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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

"High availability is outstanding. We haven't had any problems with that."
"The storage efficiency and performance are valuable."
"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 system is designed for easy scaling. Because we define everything clearly. So when we plug the system in, we apply the profile, and it scales easily."
"I really like the architecture and I like the fact that on the storage side I can swap it out. Right now I'm on NetApp, I might go to Pure Storage. I have the flexibility. But as far as the equipment itself, the way it's all bundled together, from the UCS perspective, its rock solid."
"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."
"We have had great support, and this is when we have called for any problems, which have been very minimal to start with."
"The solution is resilient, because it has good scalability, and other products in the market don't have this. It has scalable storage and service."
"Oracle Exadata has very good hardware."
"Before using this machine, we took no less than two days to run a report. Now, we can do it within five hours. So, there is a lot of improvement."
"It is a highly relevant option with extreme performance."
"We like the tool’s features like Smart Scan, Hybrid Columnar Compression, and the TFA."
"This product can noticeably enhance performance of contextual Oracle databases."
"We can use virtualization on Exadata."
"The most valuable feature is the time to solution."
"Exadata is a fantastic machine. Two features stand out. The first is the resource input/output management tool that allows you to manage the resources to the neck on the Exadata box."
 

Cons

"For the next release, because I know that we are using Pure Storage, what I want to see is the GUI interfaces on this UCS monitor."
"Hyper-V is not as well supported by NetApp and Cisco as VMware is, which is something that should be improved."
"We would like them to have better features to integrate with the cloud."
"In the SolidFire interface, if you use the GUI, you have to create one run at a time, or one device at a time, which is something that needs to be fixed."
"There is always room for improvement. I believe we can do hot swaps on the fly. On the release upgrades, if there was a way to do a release on the fly, that would really be cool because it does take some downtime. It takes restarting. It is more of a software thing. Customers hate doing releases."
"Setting up a Cisco USC environment can be complex."
"The ability to manage the templates across sites. We would like to easily take out the configuration of one FlexPod and copy it over, just making minor changes. There is a way to do it, but it's clumsy."
"Cisco support is much slower. Opening cases with Cisco tech is sometimes a bit tedious. The return time for less important calls can be slower. Even Priority 1 calls can sometimes be a bit long and they will have to call me back."
"I would like to see more database features and maybe more archiving features, because we need to do data archiving."
"The scalability can be improved as it is not a parallel execution."
"The customization can sometimes be difficult to achieve."
"License or upgrade management can be difficult and time consuming because it requires login to a separate console."
"The performance could be improved."
"We used the support from Oracle Exadata to complete the implementation."
"Exadata would be improved with single dashboard visibility."
"Checking the Smart Scan issues is complicated."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"We have saved 50 percent on new service deployments."
"The pricing and licensing are quite expensive. However, compared to other solutions, it is okay."
"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."
"Because the solution is now stable, we are saving about $100 million USD a year."
"The cost is a little high."
"We have seen an 80 percent improvement in application performance."
"It is cheaper than other products. For example, Dell EMC VxBlock is more expensive."
"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."
"I'm giving Oracle Exadata five out of ten in terms of pricing. Its price could be lower."
"It is quite expensive."
"I give the pricing of the solution a five out of ten."
"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."
"The solution’s cost is a little bit more than the traditional databases."
"I think it's free."
"The price of Oracle Exadata is expensive. It is not competitive with other solutions some of the times."
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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
28%
Manufacturing Company
13%
Performing Arts
6%
Educational Organization
6%
Financial Services Firm
25%
Computer Software Company
7%
Manufacturing Company
6%
Marketing Services Firm
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

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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: February 2026.
884,656 professionals have used our research since 2012.