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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 12.3%, up 8.6% compared to last year.
Oracle Exadata, on the other hand, focuses on Data Warehouse, holds 8.7% mindshare, down 17.1% since last year.
Converged Infrastructure Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
FlexPod XCS12.3%
HPE ConvergedSystem11.7%
Dell VxBlock System9.4%
Other66.6%
Converged Infrastructure
Data Warehouse Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Oracle Exadata8.7%
Snowflake10.1%
Teradata9.4%
Other71.80000000000001%
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

"FlexPod is easy to setup, maintain and has great stability."
"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."
"The vendor delivers a fully-configured prebuilt system with a certain baseline on it."
"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."
"It runs our VMs. Our SQL databases are all on VMs, so everything is virtualized."
"The flexibility and data deduplication have been the biggest practical applications."
"Our footprint is lower than it used to be."
"One of the most valuable aspects is its integrated convergence infrastructure, particularly the LAN and SAN cloud features that offer a unified fabric."
"We like the tool’s features like Smart Scan, Hybrid Columnar Compression, and the TFA."
"Oracle Exadata is stable."
"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."
"The offloading of data to the SIM is a valuable feature."
"What I like best about Oracle Exadata is its good performance. It's also a very fast solution."
"It is a highly relevant option with extreme performance."
"It is the best solution for OLTP and data warehousing."
"Exadata's best features are its performance during redo logging and the elasticity of the database handling."
 

Cons

"The FAS in it, with all its flexibility and scalability, it is much more complex and could be simplified."
"It would be very helpful if the upgrades for Cisco, VMware, and NetApp could be bundled together and performed at the same time."
"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."
"Make it easier to refresh hardware. We got to the point where we couldn't fix vulnerabilities without refreshing the hardware, then that became a little too expensive for us to do."
"I had one problem at the site where I had an aggregate that would not shrink after I had deleted some stuff. It took a few tries to get the right guy on the call. We do have a NetApp SAM with our company, and it really took getting to him to get the solution fixed."
"We haven't seen ROI yet."
"One of the things that I've wanted would be availability of a health status, similar to Active IQ from my converged platform, on an app. I have dashboards so I can see the health of the system when I'm in the office, but when I'm not in the office I can't."
"There are times where we have had issues with technical support."
"The customization can sometimes be difficult to achieve."
"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 solution's pricing is very high."
"The price is also higher than I would prefer."
"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."
"The improvement could be made on the hardware level as the habit in the industry is to go better and faster and larger with every iteration."
"In a future release, I would like to see some upgrade analysis advisors to help with a clear roadmap on steps that need to be taken and some of the automated processes."
"The setup is a little bit complex. We would like to see the installation part get easier."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The cost is a little high."
"It's expensive, but when you pay for enterprise support and enterprise products, you have to pay the big bucks."
"Our licensing costs are about $50,000 per year."
"It is not going to save you money, but that is not the point. The opportunity to stay competitive in the marketplace is not a cost."
"It is cheaper than other products. For example, Dell EMC VxBlock is more expensive."
"Make sure that you engage as much with whom you are buying from as a partnership, not just as a purchase."
"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 purchased from CDW•G. They are great partners on the government side."
"The solution is expensive."
"The pricing of Oracle Exadata is too high."
"The majority of our customers are in government or big enterprises, and the projects that we sell come out to several million USD. With this amount of money on the table, it's always better to have an experienced team of consultants, who know Exadata very well, handle the implementation."
"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."
"There is an annual license to use this solution. The solution is expensive."
"The Initial investment price could use improvement"
"It is quite expensive."
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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
31%
Manufacturing Company
14%
Performing Arts
7%
Educational Organization
6%
Financial Services Firm
27%
Computer Software Company
7%
Manufacturing Company
5%
Government
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 do you like most about Oracle Exadata?
It is the best solution for OLTP and data warehousing.
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...
 

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: January 2026.
882,207 professionals have used our research since 2012.