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FlexPod XCS vs Oracle Exadata comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Categories and Ranking

FlexPod XCS
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
295
Ranking in other categories
Converged Infrastructure (2nd)
Oracle Exadata
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
130
Ranking in other categories
Data Warehouse (2nd)
 

Mindshare comparison

FlexPod XCS and Oracle Exadata aren’t in the same category and serve different purposes. FlexPod XCS is designed for Converged Infrastructure and holds a mindshare of 12.6%, up 8.8% compared to last year.
Oracle Exadata, on the other hand, focuses on Data Warehouse, holds 8.1% mindshare, down 16.7% since last year.
Converged Infrastructure Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
FlexPod XCS12.6%
HPE ConvergedSystem11.5%
Dell VxBlock System8.7%
Other67.2%
Converged Infrastructure
Data Warehouse Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Oracle Exadata8.1%
Snowflake10.2%
Teradata9.0%
Other72.7%
Data Warehouse
 

Featured Reviews

John Kevin - PeerSpot reviewer
Deputy IT Manager at MBBank
Enforces standardized setup procedures following Certified Validated Design (CVD) guidelines and offers greater flexibility and control over the system compared to traditional systems
The GUI setup follows the right setup, meaning we have to follow the CVDi.e. Certified Validated Design. Everything is clear, because you can build CI yourself, but without rules, it can be messy. With FlexPod, there are rules to follow, making it more standardized. This helps with troubleshooting and compatibility assessments, simplifying troubleshooting significantly. We also use FlexPod pre-validated architectures to validate the design. It is very, very important to us because we had a bad case in 2015 where separate items integrated poorly due to no version or firmware compatibility certification. Troubleshooting became a nightmare. So, standards are crucial for us, and everything entering production should be verified or at least documented for certification.
Prabir Kumar Kundu - PeerSpot reviewer
SR AVP–Presales Cloud & Platform Management Services at Path Infotech ltd
Has consistently delivered high performance and aligned security while evolving with AI-driven improvements
When discussing Oracle Exadata, the main thing is the specialized database appliance, the flash cache, and the engineered machine on the database for the database itself. Overall, all the features are useful and meaningful for any database like Oracle to run the Oracle database. Regarding Smart Scan technology, it is for better performance. If a customer cannot tune their applications, this will help them to run the database and run the application without any tuning itself. Oracle Exadata's advanced compression techniques have affected my customer's data storage efficiency positively, with the feature being great, but as of now, our customer is not using that. I find its security measures align with my customer's organization, as security is aligned as per the customer's requirement. It has helped optimize performance and cost.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"We have experienced about 28 to 30% improvement in application performance and in our industry that's actually a very significant improvement."
"This solution has given us a great deal of on-site storage that we didn't have before."
"NetApp is way, way better than some others that we've had really bad times with."
"It has saved us hundreds of man-hours by using this converged infrastructure."
"The most valuable thing for me as a partner, as well as our customers, is the shorter time to market."
"It doesn't really get simpler than the setup that we had, and the maintenance that we have had."
"FlexPod's native integration with hyperscalers is one of the reasons we chose to look at it and NetApp. That is one of the key components of our infrastructure. That native integration is very important."
"The most valuable feature is ease of deployment. Once I deploy the chassis and I have the back-end storage, configuring more UCS servers is very quick. I can deploy a new UCS server within minutes."
"It combines hardware with the software that we use from Oracle, providing a complete stack not only for the hardware but the full implementation and delivery, so it’s really good for IT."
"Exadata's best features are its performance during redo logging and the elasticity of the database handling."
"The separation between the database nodes and storage cells is the key feature of Exadata."
"The technical support team are real professionals. I admire their technical skills and supports. Their supports are really admirable."
"The offloading of data to the SIM is a valuable feature."
"The performance of the data is the most important part."
"This solution meets all of my expectations."
"Oracle is known to be the number one in their industry; the help and support, the features they are giving the clients comparing to other databases, the new technology, they provide a good solution."
 

Cons

"The tool is obsolete and we are migrating to HPE. It should improve the pricing."
"There were several different management consoles that we had to deal with: UCS, VMware, and separate ESXi installations. Maybe one interface council where we could manage everything from might be a little easier."
"The biggest complaint I have from customers is the cost."
"On the NetApp side, there are definitely things to improve in terms of software updates."
"Both NetApp and Cisco need to do improvements in their day-to-day operations management upgrades, and they are working on it."
"FlexPod can improve with a single control management interface to manage all aspects and components of the solution."
"When we do call in for support, the Cisco side of it is fairly poor until you get past tier 1."
"Storage and compute could be better managed. Right now, there are two separate consoles for NetApp and Cisco components."
"The cost of the solution is high and can be improved."
"Price: It’s extremely expensive."
"I think the patching is still lacking quite a bit."
"There is one aspect to Exadata that I dislike, and that's the inconsistency with other databases. When you try to get Exadata to function with another type of database like SQL, or others, there should be reliable and consistent operation. When this is improved on, we should start to see more applications growing the market."
"I would like to add some features to run applications or microservices-based applications on Exadata."
"One improvement would be the limitation on the storage."
"The handling of temp space has room for improvement."
"The solution's pricing is very high."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"We purchased FlexPod though Datalink."
"We have saved money using FlexPod. We have saved time and money for new service deployments."
"I have saved time on new service deployments. I've done deployments in under a week, and if it's a cloud-based deployment, it's even faster."
"It is cost-effective."
"The FlexPod licensing can adjust to your purse, i.e. there are different levels available for businesses of all sizes."
"It's expensive, but when you pay for enterprise support and enterprise products, you have to pay the big bucks."
"We immediately saw a return on investment due to the fact that replacing our legacy storage arrays with the new AFFs reduced the footprint and maintenance costs. Overall, we saw an almost immediate ROI."
"We have saved time, money, space, and power consumption on new service deployments. We have a data center in Toronto which had ten racks on one of the new servers. This was all reduced to two racks with six chassis, which is amazing."
"The price of Oracle Exadata is expensive. It is not competitive with other solutions some of the times."
"There is an annual license to use this solution. The solution is expensive."
"The majority of our customers are in government or big enterprises, and the projects that we sell come out to several million USD. With this amount of money on the table, it's always better to have an experienced team of consultants, who know Exadata very well, handle the implementation."
"The price of the solution could improve, it is expensive."
"The price is very high."
"I give the pricing of the solution a five out of ten."
"I think it's free."
"Our customers are always looking to reduce the license's cost."
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Comparison Review

it_user244362 - PeerSpot reviewer
Managing Consultant with 51-200 employees
Aug 30, 2015
Nutanix vs. VMware EVO:RAIL vs. FlexPod
Originally posted at www.storagegaga.com/dont-get-too-drunk-on-hyper-converged/ I hate the fact that I am bursting the big bubble brewing about Hyper Convergence (HC). I urge all to look past the hot air and hype frenzy that are going on, because in the end, the HC platforms have to be aligned…
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
20%
Marketing Services Firm
17%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Construction Company
8%
Financial Services Firm
25%
Computer Software Company
6%
Government
6%
Manufacturing Company
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business34
Midsize Enterprise66
Large Enterprise182
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business47
Midsize Enterprise14
Large Enterprise86
 

Questions from the Community

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What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Oracle Exadata?
I find its pricing reasonable and cost-effective for large organizations, but for smaller organizations, it may not be that useful.
What needs improvement with Oracle Exadata?
I believe that there is still room for improvement in Oracle Exadata, as they are putting AI features on those databases, which is making the database more user-friendly. Even you can talk to the d...
What is your primary use case for Oracle Exadata?
I deal most with Oracle database. I have been working with Oracle Database Appliance for more than 25 years, and if you're talking about appliance, it's more than 10 years, but on Oracle database, ...
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

University of Sao Paulo, WD-40, The Commonwell Mutual Insurance Group
PayPal, EBS, Organic Food Retailer, Garmin, University of Minnesota, Major Semiconductor Company, Deutsche Bank, Starwood, Ziraat Bank, SK Telecom, and P&G.
Find out what your peers are saying about Dell Technologies, NetApp, Hewlett Packard Enterprise and others in Converged Infrastructure. Updated: March 2026.
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