Oracle announced the general availability of its Exadata Database Service on AWS, a year after the initial launch of the Database@AWS offering. The service runs Oracle databases on Amazon’s infrastructure and lets customers define the required compute and storage capacity.

Database@AWS, introduced in 2024, enables Oracle databases to operate on Amazon EC2, AWS Analytics, and AI/ML services. The service became generally available in July 2023, and the new Exadata offering adds the high‑performance hardware platform to the service.

Exadata combines Oracle‑engineered hardware with software to provide pooled storage and high availability, eliminating the need for separate database and storage servers. Customers can specify the compute and storage capacity required. However, licensing terms differ from native AWS services. Under a bring‑your‑own‑license model, a processor license is required for every eight engineered central processing units, compared with one license per two virtual CPUs in Amazon RDS or EC2. While compute and storage pricing for Exadata is higher than for standard RDS/EC2 instances and configuration options are less granular, the offering can be attractive to organizations constrained by existing Oracle license agreements, Nick Walter, CTO of House of Brick, an Oracle licensing consultancy, said. The cost structures, minimum configuration requirements, and licensing metrics differ significantly from running Oracle databases on native AWS services.

Craig Guarente, founder and CEO of Palisade Compliance, noted that many customers remain bound by legacy Exadata contracts. He said Oracle has generated uncertainty regarding support and licensing costs, which may encourage customers to consider Oracle Cloud Infrastructure. He added that hyperscalers such as AWS, Google, and Microsoft cooperate with Oracle to capture revenue from on‑premises workloads while also promoting migration to their own database services.

The Register has requested comment from Oracle. The service may appeal to organizations seeking to consolidate Oracle deployments in the cloud, but cost and licensing considerations remain unresolved.