Domestic alternative to Oracle Exadata: Tantor XData database appliances

      Large enterprises have gained a full-fledged domestic alternative to Oracle Exadata. Tantor XData database machines offer industrial-grade performance, architectural flexibility, and complete technological independence. The Russian system provides scalability, built-in cryptographic protection, and an AI assistant for working with high-load systems, including 1C and private DBaaS services. More details in IT-World.

      When a business generates and uses large amounts of data, sooner or later the capabilities of traditional servers and database management systems become insufficient and enterprises need to move to the next level. That level is database machines (DBMs). Unlike standard systems, DBMs are a specialized product created for growing business needs. The machine automatically allocates resources and processes tens or even hundreds of thousands of operations per second through deep optimization and adaptation of hardware and software. Convenient management and maintenance of DBMs allow businesses to focus on objectives rather than infrastructure issues. Their use in corporate data centers (DCs) helps increase operational efficiency, reduce administrators’ workload, and lower the total cost of ownership of the IT landscape.

      The DBM niche in Russia was occupied by Oracle, which entered the domestic market in 2011 with Oracle Exadata. The foreign DBM was highly demanded in the corporate environment, becoming the standard for storing and processing large data volumes. Against the backdrop of restrictions on supplies and technical support for foreign IT products, including the Oracle Exadata DBM, the Russian market faced an acute need for its own high-performance database machines. Tantor Labs was the first on the Russian market to offer a full-fledged alternative to the unavailable foreign DBMs. The Tantor XData DBM lineup not only fills the niche left by departing foreign vendors but also creates a new category among domestic solutions, offering enterprises industrial-level performance and reliability, architectural flexibility, ease of support, and complete independence from imported technologies.

      Tantor XData lineup

      The Tantor Labs DBM lineup includes three models based on hardware components from the registry of the Russian Ministry of Industry and Trade and software from the registry of the Russian Ministry of Digital Development. The Tantor XData 2Y model is based on YADRO servers (3rd-generation Intel Xeon server processors and up to 8 TB of RAM). The Tantor XData 2A model uses Aquarius servers (2nd-generation Intel Xeon processors, up to 4 TB of RAM). The lineup also includes a fully Russian solution — the Tantor XData 2B DBM, built on Russian Elpitech servers and Baikal‑S processors. This DBM offers a high level of performance comparable to popular x86-64 processors (Intel Xeon Gold 6230), and its architecture is already developed for single- and dual-processor servers. Its storage system can reach one petabyte for backups using S3 storage. Tantor XData 2B is already ready today to serve as the foundation for mission-critical high-load systems: even in the minimal configuration it can handle 60,000 transactions per second, create backups at up to 35 TB/hour, provide fault tolerance, and scale resources without stopping workflows.

      All machines in the Tantor XData lineup offer Russian corporations high performance, reliability, and scalability for OLTP and OLAP workloads, the ability to create high-performance DBaaS services in on-premises data centers, and API integration with private clouds. The DBM software suite includes intelligent maintenance and resource management as well as an AI assistant. The machines are aimed at a wide range of enterprise tasks. One of the most common scenarios is working with heavy 1C:ERP systems, including migration from Microsoft SQL Server and consolidation of many 1C databases into a single hardware-software complex.

      Another use case is Private DBaaS — organizing an internal cloud database service within a corporate data center. Tantor XData 2B easily integrates into existing private clouds as a single service supporting API access. Thus, an enterprise obtains a private “cloud database machine” without dependence on external suppliers and without losing control over critical data.

      Finally, DBMs are optimal for high-load OLTP/OLAP scenarios where Oracle Exadata complexes were previously used. A single database instance can reach 50 TB in transactional use and up to 120 TB in analytical use, while maintaining low latency and predictable scalability.

      Performance proven in practice

      In OLTP mode, Tantor XData machines demonstrate around 60,000–120,000 transactions per second. Analytical operations are up to 15 times faster thanks to columnar storage and a proprietary RAID system. Backup speed reaches up to 35 TB/hour. The storage subsystem in all models supports vector indexes — a key feature for AI systems, semantic search, and analysis of large volumes of unstructured data.

      Configurations and scaling

      Tantor XData DBMs are supplied in three standard configurations, allowing customers to choose the optimal balance between performance and total cost of ownership. The Starter kit is intended for small information systems and includes three compute servers, three storage controllers, and a disk shelf with drives of 1.92–7.68 TB. The Optimal kit is aimed at high-load corporate systems and private clouds; it includes three additional compute servers and increased storage size. For large enterprises there is an Enterprise configuration consisting of three Optimal kits with the ability to scale using any kits chosen by the customer.

      An advantage of Tantor XData is a reduced total cost of ownership. The new database machine includes the Tantor Postgres DBMS in various editions, including an FSTEC-certified edition, its own software-hardware RAID array, and other platform solutions running on the Astra Linux OS. All this allows the vendor to provide the entire product value chain with its own solutions. Integration is important not only for full customer control over the system; it enables rapid refinement and adaptation of products to specific requirements, since the vendor has direct access to all development teams of the Group Astra ecosystem. This comprehensive, customer-oriented approach, together with a single point of technical support, significantly enhances the solution’s value for the end customer. Functions for dynamic reallocation of compute power, memory, and storage make it possible to adapt infrastructure to current loads without stopping services. This is especially important for organizations that work with seasonal traffic peaks or variable volumes of analytical data.

      Cryptographic data protection

      Tantor Labs is jointly developing the integration of the CryptoPro HSM software-hardware cryptographic module into the Tantor XData DBM with CryptoPro. This solution provides a high level of security and performance for cryptographic operations, including GOST encryption, aimed at preventing threats including those originating inside the customer’s internal perimeter. Object-level encryption is supported — from transaction logs to indexes and metadata — as well as protection of connections within the DBM perimeter. This approach allows the use of Tantor XData in infrastructures with heightened requirements for the protection of personal and confidential data without the need for third-party solutions.

      AI assistant

      A separate direction has been the introduction of an AI assistant into the management interface that operates without Internet access. The intelligent assistant answers technical questions about the product and DBMS, helps formulate and optimize queries, and analyzes the performance of all system components. The AI assistant not only collects information but also generates practical recommendations for the administrator: from automatic parameter tuning to warnings about potential threats. In addition, it can generate SQL queries from natural language, analyze and classify data, significantly speeding up the work of analysts and administrators.

      Conclusions

      The appearance of the Tantor XData DBM lineup has been a landmark event for the entire Russian IT industry. It is not just another hardware platform, but a complete specialized hardware-software complex for DBMS operation that combines high performance and reliability, intelligent features, cryptographic protection, and is built on Russian software and hardware.

      Tantor XData machines demonstrate that a move toward technological sovereignty is possible without compromise on performance and usability. Close cooperation between the domestic DBMS vendor and Russian manufacturers of server and network equipment opens a new chapter in the history of high-performance enterprise IT solutions — a chapter written entirely in our country.

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