Oracle has announced the general availability of Oracle Database Appliance X3-2, which provides up to twice the performance and supports over four times the storage compared to the original Oracle Database Appliance. 
Customers can instantly grow their data volumes by simply connecting a Storage Expansion Shelf – no administration required.
Oracle Database Appliance X3-2 optionally features a virtualised platform, which is built on Oracle VM, enabling ISVs to package and ship a complete solution-in-a-box.
With the addition of virtualisation support, customers can quickly deploy complete, highly available solution appliances to remote branch office locations where IT footprint and skills may be a challenge.
The Oracle Database Appliance Virtual Platform reduces software licensing requirements by leveraging Oracle VM’s unique hard partitioning capabilities. It also extends pay-as-you-grow software licensing to all Oracle software.
Oracle Database Appliance is a complete package of software, server, storage and networking engineered for simplicity and high availability to help customers and partners take advantage of the world’s most popular database.
By simplifying deployment, maintenance and support of database workloads, the Oracle Database Appliance helps businesses of all sizes reduce their risk while saving time and money managing their valuable data and applications.
With built-in one-button deployment, patching and database provisioning, simplified VM management and automatic phone home capabilities, the Oracle Database Appliance X3-2 reduces cost, resource and skills required to build and maintain a highly-available database system.
Oracle Database Appliance X3-2 provides a flexible and scalable platform that enables organisations to ensure performance and minimise license spend by automatically pinning the database and application VMs to specific cores and maximise value by paying only for capacity used by database and applications.
The Oracle Database Appliance X3-2 extends rapid deployment and simplified usability to enterprises and partners by streamlining deployment and management via pre-configured Oracle VM Templates for Oracle Database, Oracle WebLogic Server, and some Oracle Applications.
The Oracle Database Appliance X3-2 further simplifies implementation and management of data workloads by integrating servers, storage, networks and databases for high availability. With a single appliance, customers can:
* Reduce power and cooling with a smaller IT footprint; and
* Decrease total cost of ownership by lowering both capital and operational costs.
Additionally, Oracle upgraded the Oracle Database Appliance X3-2 hardware with 512Gb of memory, 18Tb SAS disk storage and 800Gb flash to enhance performance for online transaction processing (OLTP) and data warehousing.
Compared with the previous version, the Oracle Database Appliance X3-2 now offers:
* Up to two-times faster performance;
* Over four-times storage capacity;
* Almost three-times flash; and
* Over 2,5-times the memory.
“When we introduced the Oracle Database Appliance, it offered growing businesses and departments a greatly simplified way to manage and harness the power of Oracle Real Application Clusters,” says Sohan DeMel, VP, product strategy and business development, Oracle.
“With the second generation, we’ve infused this engineered system with up to twice the power and added virtualisation support.”