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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 12.8%, up 9.3% compared to last year.
Oracle Exadata, on the other hand, focuses on Data Warehouse, holds 7.6% mindshare, down 16.3% since last year.
Converged Infrastructure Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
FlexPod XCS12.8%
HPE ConvergedSystem10.8%
Oracle Private Cloud Appliance8.2%
Other68.2%
Converged Infrastructure
Data Warehouse Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Oracle Exadata7.6%
Snowflake9.5%
Teradata8.8%
Other74.1%
Data Warehouse
 

Featured Reviews

John Kevin - PeerSpot reviewer
Infrastructure Manager at a financial services firm with 5,001-10,000 employees
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

"Pricing and licensing is very affordable from a FlexPod perspective."
"It can scale, compute, and storage independently by what we need."
"FlexClone allows you to create copies of volumes in seconds, and without occupying physical space."
"The most valuable feature of the solution is the pre-design; I don’t have to think – it’s a proven and pre-certified architecture that just works."
"It runs very well lights out. Set it and forget it."
"The hardware has been rock solid so far; it has gone up easy, it runs well, and we have not had issues with it."
"We decided to go with NetApp over Dell, because it all worked together so easily."
"It is an easy, straightforward system to set up and maintain."
"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."
"For our customers, we are able to significantly reduce both CapEx and OpEx for customers for 3-5 years TCO."
"The business outcomes are much faster; end users are very happy so they can focus on their day-to-day work rather than waiting for the computer, the response from the system."
"It has improved the performance, now we run with more performance cores with less CPU to attend all the database demands, reducing Time to Market, increasing our ability to face the competition with speed and low cost."
"One of its most valuable features is the ease of managing infrastructure as a whole; software and hardware coming together in one place to manage all the architecture, networking, hardware, software, storage, etc."
"My company's data warehouse was consolidated on a single database with improved capability and performance."
"What I like best about Oracle Exadata is its good performance. It's also a very fast solution."
"This product can noticeably enhance performance of contextual Oracle databases."
 

Cons

"This is an expensive solution."
"The interface is a little convoluted."
"Installation with FlexPod is a bit complex, but it can be upgraded easily. I think Flexpod is phasing out, but it is still the right solution."
"The majority of the time, if we need more storage, then we need to work with customizing the NetApp deployment. Right now, we just do a generic deployment, then wherever we have a need for storage, we have to move some application out of the next FlexPod deployment. One thing is to customize based on the requirements, but the requirements change so frequently, they are absolutely obsolete in six months."
"Because when you try to do automation, there are many bits and pieces tied together. Sometimes, automation gets a little tricky for provisioning."
"Initial setup was extremely difficult. It took us a few days to get it up and running."
"The integration between both companies, Cisco and NetApp, is very good but it still needs to be enhanced in terms of visibility and observability."
"The setup was complex, but mostly because of our environment."
"The handling of temp space has room for improvement."
"The support for patching – we have Platinum Support – is probably one of the worst I have ever experienced in my career."
"Customer service is 7/10. Technical support is 6/10."
"There is one aspect to Exadata that I dislike, and that's the inconsistency with other databases."
"Technical support can be patchy, particularly a couple of years back, the number of support personnel with Exadata skills was perhaps not at the level it could have been."
"I would like to see more database features and maybe more archiving features, because we need to do data archiving."
"The solution lacks a visualized console."
"Patching must be simplified."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"We have saved time and money for new service deployments. Without FlexPod, it probably takes about ten hours. With FlexPod, within two hours, we are up and running. So, we have seen about an 80 percent time decrease."
"Anytime that you are buying any storage make sure you understand storage. Do not just buy storage based on what somebody sells you in terms of IO or throughput."
"The product's pricing is high and I would rate it a nine out of ten."
"The scalability is very good. I wish it was a more cost-effective, but you get what you pay for."
"We can just swap in new equipment or hardware as we need, which has probably saved us several weeks."
"We purchased FlexPod though Datalink."
"It's expensive, but when you pay for enterprise support and enterprise products, you have to pay the big bucks."
"I find the licensing and pricing structure to be favorable."
"The solution takes a lot of time to clone the environment. I would like to see some improvement in the cloning support or the time it takes on the storage side."
"The Initial investment price could use improvement"
"There is an annual license to use this solution. The solution is expensive."
"The price of Oracle Exadata is expensive. It is not competitive with other solutions some of the times."
"The price of the solution could improve, it is expensive."
"Our customers are always looking to reduce the license's cost."
"The price is very high."
"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."
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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
5%
 

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

Ask a question
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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.
886,426 professionals have used our research since 2012.