This document compares Netezza, Teradata, and Exadata databases across several criteria such as architecture, scalability, reliability, performance, compatibility, affordability, and manageability. Some key highlights are that Netezza uses an asymmetric massively parallel processing architecture while Teradata uses a true MPP architecture. Teradata and Exadata can scale storage and memory linearly while Netezza has fixed hardware. All three databases provide high availability but Exadata has redundancy at every layer.

1. NETEZZA VS TERADATA VS
EXADATA
Asis Mohanty
CBIP, CDMP
asismohanty@gmail.com

2. Comparison Criteria
• Architecture
• Scalability
• Reliability
• Performance
• Compatibility
• Affordability
• Manageability

3. Architecture
Functionality Netezza Teradata Exadata
Commodity/Proprietary Proprietary Proprietary Proprietary
Asymmetric Massively
Parallel Processing (best Hybrid MPP-Shared
combination of SMP + everything
MPP MPP) True MPP architecture.Clustered
Recommended for Data
Warehouse and Both OLTP and EDW Both OLTP and EDW
OLTP/EDW Analytical platform supported supported
Bynets - 10 Gigabit
Ethernet
10gbps gigabyte Interconnect node to 40gbps infiniband
Interconnect Ethernet node switch
FPGA-Field Smart scan and data
Storage layer Programmable Gate offloaded on storage
offloading Arrays server
Hardware Flexibilty Fixed Fixed Fixed
Linux and solaris-
O/S flexibility Linux-preconfigured o/s Linux preconfigured o/s

4. Scalability
Functionality Netezza Teradata Exadata
Eight nodes in a fully Can scale from qtr to
Linear Scalability for Scale upto qtr->half- populated cabinet half and full rack upto 8
storage >full rack scalable to 6 cabinets full racks.
Linear Scalability for 96 GB memory in Fixed memory of 96gb
memory fixed each node per node
Teradata integrated
data warehouse high-
speed data transfer
infrastructure and
native Hadoop Open to use
Open to third party open to use hadoop for connectivity are hadoop/nosql for
storage unstructured data included. unstructured data
96gb can expand to
Memory Exapansion Scalable 144gb per node
Scalable up to 6 fully
populated cabinets
and 200 Terabytes of Storage expansion can
Storage Exapansion Scalable up to PB customer data space scale upto

5. Reliability
Functionality Netezza Teradata Exadata
Teradata software High availabilty -
redundant design clustered instances.
using journals and Redundancy at every
Availability High availability fallback mechanism. layer.
High redundancey ASM
RAID-1 & RAID-0 mirroring as storage
Mirroring Full mirroring Available layer
Data integrity Fully ACID ACID compliant Fully ACID

6. Performance
Functionality Netezza Teradata Exadata
Query data offloaded to
storage layer and using
AMPP (Asymmetric storage index it
Massively Parallel retrieved required rows
Processing), Distribution avoiding unnecessary
Storage scan Key & Row-Id .. i/o
Teradata is based on
Primary Index and
Hashing algorithm is
Indexing No Indexing dependent on PI Required for oltp
5tb solid state disk for
Flash Memory ?? ?? memory cache
Storage Compression 10X Compression 30% compression 10x compression
10x compression for
achived data.
Teradata 13 Uncompressed
compresses mostly all overhead is zero as
10X Compression (Stores data types. data read from storage
Columnar Compression columnr compression) Reduced System I/O. in compressed format
Row based
compression No Oltp compression

7. Performance (Conn..)
Functionality Netezza Teradata Exadata
operates at the data
storage block level to
Block Level Host & Snippet takes deliver dramatic
Compression care of this. space savings
Shared Nothing
architecture, data is
stored equally on all
Shared nothing along amps and fetched in
with AMPP(Asymmetric parallel. (more amps
Massively Parallel implies faster Mini 48 threads per
Parallelism Processing) Architecture processing) node
Query used the
parallelism based on
SPU & FPGA takes care of Table level partition proper partitioning at
Condtional Parallelism this support table level.
Unconditional
Parallelism NA Doesn't support
Based on Hashing
~ 10 TB/Hr using Bulk algorithm,data is
load or Informatica stored equally on all 7tb/hr on full rack. Flat
Data loading Rate Fastreader amps. file loading

8. Compatibility
Functionality Netezza Teradata Exadata
All BI tools can be used. All BI tools can be used.
Can use existing Compatible with all Can use existing
apps/tools with almost BI Tools but apps/tools with almost
no modification (out of Customization no modification (out of
BI app/tool integration the box) required the box)
Required minimal
changes for
partitioning if porting
data from other
database vendors. Not
Unnecessary/Slightly required for oracle
Data restructuring required. Automatic databases

9. Affordability
Functionality Netezza Teradata Exadata
Upfront entry cost Less than $1M Less than $1M $1M for full rack
Less than 1 DBA and Less than 1 DBA and Less than 1 DBA and
Ongoing admin costs system administrator system administrator system administrator
Support/Maintenance
cost Less Medium 132000K for Full rack

10. Manageability
Functionality Netezza Teradata Exadata
Server/DBMS/disk
integration Fully integrated Fully Integrated Fully Integrated
Minimal - Gives
recommendations for
optimal performance if
Performance tuning Not Required coded wrongly. Minimal
Comes with Industry
Supports Industry specific logical data
Data modeling Standard Data models models (Integrated) Unnecessary
Install time Less than 1 day Less than 1 day
Expansion/
Upgradation Simple Simple