Scaling out?

Kevin Closson has a couple of interesting posts about Sun gear and Oracle here and here.

In the second post, he says:

But even for the “heavy” databases, it wont be long until they too only require some of the cores that a single socket offers.
...
OK, remind me again who actually needs to “scale-out” a database to multiple servers?

Very good point. Very good question.

I personally believe that a lot of the companies who use Oracle RAC today don't need it.

As to when "heavy" databases will need only some cores that a single socket offers, I'm already seeing this situation today. While a lot of people talk about scaling out - and some companies are actually scaling out - I also see companies that are consolidating their databases on more powerful machines. Right now, I'm working on a project for one of the big telcos in North America. You would think that these guys would be scaling out like crazy. On the contrary, they are consolidating all sorts of things, including big databases, on more powerful machines.