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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

"It is valuable, because it is easy, easy to use, so we don't spend a whole lot of time learning new products out there, which is a major plus."
"The benefit is the speed, it's the performance. That's what it comes down to is the performance of the solution."
"The most valuable features of this solution are the integration and ease of use."
"Take a look at FlexPod and do a PoC; compare it to other products and you will see the huge savings."
"I run all the critical applications for the university on my FlexPod solution; it needs to be up 24/7, 365, I don't need "five nines," I need "eight nines" - and it stays up."
"The most valuable feature of this solution is the stability."
"Despite our FlexPod being six to seven years old, it still works to this day."
"We’ve seen an improvement in application performance."
"We have improved the average response time between 36% and 85%, depending on the database after migrating to Exadata."
"The innovative use of all the technologies integrated so creatively and functionally provides an immense performance boost impossible to attain with do-it-yourself systems."
"Before using this machine, we took no less than two days to run a report, now we can do it within five hours, so there is a lot of improvement."
"One of the customers we work with had mostly thousands of batch jobs, which used to take 30 to 40 hours; with Exadata and re-architecting some of those solutions on Exadata, it turned out to be running in one hour or less than one hour, and in the end, the company realized the return on the investment they have made into Exadata."
"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."
"This product can noticeably enhance performance of contextual Oracle databases."
"Exadata is a fantastic machine. Two features stand out. The first is the resource input/output management tool that allows you to manage the resources to the neck on the Exadata box."
"It makes it possible to deliver high performance Oracle OBIEE applications to our customers."
 

Cons

"With us being Oracle service providers for Oracle databases and applications, it's a niche area, and FlexPod still isn't there."
"It is overkill for our environment."
"I'd like to see better integrations with some of the third-party tools, like Terraform. That would be good. We use Ansible to deploy and that's good, but it's slower than it needs to be."
"I would like them to integrate the NVIDIA GRID into the system, so we could easily deploy certain solutions with the FlexPod."
"FlexPod was born to be used like building-block elements, to create large EDP premises. If used to create a single FlexPod CED, optional operational collaterals (backup, management, etc.) are missing, both in docs and in design."
"When we do call in for support, the Cisco side of it is fairly poor until you get past tier 1."
"FlexPod is not cheap and the way things are going, you could probably get the same thing at half the price from another vendor."
"There is a history of issues with hardware availability. It becomes this big process to try to figure out what we need to get, how it'll work, and how that'll integrate into the system."
"More control for database admins is needed for storage indexes and pricing."
"The ASR system with the jump gate was more problematic than the Exadata setup."
"Oracle Exadata has room for improvement in pricing, especially for smaller companies. The solution is okay for bigger companies, but for smaller companies, it isn't."
"X5 supports virtualization, but I think the performance on virtualization is not all that great."
"One improvement would be the limitation on the storage."
"Oracle Exadata is not a cheap solution. Pricing is a problem for Oracle, and every client, not just my company, would like the vendor to improve on the price, or lower the price."
"There's room for improvement in terms of deployment, as it could be made faster and more user-friendly."
"However, the people are not always knowledgeable."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The product is kind of expensive even from an entry-level standpoint. I would say FlexPod would be the way to go if you are a larger business or one with large data volume."
"Sometimes you may end up spending a little more to get it in the first place, but you gain it back in terms of infrastructure upgrade costs and troubleshooting costs. The solution also lasts a surprisingly long time."
"As a startup, for the amount of budget we have and the amount we spend, we are getting what we expected."
"We have reduced our manpower with the solution."
"It created lower total cost of ownership. Previously, we had disparate storage and servers, and there were bits of kits everywhere. Now, we have two data centers with almost identical setups in both."
"If your company really needs to be up 100% of the time, and you need to do a private data center, I don't know if I could realistically actually recommend another blueprint."
"We have saved time with Snapshots, SnapMirrors, and backup and DR capabilities versus other platforms that we have looked at in the past."
"We have saved 50 percent on new service deployments."
"I would rate the tool's pricing a nine out of ten."
"The price of the solution has been expensive to implement."
"The Initial investment price could use improvement"
"All things considered, the price of this product is fairly high, as is always the case with Oracle."
"The pricing of Oracle Exadata is too high."
"Exadata is an expensive tool, but, considering the ROI, it's worth going for the solution."
"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 cost of the solution is high."
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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

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.
886,174 professionals have used our research since 2012.