Oracle Exadata Database Machine

Smart Flash Cache

Overview

Smart Flash Cache is an automatically managed tier of flash on every Exadata Extreme Flash and High Capacity Storage Server. Exadata Smart Flash Cache is used in conjunction with Exadata RDMA Memory Data (XRMEM) to automatically cache frequently accessed data while keeping infrequently accessed data on disk, delivering the high I/O rates and fast response times of flash along with the large capacity and low cost of disk.

In addition to caching frequently accessed data, Exadata storage servers uniquely understand the different classes of database I/O requests. This knowledge ensures that certain long-running operations, such as backups, do not replace valuable cached data with infrequently accessed data. Such operations are therefore serviced solely by the storage server disk drives without causing any cache pollution. Database-conscious caching algorithms such as these ensure that the smart flash cache is utilized to service database requests in the most optimal way.

Based on observed access patterns, Exadata automatically caches hot data in either XRMEM or in the Smart Flash Cache, ensuring the highest performance.

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