ultra-low latency, or integration with legacy infrastructure.
  • Cloud@Customer: Brings OCI services behind your firewall with full Oracle cloud benefits.
  • OCI Native: Leverages Oracle Autonomous Services, Exadata Database Service, and dynamic scaling in the public cloud.

Our Approach to Rapid Deployment and Customization

Speed and precision are core to INFOLOB’s deployment framework. Through a proven blueprint that blends Oracle best practices with real-world enterprise experience, INFOLOB achieves:

  • Accelerated provisioning with automated scripts and zero-touch network configurations.
  • Custom architecture design aligned with current workload patterns and future expansion plans.
  • End-to-end automation of storage provisioning, database creation, and performance benchmarking.
  • Post-deployment validation to ensure every component performs to specification before go-live.

This means Exadata X11M gets optimized for your unique operational context right from the day you implement as part of its engineering excellence + business enablement.

Elastic Configurations for Scalable Enterprise Growth

Exadata Database uses a scale-out architecture for database and storage servers. As workloads increase, database, storage, and networking resources can be executed on Exadata at scale without any disruptions. This architecture empowers the organizations to scale their workloads of any size. Whereas, Exadata X11M encompasses high-bandwidth, low-latency, active-active 100Gb/sec RDMA over Converged Ethernet (RoCE) Network Fabric connecting all the above components. All these capabilities enable faster response time for OLTP operations and higher throughput for analytical workloads. Expanding its innovative capabilities with powerful database servers such as extreme scalability at every layer in its architecture, it’s architected for resilience and scalability.

Exadata X11M brings new Database Server-Z that has 32-core x86 processor and 768GB of DDR5 memory, offering customers with the database choices that meets their increasing workload requirements.

Another incredible feature – CPU scalability within each database server unleashes superior performance and utilization efficiency through the enablement of greater database and VM consolidation with higher OLTP transaction throughput.

Advancements of Exadata X11M

Oracle Exadata X11M brings powerful advancements in storage performance through in three main configurations tailored to meet diverse workload needs.

High-Capacity (HC) Storage Servers

These servers are equipped with four high-performance 6.8 TB Flash Accelerator F680 v2 NVMe PCIe 5.0 cards designed for Exadata Smart Flash Cache. They also feature twelve 22 TB, 7,200 RPM SAS hard drives, delivering a combined raw storage capacity of 264 TB—an ideal setup for data-intensive operations requiring both speed and scale.

Extreme Flash (EF) Storage Servers

Exadata X11M EF Storage Servers are entirely flash-based, offering a high-speed storage option for demanding workloads. Each server includes four 6.8 TB performance-optimized Flash Accelerator F680 v2 NVMe PCIe 5.0 cards for Smart Flash Cache, along with four large-capacity 30.72 TB NVMe PCIe SSDs. Together, they deliver a total of 122.88 TB of raw flash storage.

Advanced Caching with Exadata RDMA Memory (XRMEM)

Both HC and EF models come integrated with Exadata RDMA Memory (XRMEM), significantly improving performance, especially for OLTP read operations, which can reach up to 2.8 million 8K IOPS. Each server includes 1.5 TB of DDR5 memory—1.25 TB of which functions as a high-speed cache layer between the database buffer cache and the flash storage, while the remaining 256 GB supports Exadata System Software. This architecture enables a flash-based SQL Scan throughput of up to 100 GB/s per server—more than twice the speed of the previous generation. For analytics, Smart Scan is optimized to read columnar data directly from XRMEM, reaching scan speeds up to 500 GB/s. Processing power is delivered by two 32-core x86 processors per storage server to efficiently run system operations.

HC-Z Storage Servers

Optimized for small to mid-sized workloads, the HC-Z variant includes two 6.8 TB Flash Accelerator F680 v2 NVMe PCIe 5.0 cards for flash caching and six 22 TB, 7,200 RPM SAS disks for storage. Each server is powered by 768 GB of DDR5 memory, with 576 GB allocated to Exadata RDMA Memory for caching and 192 GB dedicated to system operations. A single 32-core x86 processor handles all Exadata system-level processes.

Exadata X11M Storage Expansion Rack

This configuration makes Exadata X11M to elastically expand by adding more database or storage servers within the same rack. Customers have the flexibility to plug and play with all the three storage server configurations within the same rack, fostering the great control of resources to match varying performance, high availability, security, and consolidation requirements. Moreover, customers can interconnect multiple Exadata racks with the help of RoCE network fabric for larger configurations.

When your databases grow beyond traditional capacity needs, whether it’s due to years of historical data, multimedia content, or large-scale document storage, the Oracle Exadata X11M Storage Expansion Rack is built to meet those extreme storage demands effortlessly.

Designed to seamlessly extend the capabilities of the Exadata Database Machine, this solution boosts Flash Cache, OLTP IOPS, and scan throughput thus ensuring performance doesn’t lag as data volume grows.

Whether you’re dealing with archived records, XML or JSON data, unstructured formats like documents and images, or LOBs and vectors, the Expansion Rack is tailored to handle high-density, high-volume workloads with precision.

Connectivity is seamless, thanks to the built-in RDMA over Converged Ethernet (RoCE) fabric, which integrates the Expansion Rack with the Exadata Database Machine using just a few straightforward commands. There’s no need to configure LUNs or mount points, simplifying setup and reducing administrative overhead.

The system starts with a flexible base configuration of four storage servers (either High Capacity [HC] or Extreme Flash [EF]), and can scale further by adding more servers as your workload or archival demands increase.

In essence, the Exadata X11M Storage Expansion Rack allows your infrastructure to grow with your data, without compromising on speed, efficiency, or manageability.

Enterprise-Class Security Features

  • Oracle Exadata is one of the most secure database machines globally, integrating security at every layer, from hardware to software.
  • Instead of handling decryption purely at the software level, Exadata pushes that task down into the storage layer using specialized hardware. This means faster decryption with less workload on the database server.
  • Data is compressed before it’s encrypted, reducing the volume of data that needs to be decrypted later. This smart sequence allows Exadata to process hundreds of GBs of fully encrypted data per second, without performance bottlenecks.
  • Oracle Transparent Data Encryption (TDE) ensures that data stays encrypted, at rest and in transit.
  • TDE also comes with a complete key management solution, removing the burden from admins.
  • Unlike traditional systems that require customers to patch together and secure each part, Exadata comes fully integrated.
  • Oracle handles the entire stack—hardware, OS, and software—so you get end-to-end, ready-to-deploy security.
  • Exadata virtual machines offer operating system-level isolation for added security. The Secure RDMA Fabric Isolation feature ensures VMs in one cluster can’t talk to VMs in another—even if they’re on the same Exadata—protecting sensitive data across departments or teams.
  • With defense-in-depth architectire, we design and develop both the database servers and storage hardware in-house, enabling features exclusive to Exadata.
  • Only cryptographically signed and trusted code is allowed to run, protecting against embedded malware or tampering.
  • Runs a customized version of Oracle Linux, with only essential components. This “nano-kernel” model reduces the attack surface and significantly strengthens the system’s resistance to threats.
  • With Oracle Linux features like Ksplice and RPM, Exadata can apply security updates without rebooting or downtime. This ensures both continuous uptime and real-time protection.
  • During drive replacement or decommissioning, Exadata uses on-device cryptographic erase instead of time-consuming overwrites. This guarantees no leftover data on any disk, flash drive, or sector—even in over-provisioned or hidden areas.

Supporting Hybrid and Multicloud Growth Strategies

In today’s diversified IT environments, infrastructure must support hybrid architectures and multicloud integrations. Exadata X11M has native compatibility with OCI and support for secure interconnects to other cloud providers.

INFOLOB works with enterprise clients to:

  • Design hybrid-ready architectures connecting on-prem, Cloud@Customer, and OCI workloads.
  • Integrate Exadata workloads with public cloud services (e.g., Oracle Database@Azure).
  • Implement data gravity-aware designs, ensuring latency-sensitive workloads remain close to data origins while leveraging cloud elasticity.

This future-proof strategy ensures that IT infrastructure doesn’t just meet current needs—it’s ready for tomorrow’s multicloud ecosystems.

INFOLOB is bringing engineering precision, deep Oracle expertise, and a strategic mindset to every deployment. From blazing-fast rollouts to bulletproof security and elastic architectures, INFOLOB ensures that your Exadata journey is smart, secure, and future-ready. When transformation is the goal, you need a partner who can turn infrastructure into impact.

Let our expertise help you write your next chapter in data infrastructure excellence.

Talk to our experts: