FAQs

Greenplum Database is a software solution built to support the next generation of data warehousing and large-scale analytics processing. Supporting SQL and MapReduce parallel processing, Greenplum Database offers industry-leading performance at a low cost for companies managing Terabytes to Petabytes of data.

What data volumes does Greenplum Database support?
Greenplum Database is designed to store and analyze Terabytes to Petabytes of data. Greenplum Database makes it easy to incrementally add storage capacity and processing power when needed, avoiding costly appliance upgrades.

What levels of price/performance does Greenplum Database deliver?
Greenplum Database delivers 10 to 100 times the performance of traditional RDBMS products.

Why is Greenplum Database that much faster?
Greenplum Database’s breakthrough performance results from its shared-nothing MPP (massively parallel processing) architecture, high-performance parallel dataflow engine, and advanced gNet software interconnect technology. Also unlike proprietary hardware offerings, Greenplum customers can immediately benefit the latest commodity hardware innovations.

Why is Greenplum Database that much less expensive?
Prior to Greenplum, the choices for high-end data warehousing all consisted of exorbitantly expensive proprietary hardware solutions. Greenplum is able to deliver all of Greenplum Database’s benefits to customers for such an attractive price because the company leverages two dominant forces in the technology industry. The first is open source software - Greenplum leverages the open source PostgreSQL database technology, allowing it to focus on value-added capabilities rather than reinventing the basics. The second force is the availability of incredibly powerful but inexpensive commodity hardware. Greenplum Database was conceived, designed and engineered to allow customers to take advantage of large clusters of increasingly powerful, increasingly inexpensive servers, storage, and switches.

Why is Greenplum Database better-suited to business intelligence and data warehousing than databases like Oracle?
Greenplum Database’s “shared-nothing” architecture is optimal for fast queries and loads because it places processors as close as possible to the data itself, and performs queries and other operations with the maximum degree of parallelism possible. “OLTP” architectures like Oracle’s were designed and built with an entirely different purpose and are not capable of the kinds of parallelism, or performance, that Greenplum Database delivers.

What is included with Greenplum Database?
Greenplum Database is software. Software packaging gives our customers the maximum flexibility and control over the selection of hardware vendor and configuration. Nevertheless, Greenplum's hardware certification lab offers reference configuration recommendations for a range of tier-1 hardware vendors to ensure customers receive the most reliable and well-tuned system.

What hardware can I use with Greenplum Database? What’s your preference?
Greenplum's hardware certification lab offers reference configuration recommendations for a range of tier-1 hardware vendors to ensure customers receive the most reliable and well-tuned system.

How is that Greenplum can deliver a product like Greenplum Database, but no other company or organization has to date?
When the founders of Greenplum converged in 2003, they set out to change the game. They saw that enterprise software, and particularly database software, was far too expensive and performed badly. Our uniquely capable team includes some of the best minds in the industry, with experts from Oracle, Teradata, Sybase, Informix, Netezza, PostgreSQL, HPTi, CalTech, MIT, Stanford University, and other leading companies, organizations and institutions. Greenplum Database is the result of the confluence of Greenplum’s unique vision and vast experience in the midst of undeniable industry trends.