Autonomous Database on Dedicated Exadata Infrastructure provides the following set of features to offer affordable, feature-rich database service in the cloud.

• Fully Managed: Oracle simplifies end-to-end management of the database with self-driving Autonomous Database technology. With Autonomous Database, you do not need to configure or manage any hardware or install any software. Autonomous Database handles creating the database, backing up the database, patching and upgrading the database, growing or shrinking the database, and other routine database maintenance tasks without human intervention and with no service downtime.
• Fully Tuned: Autonomous Database is designed as a “Load and Go” service to define tables, load data, and start running queries. Autonomous Database provides great performance out of the box. You can run your queries using Oracle database Client Drivers from all popular programming languages, any business analytics tool, cloud service, built-in SQL worksheet, or even a machine-learning notebook.
• Fully Elastic: Autonomous Database is a fully elastic service. When you get started with Autonomous Database, you can simply specify the number of CPUs (a unit expression of Compute cores) and the database's storage capacity. Any time later, you can either enable an auto-scaling feature or manually scale, increase or decrease, either the CPUs or the storage capacity. When you enable auto-scaling or perform manual scaling, your database resources shrink or grow without any downtime or service interruptions. You can size the Autonomous Database to the exact compute and storage required or even shut off idle compute to save money.
• Highly Available: Autonomous Database provides a highly available database with features such as:
  • Autonomous Data Guard that can be used to protect critical databases from failures and disasters.
  • Automatic and manual backups that can be used to restore and recover your database to any point-in-time within the retention period.
• High Performing: Autonomous Database provides a high performing database with features such as:
  • Automated index management
  • Automatic real-time statistics gathering
  • Optimized high-frequency single-row inserts for applications
  • preconfigured resource profiles for different types of users to achieve optimized query performance and concurrent workloads
• Easy to Use: Autonomous Database includes a complete REST based API and a cloud-based service console for managing the service (for tasks such as stopping, starting, or scaling the service) and monitoring the service (for functions such as viewing the recent activity levels on the data warehouse).
• Compatible with Existing Applications and Tools: Autonomous Database is built upon Oracle Database so that the applications and tools that support Oracle Database also support Autonomous Database. These tools and applications can either be in your data center or a public cloud and connect to Autonomous Database using standard SQL*Net connections.
• Integration with Third Party Tools and Utilities: With Autonomous Database, you can integrate your database applications with other Oracle Cloud services such as Oracle Analytics Cloud, Oracle GoldenGate Cloud Service, and Oracle Data Integration Platform Cloud. You can use the Database Migration Utility provided by Autonomous Database to easily migrate your data from MySQL, Postgre SQL, SQL Server, and other databases. Autonomous Database supports connectivity via SQL*Net, JDBC, and ODBC.
• Enriched with Built-in Tools: Autonomous Database comes with built-in tools such as:
  • Oracle Application Express (APEX), a low-code development platform that enables you to build scalable, secure enterprise apps with world-class features.
  • Oracle REST Data Services (ORDS), a Java Enterprise Edition based data service that makes it easy to develop modern REST interfaces for relational data and JSON Document Store.
  • Oracle Database Actions, a browser-based interface of Oracle SQL Developer.

For a glance at the features supported exclusively by Oracle cloud or Exadata Cloud@Customer deployment choices, refer to Feature Parity Between Oracle Cloud and Exadata Cloud at Customer.

The following diagram illustrates the infrastructure components of an Autonomous Database on Dedicated Exadata Infrastructure.

Autonomous Database on Dedicated Exadata Infrastructure is based upon these kinds of Oracle Cloud resources:

• An Exadata Infrastructure resource represents the Exadata Database Machine system in your data center, together with the networking configuration that connects it to Oracle Cloud.

• An Autonomous Exadata VM Cluster resource provides the link between the Exadata Infrastructure resource and the Autonomous Container Database resources in your deployment. It is a set of symmetrical VMs (virtual machines) across all compute nodes of the underlying Exadata Infrastructure resource. You can:

  • Create multiple Autonomous Exadata VM Clusters on a single Exadata Infrastructure resource. Support for multiple VM Clusters lets you:

    • Schedule separate maintenance runs for each Autonomous VM Cluster on the same Exadata Infrastructure.

    • Choose different license models for Autonomous Databases on the same Exadata Infrastructure.

    • Create and test Autonomous Data Guard between Autonomous Exadata VM Clusters on the same Exadata Infrastructure.

    • Customize compute, storage, and memory of each Autonomous Exadata VM Cluster configuration for the intended workload.

  • Create both Autonomous Exadata VM Clusters and Exadata Database VM Clusters on a common Exadata Infrastructure resource.

  Note
  
  You can only create a Multiple VM - Autonomous VM Cluster (AVMC) on Exadata Infrastructure resources created in Oracle Cloud after the launch of the multiple VM Autonomous Databases feature. Please create a service request in My Oracle Support if you need to address this limitation and want to add an Autonomous VM Cluster to older Exadata Infrastructure resources. For help with filing a support request, see Create a Service Request in My Oracle Support.

• An Autonomous Container Database resource provides a container for your Autonomous Databases. You can create multiple Autonomous Container Database resources in a single Autonomous Exadata VM Cluster resource, but you must create at least one before you can create any Autonomous Databases. For an overview of Autonomous Container Databases, their features, and how to use them, see About Autonomous Container Database.

• An Autonomous Database resource is a user database. You can create many Autonomous Databases in a single Autonomous Container Database resource.

• An Autonomous Backup resource is a backup of an Autonomous Database. Oracle creates these resources for you automatically. See Backup and Restore Autonomous Database for more details.

The tasks involved in setting up and using the Autonomous Database on Dedicated Exadata Infrastructure can be grouped into three logical roles: a few people act as fleet administrators, more act as database administrators, and even more act as database users. A given person can assume one or more of these roles, depending on how you decide to isolate and distribute duties.

• Fleet Administrator. Fleet administrators create, monitor and manage the core (Exadata Infrastructure and Autonomous Exadata VM Cluster) and Autonomous Container Database resources.

  To perform these duties, a fleet administrator must be an Oracle Cloud user whose permissions permit the management of these resources and permit the use of the networking resources that need to be specified when creating these resources.

• Database Administrator. Database administrators create, monitor and manage Autonomous Databases. Additionally, they create and manage Oracle Database users within these databases, and provide others the information necessary access the database.

  To perform these duties, a database administrator must be an Oracle Cloud user whose permissions permit the management of Autonomous Database and Autonomous Backup resources and permit the use of the Autonomous Container Database and networking resources that need to be specified when creating an Autonomous Database. When creating an Autonomous Database resource, the database administrator defines and gains access to the ADMIN administrative user account for the database.

• Database User. Database users are the developers who write applications that connect to and use an Autonomous Database to store and access the data. Database users do not need Oracle Cloud accounts: they gain network connectivity to and connection authorization information for the database from the database administrator.