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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

"The FlexPod solution increased back-end productivity and streamlined our IT admin."
"FlexPod has saved data center costs, due to the fact that we reduced our footprint for storage in a big way."
"The solution's granular scalability and broad application support helps us to meet the needs of diverse workloads."
"FlexPod has reduced our overall TCO and simplified our operations."
"In almost five years of operation, we have never had a single hour of downtime that was directly related to a storage problem."
"It's all converged into one consolidated platform, which works well together."
"The scalability is really good because it's not a silo."
"Going from the old monolithic server and silo storage that they used to use is an improvement. With the FlexPod solution, just being able to manage and monitor the overall environment helps."
"The most valuable feature of Oracle Exadata is its capabilities for storing and processing data. It is very good for our domain."
"The technical support team are real professionals. I admire their technical skills and supports. Their supports are really admirable."
"Oracle Exadata's performance is one of its best features. We very satisfied with it."
"Oracle Exadata is a great product without a doubt."
"It's about consolidation of my infrastructure, scalability, high performance, and availability."
"The key capability of Exadata, which is not found in any other solution or appliance, is its enhancement specifically for databases."
"This product can noticeably enhance performance of contextual Oracle databases."
"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."
 

Cons

"FlexPod has saved us some time, but I must add a caveat."
"The performance could be improved. Because it's over network, I don't know if they have to improve something on the NetApp end, because over the network it slows down when it's compared to the fiber channel network."
"We would like more integration with some other HCI solutions so we can take advantage of other opportunities."
"When we are positioning against a cheaper solution it's really difficult to sell NetApp to our small customers, so it's really difficult to position."
"I would be interested to see more integration with other applications."
"I think they can always improve, whether it's dedupe or compression, those algorithms; and flash through better SSDs."
"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."
"If you have expertise setting up such environments, then you are good, but for customers or novices, it becomes a nightmare and stuff may actually be left out."
"I would like to see more database features and maybe more archiving features, because we need to do data archiving."
"We can't even run our application right now because we ran into a patch problem."
"Oracle Exadata could improve the monitoring system in the enterprise manager, it could be more user-friendly. In most Oracle tools there is a lot of functionality, and sometimes you need to do five or six clicks to find metrics, and sometimes it's a waste of time."
"Complexity comes from patching the whole stack (firmware to database)."
"The initial setup process is very difficult and extremely complex."
"The support for patching – we have Platinum Support – is probably one of the worst I have ever experienced in my career."
"Checking the Smart Scan issues is complicated."
"It would be good if Exadata made some new features available regarding data retrieval and speed capacity functions."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It has saved us hundreds of man-hours by using this converged infrastructure."
"In terms of the cost, the last bill I saw was about $3.5 million, from the latest contract. That might have been for a five-year contract."
"We can just swap in new equipment or hardware as we need, which has probably saved us several weeks."
"We purchased the solution through CDW. They are a partner and knowledgeable."
"The cost is a little high."
"We have a lease for approximately $10,000 USD per month."
"The solution has saved our customers' organization in terms of CapEx. E.g., with the cloud availability, it's turned into sort of a hybrid CapEx/OpEx model."
"Cost is the primary factor behind why I would not give this product a perfect rating."
"The cost of the solution is high."
"We pay for an annual license and it is expensive."
"I think it's free."
"The solution is expensive."
"It is quite expensive."
"Oracle is always costly but it's fine."
"It is an expensive product and you pay more for certain performance enhancements."
"I give the pricing of the solution a five out of ten."
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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
5%
 

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.
886,510 professionals have used our research since 2012.