Try our new research platform with insights from 80,000+ expert users

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

"I like the consolidation in one rack, you have everything coming together, you just assemble it and you're ready to go, without having to purchase different pieces of hardware to have one solution."
"It's a kind of one-stop shop as far as support goes."
"Things got a lot faster; we can pull and test in DEV systems much more rapidly and are clearing up a lot of DBA time; in the past, every time we tested it, we needed to be refreshed and it would take a day of our DBA's time, and now it's just point, click, and ten minutes later it's done."
"It is a mature solution, it has been pretested, there are reference architectures for it, it is easy to use, and it uses the best compute, storage, and networking, which all work together in a proven solution."
"We bought the complete solution and it went in relatively easy."
"It is absolutely resilient. It has built-in redundancy and multipathing. If there is an issue with one part, it doesn't fail automatically."
"We’ve been able to transition to a hands-on approach, which is a good thing, as we were thinly staffed but now we can properly staff to be more hands-on with our system using FlexPod."
"FlexPod has helped us reduce our time of deployment because we are really only missing integration with different applications."
"It makes it possible to deliver high performance Oracle OBIEE applications to our customers."
"In the history of Oracle Corporation, there seldom has been a product so successful, complete and flawless."
"Exadata is practically a perfect solution for us as it stands."
"My company's data warehouse was consolidated on a single database with improved capability and performance."
"The most significant gain was in the area of performance, as performance increased significantly both for OLTP and batch works, and we also saw a significant decrease in IT operations because the necessity of SQL tuning and the total work spent on administration operations decreased."
"Backup/Restore performance: Fast backups, fast restores (especially useful for creating clone environments)."
"If somebody wants 5 or 6 9s worth of availability, a very good place for them to be is with one of Oracles engineered system solutions."
"On-premises Exadata is just as stable as the cloud version. It's a very stable platform."
 

Cons

"We haven't seen ROI yet."
"Upgrades are always scary because you just don't know."
"The continued simplification will be a continued battle and evolution for both Cisco and NetApp, especially on the FlexPod product."
"However, for a lot of our customers, the complexity of FlexPod can be a little overwhelming."
"I would like to see them reduce the complexity, that would be my number one request because. Right now, doing simple things is pretty complex. You have so many options. It might be better if it were more wizard-driven, as opposed to going through five hundred dials. It's not very easy or intuitive."
"When we do call in for support, the Cisco side of it is fairly poor until you get past tier 1."
"Perhaps having a unified interface for managing the entire company could lead to improved efficiency and performance."
"If we had more of them, stability would probably be great; we're kind of stuck to just one FlexPod, so for us it's a little difficult."
"The most critical issue was due to a bug with SDP (Sockets Direct Protocol): after connecting Exalogic and Exadata to the same Infiniband fabric and after enabling SDP listeners on Exadata compute nodes, we faced unexpected and random crashes of database hosts."
"We have a little trepidation with the system as it does have a learning curve. Also changing to a binary logging format for us feels like retrograde motion, but sadly almost all Linux variants have moved in this direction."
"The integration with third-party applications regarding access management security could be better."
"The management monitoring tools are quite important and an area that needs some improvement."
"Setting up Exadata is complex. You need an Oracle vendor or someone who is Oracle-certified to set it up."
"Sometimes it takes too long time to get help with technical issues."
"We had issues with system restoration."
"However, the people are not always knowledgeable."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"We fear high availability so we can't buy from different providers."
"Our licensing costs are about $50,000 per year."
"We purchased from CDW•G. They are great partners on the government side."
"It is not cheap, but there is a return on investment in time saved and efficiency."
"We have saved 50 percent on new service deployments."
"It has saved us hundreds of man-hours by using this converged infrastructure."
"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."
"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."
"The price of the solution has been expensive to implement."
"The pricing of Oracle Exadata is too high."
"Oracle is always costly but it's fine."
"Oracle Exadata is costly. Its licensing should also be more versatile. Smaller companies would benefit if Oracle Exadata had lower pricing."
"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. My company paid for several years' worth of Oracle Exadata licenses. You need to pay for the technical support and other features separately, on different contracts. In terms of affordability, my rating for Oracle Exadata is two out of five."
"It is an expensive product and you pay more for certain performance enhancements."
"We pay for an annual license and it is expensive."
"I did note that Oracle does tend to internally oversize things especially if they want to fill up a budget, and hence third-party oversight is essential."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Converged Infrastructure solutions are best for your needs.
884,933 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

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
Marketing Services Firm
27%
Manufacturing Company
13%
Performing Arts
6%
Educational Organization
6%
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

Ask a question
Earn 20 points
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: February 2026.
884,933 professionals have used our research since 2012.