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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

"NetApp is way, way better than some others that we've had really bad times with."
"As long as it's within your budget, it's a great one-shot deal that allows you to really have an integrated platform that you can just build off of."
"We have been using this FlexPod since then, and now, we have grown to about mid-scale, however, FlexPod is still able to scale out the way we want, and we are happy with it."
"Ease of cabling is the most valuable feature of the solution."
"The most valuable is the one support. I have a 1-800 number. I call one number rather than figuring out whether it's a network, compute, or storage issue. It is beautiful and works out nicely."
"One of the easiest solutions to implement, maintain, and scale."
"SolidFire all-flash block storage system in an existing FlexPod data center environment. This improves the agility and performance, including the additional load of cabling."
"During these 10 years, it was very nice to work with NetApp, Cisco, and VMware together, especially with NetApp storage."
"This solution meets all of my expectations."
"This is a powerful and extremely stable system with IB network speed."
"It is the best solution for OLTP and data warehousing."
"We have a complete HA environment with two Exadata machines across two datacenters, and we've been able to use Data Guard to perform switchovers, perform maintenance, and do other tasks with little or no downtime at all."
"Parallelism is the most valuable feature."
"Oracle solutions are excellent and evolves according to the customer needs."
"If I wanted to choose between the two, if I'm not already a VMware customer, I would definitely go Oracle VM, especially when I run Oracle products already."
"For our customers, we are able to significantly reduce both CapEx and OpEx for customers for 3-5 years TCO."
 

Cons

"The upgrades should be improved. We would like to have the ability to do unified upgrades of the whole infrastructure from beginning to end."
"There were several different management consoles that we had to deal with: UCS, VMware, and separate ESXi installations."
"​Newer platform reference architectures take a long time to harden and be publicly available.​"
"We did run into some hiccups around some different things."
"Speed would be the area where we would like to see room for improvement."
"I would like to see more storage-related features."
"Maybe in the future, they could include the HCI solution into the mix."
"We would like to see the automation improved because there has been a learning curve having to create the workflows."
"Certification should also be improved. Today, Oracle doesn't certify applications with engineered systems."
"Our main issue is the CPU; they can't cope with what we want."
"We did not see the volume of compression claimed by Oracle (10x-50x) on a table that had completely unique data."
"Checking the Smart Scan issues is complicated."
"Not knowing how to navigate through Oracle’s support structure and escalation policies can leave you feeling stranded by the vendor."
"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."
"It's always a pain working with the Oracle support team."
"The SRs that we raise are not always resolved in a timely fashion. Often I'm unhappy."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."
"Overall, the solution works pretty well. The biggest complaint I have from customers is the cost."
"You get better management and orchestration, but it still costs you money."
"We pay approximately $1,400 USD in total for between five-thousand and ten-thousand ports."
"The FlexPod licensing can adjust to your purse, i.e. there are different levels available for businesses of all sizes."
"We have seen an 80 percent improvement in application performance."
"We purchased from CDW•G. They are great partners on the government side."
"Pricing is always tough. We need to get to a point where the customer's happy. Then, as partners, we are also happy."
"Oracle Exadata is costly. Its licensing should also be more versatile. Smaller companies would benefit if Oracle Exadata had lower pricing."
"It is quite expensive."
"The solution’s cost is a little bit more than the traditional databases."
"I think it's free."
"Our customers are always looking to reduce the license's cost."
"You have to pay for the storage and the database in Oracle Exadata. It cost a lot, but it is worth it. It would be a benefit if we could reduce the price for the number of CPUs and extend the memory."
"The price of the solution could improve, it is expensive."
"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."
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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%
Manufacturing Company
6%
Government
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.
887,041 professionals have used our research since 2012.