Hybrid Cloud
Oracle Hybrid Cloud Offers Location, Choice, and Control
Hybrid cloud and edge computing are transforming and expanding usage of the cloud. Requirements for data sovereignty, security, latency, and field deployability have prevented adoption of public cloud for many mission-critical applications. Oracle Cloud’s hybrid and edge offerings address customer requirements for specialized deployment, disconnected and intermittently-connected operation, low latency and high performance, as well as data locality and security.
All products require tradeoffs, but to date, cloud offerings have been unnecessarily constrained. An approach focusing on large hyperscale cloud regions providing a large number of services required great expense to build, with very limited locations. Smaller scale provided greater flexibility of location, but often required tethering to the public cloud to operate. Customers with the "wrong" mix of needs around data sovereignty, low-latency, broad use cases, or level of control were left on the sidelines.
At Oracle Cloud, we made a different set of choices to serve our customers’ requirements for location flexibility and control, while not sacrificing performance, security, and value. Our portfolio of cloud, hybrid cloud, and edge offerings are helping customers adopt the cloud at their own pace and address hyperlocal data sovereignty rules and stringent IT SLAs. While our commercial and government public cloud regions address many customers and use cases, an increasing array of governments and organizations wanted our advanced cloud services on-premises or in remote locations.
Oracle Dedicated Region Cloud@Customer
Hyperscale public cloud regions are the standard platform for providing cloud services with the efficiencies of scale. Large public regions are powerful, but they have been, by necessity, limited in number because of their size and expense. These large data centers service an entire global region, in many cases across national boundaries. Applications that require data sovereignty, low-latency communication and processing, and specific security needs may not be well served by traditional hyperscale public cloud regions.
Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) has made technical and business choices that empower our customers to address these requirements.
Oracle Dedicated Region is a fully managed cloud region that brings all of our cloud services into customers’ data centers in a self-contained model. Customers get the exact same architecture, billing models, operations, security, and services as in the public regions of Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (including Oracle’s enterprise cloud applications). No other cloud provider even comes close to delivering such a broad set of cloud services in a customer’s data center today.
In contrast, AWS Outposts and Azure Stack Hub have a small subset of services, tethered to their public clouds, as shown in the table below.
Oracle Dedicated Region |
AWS Outposts[1] |
Microsoft Azure Stack Hub[2] |
|
|---|---|---|---|
| # of Services | Over 65 services. ALL services offered in Oracle’s public cloud regions. | 17 services. Small subset of public cloud. | 15 services. Small subset of public cloud. |
| Operations |
|
|
|
| Availability SLA | 99.95% includes planned downtime | N/A | N/A |
| Performance SLA | Covered (Disk IOPS and Network) | N/A | N/A |
| Manageability SLA | Covered (API Error Rate) | N/A | N/A |
| Connectivity | Fully self-contained region; metadata and API operations remain local to data center. Upon loss of connectivity API availability is not degraded. Simple FastConnect connection for LAN access to region. | Metadata and control-plane operations not local to data center. Upon loss of connectivity API availability is degraded. Setup two link aggregation groups (LAG) and VLANs on a per rack basis for LAN access. | Disconnected with feature trade-offs. Complex border, switch, DNS and firewall setup for LAN/outbound access. |
| Data Sovereignty |
|
|
|
| Economics | Pay for what you use: purely OpEx. Oracle manages capacity at no additional cost, as long as customers meet their spend commitment. | Pay by the rack. Capacity planning customers’ responsibility. | Pay for Azure Stack Hub services, and separately for OEM hardware. Pay for installation, upgrade, and decommission. |
| Compliance | SOC 1, SOC 2, ISO 27001, ISO 27017, and implements controls set in National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) 800-53 rev4 publication | N/A | N/A |
| Support | 24/7 remote support part of the consumption-based commitment. | Requires separate purchase of “Enterprise Support” for 24/7 remote support. | Contact Azure Stack Hub operator for support |
We have finished deploying Oracle Dedicated Region Cloud@Customer in our data center, and will next migrate our SaaS applications for the financial industry from on-premises to Oracle Dedicated Region Cloud@Customer. With Oracle Dedicated Region Cloud@Customer, we’ve been able to achieve the same level or even better performance than our existing on-premises system while continuing to maintain the high level of availability we need. We look forward to launching our services to customers, as well as our ongoing relationship with Oracle to operate and maintain this Dedicated Region and continuing to drive our digital transformation together.Tomoshiro Takemoto Senior Corporate Managing Director, Nomura Research Institute
OCI public and government cloud regions
OCI’s architectural choices have allowed us to rapidly grow a network of over 30 cloud regions, including multiple regions with Azure Interconnect for multicloud workloads. Customers around the world are running their businesses on our public cloud regions with higher performance, savings from globally consistent low pricing, higher disaster protection from multiple distributed regions in many countries, and greater data sovereignty.
- Australia
- Two regions (Sydney, Melbourne)
- Brazil
- Two regions (Sao Paulo, Vinhedo)
- Canada
- Two regions (Toronto, Montreal)
- Chile
- One region (Santiago)
- European Union
- Four regions (Amsterdam, Frankfurt, Marseille, Zurich)
- India
- Two regions (Mumbai, Hyderabad)
- Israel
- One region (Jerusalem)
- Japan
- Two regions (Tokyo, Osaka)
- Saudi Arabia
- One region (Jeddah)
- Singapore
- One region (Singapore)
- South Korea
- Two regions (Seoul, Chuncheon)
- Sweden
- One region (Stockholm)
- United Arab Emirates
- Two regions (Dubai, Abu Dhabi)
- United Kingdom
- Two regions (London, Newport)
- United States
- Three regions (Ashburn, Phoenix, San Jose)
- Johannesburg, South Africa
- Milan, Italy
- Chile 2
- Colombia
- France 2
- Israel 2
- Mexico
- Saudi Arabia 2
- Spain
- United Kingdom
- Two U.K. Gov regions (London, Newport)
- United States
- Two U.S. Gov regions (Ashburn, Phoenix) and three U.S. Department of Defense regions (Ashburn, Chicago, Phoenix)
When we architected Oracle Cloud Infrastructure, the tens of thousands of enterprise customers that Oracle serves across the globe made it clear that they wanted public cloud services for their most demanding enterprise workloads in their country or geo-area. Data residence requirements, country-specific compliance requirements, and network latency were some of the key driving forces. To thrill our customers, our strategy has been to launch right-sized regions closer to where our customers want them and scale them dynamically while preserving public cloud characteristics, such as elasticity, high reliability, and operational excellence. To serve the needs of our customers, we had to launch regions much faster than other cloud providers.Pradeep Vincent Vice President and Architect, Oracle Cloud Infrastructure
Government Cloud Regions
Oracle’s US government cloud includes two FedRAMP regions for US federal, state, and local government use; three regions dedicated specifically for the US Department of Defense (DoD) and federal customers who have workloads subject to DISA SRG impact level guidance; and National Security Regions especially designed and built for US Defense and Intelligence communities with associated accreditations (DoD Impact Level 6, ICD 503). Oracle also provides a dual-region sovereign cloud for the UK government and public sector.
Oracle Cloud VMware Solution
VMware is the foundation of the majority of enterprise data centers. To date, enterprises have chosen to either deploy VMware with full control on-premises or to delegate control to an MSP or hosting provider. VMware services in the cloud provided benefits not found in traditional infrastructure environments, including just-in-time provisioning, elastic capacity scaling both up and down, and pay-for-usage models. However, traditional cloud services required relinquishing full control over administration, access, and upgrades.
OCI has delivered a cloud VMware solution that offers these benefits while still giving VMware administrators full control over their environment.
Oracle Cloud VMware Solution (OCVS) is the only solution on the market that provides a native VMware-based cloud environment that offers complete control using familiar VMware tools.
VMware workloads to the cloud without having to modify them. They also want to gain scale and agility while maintaining continuity with existing VMware-based tools, processes, and policies. Customers can use Oracle VMware Solution to move or extend on-premises VMware-based workloads to OCI across all regions, including our on-premises Dedicated Regions, without rearchitecting applications or retooling operations.
OCVS offers greater customer control of the VMware environment, with the elasticity of the cloud, and is available in more regions around the world:
Oracle Cloud VMware Solution |
VMware Cloud on AWS[3] |
Azure VMware Solution[4] |
Google Cloud VMware Engine[5] |
|
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Operating Model | Customer-managed and controlled | Managed services by VMware and AWS | Managed services by Microsoft | Managed services by Google |
| Maximum nodes per VMware SDDC environment | 64 | 16 | 16 | 32 |
| Security | Customer owns root credentials. Oracle doesn’t have access to root credentials or metadata. | AWS retains root credentials and metadata perpetually. | Azure retains root credentials and metadata perpetually. | GCP retains root credentials and metadata perpetually. |
| Billing | Consolidated | Separate bills from AWS and VMware | Unspecified | Consolidated |
| Support | Oracle | VMware and AWS | Microsoft provides support | Google provides support |
| Updates, patches, and upgrades | Customer controls when and whether to upgrade. | AWS controls and decides. | Azure controls and decides. | GCP controls and decides. |
| SDDC vCenter access | Full Administrator access | Restricted access | Restricted access | Restricted access |
| Region Availability | 22 OCI regions 2 OCI Gov regions |
17 AWS regions | 9 | 10 |
| On-Premises Cloud | Yes. Oracle Dedicated Region | No. VMware Cloud on AWS Outposts (In Preview) | No. Not available on Microsoft Azure Stack Hub | No. Google Anthos cannot run IaaS on-premises |
Entel migrated more than 60 production applications to Oracle Cloud Infrastructure, including our mission-critical customer engagement, business intelligence, and risk management systems. We have a strong technical team, including many VMware experts, so a managed VMware service is not helpful. We need administrative access to the VMware software so we can maintain control of every aspect of the VMware environment. Oracle Cloud VMware Solution offers my team the exact same VMware experience they had in the data center but with cloud elasticity and access to Oracle Cloud services, providing a fast, easy, and cost-effective path to migrate our VMware-based applications to the cloud. As a result, performance has increased dramatically, and downtime is close to zero.Helder Branco Chief Technology Officer, Entel
Hybrid Cloud with Oracle Exadata Cloud@Customer
A common hybrid cloud pattern is a “remotely-tethered” rack or server on the customer’s premises. The "control plane" or service management runs in the public cloud to take advantage of existing services, governance, and operational control, while hardware and data remain on-premises. This model gives tremendous operational advantages, but choices must be made where data, metadata, and backups are located, and how interruption of connectivity affects operations and control.
Oracle Exadata Cloud@Customer delivers high-performance Exadata Cloud Service capabilities directly to a customer’s data center. The service helps address requirements for strict data sovereignty and security by retaining data securely on-premises while shifting operational management to an OCI-managed cloud service. Once provisioned, databases remain fully operational even when disconnected from the cloud. Optional Oracle Autonomous Database capabilities eliminate up to 80% of manual database operations. The solution is delivered with an all-inclusive or bring-your-own license subscription model, and the ability to scale up or down seamlessly as needed.
| Oracle Exadata C@C | RDS on AWS Outposts[6] | Azure Stack Hub[7] | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Min SQL read latency | 19 µs | ≥ 1000 µs | OEM variable |
| Max SQL read IOPS | 12 million | 960,000 | OEM variable |
| Max SQL throughput | 300 GB/s | 28.5 GB/s | OEM variable |
| Max database size | 476 TB | 64 TB | 4.75 TB |
| Time in production | 3.5 years | < 1 year | 3.5 years |
| Purpose-built for database workloads | Database-aware Flash Cache and persistent memory, offload SQL to storage; Hybrid Columnar Compression | Non-optimized infrastructure for database workloads | Non-optimized infrastructure for database workloads |
| Enterprise database capabilities | Oracle RAC, Oracle Active Data Guard, and advanced database security; Oracle Multitenant, multiworkload, multidata types in one engine | No AWS native DBs (Aurora, Redshift, etc.); RDS only for open source MySQL, PostgreSQL | No DBaaS on Azure Stack Hub |
| Autonomous Database: self-driving, self-securing, self-repairing | yes |
yes |
no |
| No downtime for maintenance | yes |
no |
no |
| Delivered and supported as a service by cloud provider | yes |
yes |
no |
| Service Level Objective | 99.95%, including planned downtime | no |
no |
Back in 2010, we adopted the first Exadata platform to improve a display manufacturing system. Now 10 years later, we have implemented nearly 300 Exadata systems for our customers in manufacturing, financial services, construction and engineering and public and private sector services. Aligning with our digital innovation strategy and our journey to enterprise cloud, we have now adopted the first Exadata Cloud@Customer in one of our datacenters and look forward to deploying Autonomous Database.Dr. WP Hong CEO, Samsung SDS
Oracle Roving Edge Infrastructure
Edge computing applications reside at or beyond the boundary of a cloud region or network. Self-contained, independent operation with isolated or intermittent connectivity is key to satisfy the requirements of these remote deployments. Physical instances must have enough processing, throughput, and storage to handle intensive workloads in limited timeframes.
Oracle Roving Edge Infrastructure is a service that extends fundamental Oracle Cloud Infrastructure capabilities to a ruggedized device. This allows applications with requirements for low-latency, time-sensitivity, and high throughput to function even in locations without network connectivity.
The key component of Oracle Roving Edge is the Roving Edge Device (RED)—a high-powered and portable server node. Customers configure a RED in their OCI console with the same services, applications, and data they use in the cloud. OCI then ships the device to the customer. Devices are deployed in the field and can operate either without a network connection or connected to the internet or a local network. After the device usage is complete, the customer returns the RED to an OCI Transfer Station, where data can be synchronized with the cloud and the device is prepared to be used again. Roving Edge Devices can also be deployed in larger clusters for more resilient, longer-lived compute resources or mobile data centers.
Oracle Roving Edge Infrastructure |
AWS Snowball Edge Compute Optimized[8] |
Azure Stack Edge Pro[9] |
|
|---|---|---|---|
| CPU cores | 40 | 26 | 20 |
| DRAM | 512 GB | 208 GB | 128 GB |
| Storage | 61 TB NVMe 2 x 1 TB NVMe (System OS) |
42 TB HDD 7.68 TB NVMe for VMs |
12.8 TB NVMe for local cache |
| AI/ML Support | NVIDIA Tesla T4 GPU | NVIDIA Tesla V100 | Intel Arria 10 GX FPGA or NVIDIA T4 GPU |
| Clustering | 5-15 node clusters | 5-10 node clusters |
OCI services for hybrid cloud architecture
Learn about OCI’s offerings for on-premises cloud environments that support hybrid cloud architecture.
Understanding hybrid cloud deployments
Hybrid cloud architecture uses both a public cloud provider, such as OCI, and on-premises infrastructure to meet enterprise IT needs. This approach provides the flexibility to move some workloads to the public cloud while retaining others on-premises.
According to industry analyst IDC, “hybrid cloud has become central to successful digital transformation efforts.” This architecture is gaining importance as certain workloads cannot be moved to public cloud data centers for reasons that include data sovereignty, data residency, network latency, and infrastructure performance. Oracle Cloud@Customer brings the complete portfolio of cloud services into customer data centers, enabling hybrid cloud architectures.
Differentiation
- Dedicated Region Cloud@Customer is the only offering among public cloud vendors that brings 65+ services into customers’ data centers
- Meet end-user requirements with SLAs for 99.95% availability, performance and manageability
- Use a self-service, high performance Oracle Database with Exadata Cloud@Customer
- Automate scaling, tuning, provisioning, patching, and fault management with Autonomous Database on Exadata Cloud@Customer
Many large-scale data center users have been working through plans for cloud migration, but struggle to move gradually, keeping processing on-premises and moving applications and data in a stepwise manner to the cloud. Exadata Cloud@Customer and Oracle Dedicated Region Cloud@Customer overcome this issue by, in effect, bringing the cloud to the customer.
Carl Olofson
Research Vice President, IDC
Complete cloud capabilities within your data center
Oracle Dedicated Region is a completely managed cloud region that brings all of Oracle’s second-generation public cloud services and Oracle Fusion SaaS applications into your data center, and runs these without data sovereignty concerns. The solution enables autonomous operations that eliminate human error and maximize the security of your data.
Oracle Dedicated Region can be used with OCI’s public cloud services for hybrid cloud deployments and can be interconnected with other cloud providers. With Oracle Dedicated Region, customers increase agility and innovation by accessing new cloud services on-premises as soon as Oracle makes them available in public cloud regions—all while lowering costs with OCI’s leading price-performance. Further, you can leverage the exact same SLAs, APIs, and tools available in Oracle’s public cloud, and experience low-latency interaction with your on-premises applications and databases.
Advanced machine-learning–based database for on-premises deployments
Oracle Autonomous Database on Exadata Cloud@Customer combines all the benefits of having Oracle Exadata in your data center with the simplicity of an autonomous cloud service. It helps you meet strict data sovereignty and security requirements and eliminate many manual database and infrastructure management tasks, while supporting on-premises enterprise applications with high Exadata performance.
The solution can be used with OCI’s public cloud services for hybrid cloud deployments and can be interconnected with other cloud providers. Oracle Autonomous Database enables you to consolidate databases with autonomous operations, and to build a modern enterprise data warehouse without the challenge and cost of moving your on-premises data. IT teams benefit from machine-learning–based automation of provisioning, configuring, and tuning—reducing management cost and eliminating downtime with automated error detection, correction, and patching.
High-performance managed database for your data center
Oracle Exadata Cloud@Customer combines the performance of Oracle Exadata with the simplicity, flexibility, and affordability of a managed database service in your data centers. It’s the simplest way to move your existing Oracle databases to the cloud, providing full compatibility with your existing Exadata systems and Oracle Exadata Cloud Service.
The solution can be used with OCI’s public cloud services for hybrid cloud deployments and can be interconnected with other cloud providers. Exadata Cloud@Customer enables customers to meet data sovereignty and low-latency requirements in existing data center resources while achieving higher database consolidation and scaling that isn’t possible on-premises.
Cloud computing and storage services at the edge
Oracle Roving Edge Infrastructure accelerates deployment of cloud workloads outside the data center. Ruggedized Oracle Roving Edge Devices (Oracle REDs) deliver cloud computing and storage services at the edge of networks and in disconnected locations, allowing faster processing close to the data source and enabling faster insights into the data.
Existing Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) virtual machines (VMs) and object storage can be synchronized to Oracle Roving Edge devices using the same portal and tenancy tooling as our public regions. Roving Edge Devices can be used for fast data collection and processing in the field, application deployment to remote facilities, development/test in cloud and deployment to edge, and artificial intelligence/machine learning (AI/ML) at the edge.
Resources
Adopt hybrid cloud with OCI
Browse reference architectures and use cases, validate technical requirements, and learn best practices on hybrid cloud architectures.
Start a free Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) trial.
As of February 2021:
[1] https://aws.amazon.com/outposts/features/, https://aws.amazon.com/outposts/faqs/, https://aws.amazon.com/outposts/pricing/
[2] https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/products/azure-stack/hub/#faqs, https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/global-infrastructure/services/?products=all®ions=azure-stack-hub, https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure-stack/operator/azure-stack-disconnected-deployment?view=azs-2002, https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure-stack/operator/azure-stack-network?view=azs-2002, https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure-stack/operator/azure-stack-billing-and-chargeback?view=azs-2002
[3] https://configmax.vmware.com/guest?vmwareproduct=VMware%20Cloud%20on%20AWS&release=VMware%20Cloud%20on%20AWS&categories=68-0,52-0,3-0,53-0,54-0,55-0,56-0,57-0,58-0,75-0,76-0, https://www.vmware.com/content/dam/digitalmarketing/vmware/en/pdf/partners/vmware-cloudtm-on-aws-technical-overview.pdf, https://www.vmware.com/content/dam/digitalmarketing/vmware/en/pdf/support/vmw-cloud-aws-service-description.pdf, https://cloud.vmware.com/vmc-aws/faq, https://docs.vmware.com/en/VMware-Cloud-on-AWS/services/com.vmware.vmc-aws-operations/GUID-7458E592-FC6E-43A8-B0BE-505B1435D12D.html, https://aws.amazon.com/vmware/faqs/
[4] https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/azure-vmware/faq, https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/global-infrastructure/services/?regions=all&products=azure-vmware
[5] https://cloud.google.com/vmware-engine/docs/concepts-private-cloud, https://cloud.google.com/vmware-engine/docs/concepts-permission-model, https://cloud.google.com/vmware-engine/docs/concepts-vmware-components, https://cloud.google.com/blog/topics/hybrid-cloud/announcing-google-cloud-vmware-engine, https://cloud.google.com/vmware-engine/docs/concepts-permission-model, https://cloud.google.com/vmware-engine/
[6] https://aws.amazon.com/outposts/features/, https://aws.amazon.com/outposts/faqs/, https://aws.amazon.com/rds/faqs/, https://aws.amazon.com/outposts/pricing/, Performance calculated for maximum 12 servers from https://aws.amazon.com/about-aws/whats-new/2019/04/amazon-rds-for-oracle-now-supports-64tib/, https://docs.amazonaws.cn/en_us/AmazonRDS/latest/UserGuide/CHAP_Storage.html, https://docs.aws.amazon.com/AmazonRDS/latest/UserGuide/Concepts.DBInstanceClass.html
[7] https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/products/azure-stack/hub/, https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure-stack/user/azure-stack-acs-differences?view=azs-2002
[8] https://docs.aws.amazon.com/snowball/latest/developer-guide/specifications.html#specs-compute-optimized and https://docs.aws.amazon.com/snowball/latest/developer-guide/UsingCluster.html as of January 2021
[9] https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/databox-online/azure-stack-edge-gpu-overview, https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/pricing/details/azure-stack/edge/#azureStackEdgePro, and https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/databox-online/azure-stack-edge-gpu-technical-specifications-compliance as of January 2021