Understanding Oracle’s ECPU With Autonomous Database.

Oracle’s Autonomous Database has undergone a significant transformation in its billing metric, transitioning from OCPU to ECPU. In this blog post, we’ll explore what ECPU is, the pricing details, benefits, and a recommended approach for new and existing Autonomous Databases.

What is an ECPU?

Introduced in early 2023, an ECPU (Elastic Compute Processing Unit) is the standard billing metric for Autonomous Database. Unlike its predecessor, OCPU which is a physical measure of compute resources. An ECPU is an abstracted measure of compute resources. ECPUs are based on the number of cores elastically allocated from a pool of compute and storage servers.

While provisioning a new database or cloning an existing database, the minimum CPU count defaults to two ECPUs.

The difference between ECPUs and OCPUs:

OCPUs are defined as the equivalent of one physical core with hyper-threading enabled, and are replaced by the more versatile ECPU with abstracted measures.

As technology improves, the processor’s price and performance characteristics will change. Oracle aims to provide a durable pricing metric independent of the exact make, model, or clock speed of the underlying processor with ECPU.

Pricing Details:

At this time, the pricing for ECPU varies for different Autonomous Database services:

• Autonomous Data Warehouse: $0.336 per ECPU per hour
• Autonomous Transaction Processing: $0.336 per ECPU per hour
• Autonomous JSON Database: $0.0807 per ECPU per hour
• APEX Service: $0.0807 per ECPU per hour

Storage pricing in the ECPU billing metric is also detailed for various services.

Benefits of ECPUs:

ECPUs offer several advantages, including:

• Similar or better price-performance than OCPUs
• Lower entry price, with the smallest configuration starting at 2 ECPUs
• Finer-granularity pricing with one ECPU increment for resizing or autoscaling
• Introduction of new features, such as Elastic Resource Pools, available exclusively with ECPUs

Migration and Retiring OCPU:

Oracle recommends using ECPU for new Autonomous Databases, and OCPU has been retired for Autonomous Data Warehouse and Autonomous Transaction Processing as of January 2024. Existing OCPU databases are not modified, but Oracle advises updating to ECPU for future benefits.

Converting to ECPU:

Database conversion from OCPU to ECPU can be done without downtime via the database console UI or APIs. Customers can also clone OCPU-based databases to ECPU-based ones.

Sizing and Performance:

Sizing recommendations for ECPU databases focus on ensuring similar or better performance based on costs. Oracle encourages customers to work with their sales teams for new databases or migrations from Oracle Database to Autonomous Database.

Feature Parity:

ECPU-based databases have the same features and performance characteristics as OCPU-based databases. Auto-scaling, autonomous data guard, cloning, and other core features are fully supported in both billing metrics.

Conclusion:

Oracle’s introduction of ECPU as a long-term pricing metric ensures simplicity and flexibility as hardware systems evolve. Customers are encouraged to adopt ECPU with confidence, knowing they will experience similar or better price-performance without significant changes to their Autonomous Database usage.