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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

"The vendor delivers a fully-configured prebuilt system with a certain baseline on it; we can ship it to five continents, roll them into place, plug in two power cords and six network cables, and we are off to the races."
"The tool's most valuable features are the flexibility and ability to adapt to redundancy."
"If the network or site is down, you just need to go to a single vendor. You don't have to open up multiple cases with each vendor to get things done. That is one of the financial benefits of this solution."
"Due to the way the equipment is all together, with its resiliency, typically we have zero downtime."
"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."
"In our circumstance, it fit our needs and has performed as advertised."
"It's flexible; it's adaptable; it's pretty fast; and it's non-disruptive."
"Because the solution is now stable, we are saving about $100 million USD a year."
"A valuable feature is that everything goes into one machine; Oracle and the applications, so that is a big advantage."
"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."
"We were really impressed with the performance of the applications."
"The storage capacity and the performance of Oracle Exadata are good. When comparing the performance to other technologies it is very good. I am satisfied with the management of the solution."
"Exadata is also a very stable environment. Their Smart Scan feature is great for every banking environment and financial institutions willing to implement it."
"The most valuable feature is supposed to be speed."
"The key capability of Exadata, which is not found in any other solution or appliance, is its enhancement specifically for databases."
"Saved 48 CPU licensing after consolidation on Oracle Exa-data"
 

Cons

"Setting up a Cisco UCS environment can be complex."
"They could improve their technical support team. They need to have a specific phone number for you to call in for the FlexPod solution. Some of the partner support knows if it is for FlexPod, they will get you to the right department."
"We would like them to improve the validate designs. It is hard to stay in a supported config with the software and firmware versions of the platform. It's always a concern to ensure things not only work well, but they work at all. If we run into incompatibility inside of the NetApp, Cisco, or VMware versions, it can cause real issues."
"Automatic tiering would be good to have."
"We would like to have more monitoring and reporting, because today some of the reporting, and if you purchase it separately is expensive. We use OnCommand Unified Manager today, which is great, but we are looking for more of that."
"We haven't seen ROI yet."
"The solution could be improved by including automation for user updates."
"I would also like to feel more support. NetApp has been pretty good, for the most part, but Cisco has more work to do."
"I would like to add some features to run applications or microservices-based applications on Exadata."
"However, the people are not always knowledgeable."
"The customization can sometimes be difficult to achieve."
"Oracle manages the entire hardware and software including database and OS patches but companies need to pay heavily for that service."
"It would be good if Exadata made some new features available regarding data retrieval and speed capacity functions."
"The ASR system with the jump gate was more problematic than the Exadata setup."
"As soon as your joins get complicated, things start to go wrong. You lose much of the offloading and start spilling into temp space."
"There is room for improvement with the handling of the Temp IO, which is often used for JOIN statements."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."
"The NetApp portion was a $5 million investment five years ago. That has served the customer well over five and a half years."
"Because the solution is now stable, we are saving about $100 million USD a year."
"Licensing can be interesting with the new version because of the Intersight integration. I don't know what that looks like yet. I have seen some of the different licensing models, but with the new purchasing, all customers are going to have to buy some sort of Intersight licensing with the Blades or FlexPod. I am curious to see how that option shakes out. Previous to the UCS X-Series, the licensing was the same."
"We purchased the solution through CDW. They are a partner and knowledgeable."
"Buy storage based on the solutions you need, the technologies you need, and what will make your life a lot easier down the road."
"Pricing is always tough. We need to get to a point where the customer's happy. Then, as partners, we are also happy."
"The investment has been great. We put our money into it and it has given us something that we have been able to rely on for years."
"In the sizing phase, you can also decide whether to license all cores, or reduce the number cores using capacity-on-demand features of Exadata, as well. This has a direct impact on licensing."
"All things considered, the price of this product is fairly high, as is always the case with Oracle."
"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."
"There is an annual license to use this solution. The solution is expensive."
"We pay for an annual license and it is expensive."
"The price is very high."
"The licensing can be a bit expensive because you need to have certain tools enabled that require them."
"It is an expensive product and you pay more for certain performance enhancements."
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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
Marketing Services Firm
25%
Manufacturing Company
12%
Construction Company
7%
Performing Arts
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
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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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