Many folks have been wondering about when or if Oracle will integrate servers based on the Intel Xeon 7500 (Nehalem EX) family of processors. As of this morning, there are two freshly-announced packaging options that include:
- Exadata Database Machine X2-8 HP Full Rack
- Exadata Database Machine X2-8 HC Full Rack
Both of these configuration options offer two 8-socket Xeon 7500 systems each with 64 processor cores and 1 TB of physical memory. Also included is support for 8 paths of 10GbE connectivity.
The HP/HC identifiers stand for High Performance and High Capacity respectively and relate to the hard drive options available in the Exadata Storage Servers. The High Performance option is based on the 15,000 RPM 600 GB SAS drives and the High Capacity storage option is based on 2TB 7,200 RPM SAS drives. No SATA option.
The two 8-socket servers are attached to 14 Exadata Storage Servers each based on the Xeon 5600 (Westmere EP) family of Intel processors with 12 hard drives and the same complement of Exadata Smart Flash Cache as was available in the previous generation of X2-2 offerings (384 GB per Storage Server).
I shouldn’t think folks are too surprised that Xeon 7500-based servers have found their way into Exadata packaging. Oracle has been shipping the Sun Fire x4800 for some time now as I blogged in my post entitled Will Oracle Ever Release Sun Servers Based On Westmere EP and Nehalem EX Processors? Yes. However, folks may be (pleasantly) surprised to hear that the Exadata Database Machine X2-8 will offer support for either Solaris 11 Express or Oracle Linux 5 Update 5 with the Unbreakable Enterprise Linux kernel.
Kevin Closson's Blog: Platforms, Databases and Storage 
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