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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

"When you open the box, they give you a very nice diagram. Which was my initial guide through setting up any NetApp SAN. It worked itself out pretty well."
"If you’re looking for a mixture of companies and you’ve played the point-the-finger blame-game – it removes all that."
"The solution's granular scalability and broad application support helps us to meet the needs of diverse workloads."
"For anybody wanting to get a small system to actually teach on as well as learn and use, you can't beat FlexPod."
"It is definitely scalable; this is a great platform that you can build from, because you can stay small and build it out as you go, as you grow, and stay ahead of the market."
"It simplifies everything; it gives you a single place to go if you need support or if you need to expand."
"There is a huge improvement, between fifteen and twenty percent, in application performance."
"I would say that its very scalable, as it meets and exceeds our needs."
"On-premises Exadata is just as stable as the cloud version. It's a very stable platform."
"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."
"Oracle Exadata has very good hardware."
"The most valuable feature of Oracle Exadata is the smart scan. We have large TB sessions of approximately 100 per second for each of our three instances. The smart scan allows us the obtain data in time in the enterprise manager."
"Oracle solutions are excellent and evolves according to the customer needs."
"It is the best solution for OLTP and data warehousing."
"This product can noticeably enhance performance of contextual Oracle databases."
"The solution is extremely stable."
 

Cons

"I think that the orchestration and automation could be better."
"Management is still by separate screens. I need to go to NetApp to manage the enterprise storage."
"The initial setup for FlexPod is complex."
"I would like to see improvements in the documentation."
"Sometimes, when the newer versions of any of the partners’ firmware or software come out, there's still sometimes a lag of the partners to support all of those new components."
"The upgrades should be improved. We would like to have the ability to do unified upgrades of the whole infrastructure from beginning to end."
"FlexPod has saved us some time, but I must add a caveat."
"I would like to see more scalability and possible cost reductions with the all-flash solution."
"The integration with third-party applications regarding access management security could be better."
"Complexity comes from patching the whole stack (firmware to database)."
"Checking the Smart Scan issues is complicated."
"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."
"I have found Oracle Exadata to be scalable. However, you have to purchase more hardware, such as memory."
"The solution lacks a visualized console."
"I would like to add some features to run applications or microservices-based applications on Exadata."
"Try to diminish the logging service."
 

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."
"We have saved money using FlexPod. We have saved time and money for new service deployments."
"Make sure that you engage as much with whom you are buying from as a partnership, not just as a purchase."
"The main return on investment would be that instead of having to refresh all of our desktop hardware we have been able to go reimage existing machines and use those as thin clients, then also purchase new thin clients rather than buying actual hardware. It also reduces the overhead of having our technicians deploy those systems and maintain them."
"We have absolutely seen ROI. We have saved between two to four million dollars on travel alone over the past 24 months."
"We have reduced our manpower with the solution."
"The pricing is not cheaper, but stability is more important for us now. We focus on business gains, not static numbers."
"We purchased FlexPod though Datalink."
"We pay for an annual license and it is expensive."
"It is quite expensive."
"The licensing can be a bit expensive because you need to have certain tools enabled that require them."
"There is an annual license to use this solution. The solution is expensive."
"It is an expensive product and you pay more for certain performance enhancements."
"I'm giving Oracle Exadata five out of ten in terms of pricing. Its price could be lower."
"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."
"The price of the solution has been expensive to implement."
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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

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.
887,041 professionals have used our research since 2012.