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Oracle Exadata vs VxRail 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:
 

ROI

Sentiment score
6.6
Oracle Exadata offers up to 300% ROI with significant cost savings and efficiencies, despite a learning curve.
Sentiment score
6.6
VxRail offers efficient management, cost-effectiveness, and scalability with reduced power use and no vendor lock-in for hybrid cloud.
The investment is good, which is why people choose this hardware.
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
6.6
Oracle Exadata customer service is praised for improvements but faces challenges with response times and support system navigation.
Sentiment score
8.0
Dell EMC's VxRail support is praised for responsiveness and knowledge, though some report regional discrepancies and communication improvement needs.
Exadata comes with a platinum gateway and comprehensive support, which often gets immediate attention with severity one cases.
A key area for improvement for VMware would be response time.
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
7.6
Oracle Exadata provides scalable solutions with efficient resource management, though some users face challenges with cross-generation upgrades.
Sentiment score
7.8
VxRail is praised for scalability, adaptability, and seamless integration, supporting diverse environments from small businesses to enterprises.
Within a site, scalability is excellent.
The scalability is excellent.
There are limitations, such as the inability to upgrade from a single to dual CPU in certain configurations.
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
7.8
Oracle Exadata is highly stable and reliable, with minimal downtime and high-availability features praised by users.
Sentiment score
8.6
Users praise VxRail for stability and reliability, performing well even amid minor issues, enhancing its business-critical suitability.
Once installed, Exadata is very stable.
It is a very stable and mature product, with centralized management and upgrades being perfect for us.
The product is very stable, and I rate its stability as nine out of ten.
 

Room For Improvement

Oracle Exadata's high cost, licensing complexity, and technical issues reduce appeal, with users seeking better integration and support.
VxRail users face installation, compatibility, security, and cost challenges, seeking better performance, integration, and support enhancements.
I cannot create an extended rack cluster with one node on one site and another node on a different site.
It requires a very clean environment to proceed without issues.
The major issue with VxRail is the razoring process, which can only be performed by Dell.
 

Setup Cost

High costs reflect Oracle Exadata's performance benefits; enterprises value integrated components and negotiate discounts for large-scale deployments.
VxRail's high initial and ongoing costs provide long-term value for enterprises but challenge smaller businesses financially.
Previously, the cost was higher, however, recent changes in VMware pricing have reduced it.
The cost varies for us as a large company because we receive special offers from Dell.
 

Valuable Features

Oracle Exadata enhances performance and efficiency with features like Smart Scan and Flash Cache, offering high availability and scalability.
VxRail offers seamless upgrades, robust performance, and streamlined management, making it ideal for diverse workloads with simplified operations.
It also offers high backend speed between self-storage units and servers, which is beneficial for processing.
Customers prefer the single pane of glass management and integration with VMware, which makes it easier for them to proceed with decisions involving VMware products.
Another benefit is the fully automated upgrade process, which is completed with just one click through the VxRail Manager.
 

Categories and Ranking

Oracle Exadata
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
127
Ranking in other categories
Data Warehouse (2nd)
VxRail
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
130
Ranking in other categories
HCI (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

Oracle Exadata and VxRail aren’t in the same category and serve different purposes. Oracle Exadata is designed for Data Warehouse and holds a mindshare of 18.8%, up 18.6% compared to last year.
VxRail, on the other hand, focuses on HCI, holds 19.7% mindshare, down 21.4% since last year.
Data Warehouse
HCI
 

Featured Reviews

Arun Kumarasamy - PeerSpot reviewer
A highly scalable solution that has the best technology and is designed for huge database workloads
It's an entire hardware box where the software and the hardware combination can fasten our queries for the database. The tool has an intelligent cell server where the data is processed at the storage layer rather than the server layer. The tool supports our big data analytics and data warehousing needs. It is the best solution for OLTP and data warehousing. Oracle has the best database technology in the world. Exadata is the best hardware machine designed for huge database workloads along with OLTP.
Rami Jadallah - PeerSpot reviewer
Streamline management and integration with seamless upgrades
The primary reasons customers choose VxRail include ease of management, ease of upgrades, and integration with VMware. The hyper-converged infrastructure simplifies software and hardware upgrades. Customers prefer the single pane of glass management and integration with VMware, which makes it easier for them to proceed with decisions involving VMware products.
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Answers from the Community

PX
Jan 18, 2022
Jan 18, 2022
Although the VxRail is considered as the #1 HCI solution for its reliability & performance, yet unfortunate when it comes to an Oracle solution ... it won't be considered as the best infrastructure choice ... and it's not due to the performance or the architecture, but in fact, the whole blame goes to Oracle license base (core base), as you may see ... VxRail is based on VMWare license, whe...
2 out of 3 answers
RI
Mar 3, 2021
First off I am biased I work for Oracle.  What I am sharing is my own perception and not the views of Oracle.  I don't sell Exadata, but have worked with more than a hundred Exadata customers over the years.  My answer - Not really.  The not so secret sauce in Exadata is the DB binaries are running in storage server and in the DB server, when SQL executes it only returns the part of the DB needed for processing by the DB server, saving a lot on IO and gaining processing speed.  I haven't seen a POC where Exadata wasn't 3-4x faster, even one where it was 15x faster for batch/DWH workload at a large bank.  Also Exadata has optimized memory and flash utilization within the binaries of the DB, making it tough to duplicate without access to source code by other HW developers.  In terms of licensing best to talk to sales at Oracle.  Generally if you have a ULA then you can get parity for licensing costs on each, however you will be running at least 2x as many cores for the same workloads so cost will be higher on VxRail.  Oracle standard architecture with 19c and forward is to use Multi-Tenant architecture - and it is only option starting with 21c.  Meaning you can manage many DBs as one, and avoid VM server sprawl you find with VMWare and VxRail.  If you have workloads that fit Exadata's smallest footprint then it really is the lowest TCO and highest performance - I have seen dozens of comparisons, even one with a major telco where the competing HW vendor through in free storage and was giving a 70% discount on servers - versus 25% discount on Exadata and Exadata still was lower cost TCO and matched the cost per core (cost per core is not a great compare since Exadata needs far fewer cores for the same workload - need to look at total solution cost).  
MM
Mar 4, 2021
Although the VxRail is considered as the #1 HCI solution for its reliability & performance, yet unfortunate when it comes to an Oracle solution ... it won't be considered as the best infrastructure choice ... and it's not due to the performance or the architecture, but in fact, the whole blame goes to Oracle license base (core base), as you may see ... VxRail is based on VMWare license, where Oracle condition when you are going to deploy it over VMWare, you will need to license the whole host cores (not only the assigned Virtual cores to the VM), so if you have a VxRail cluster that consists of 4 nodes for example, and each node have dual sockets 16 cores, then although you are assigning only 8 Cores for the Oracle VM, yet you will need to pay for the whole host cores (32 core) which a huge amount of money, and you will pay the double if you are going to deploy in high availability mood. So you see, the issue is from the Oracle side not from VxRail, Alternatively ... you can deploy all of your application over the VxRail cluster, including the Oracle application, yet for the Oracle database, use a physical server with high CPU frequency and low no of cores ... for example (Intel Xeon Gold 5222 3.8G, 4Core / Intel Xeon Silver 4215R 3.2G, 8Core), and you may use a single socket server which will allow you for upgrading later on.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
31%
Computer Software Company
12%
Manufacturing Company
6%
Government
5%
Computer Software Company
15%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Government
9%
Financial Services Firm
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

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?
The pricing of Exadata is high. It is more expensive than usual, making it suitable only for big enterprises or businesses that can afford it.
What needs improvement with Oracle Exadata?
Also considered an advantage, the main drawback is the inability to cluster two Exadata systems across sites. For example, with one node on one site and another node on a different site, I cannot c...
How does HPE Nimble Storage compare to VxRail?
HPE Nimble Storage dHCI Vs. VxRail One of the best things about the HPE Nimble Storage dHCI is the three, two, one, zero rule. That means I need three copies of my data on two different types of me...
What Is The Biggest Difference Between vSAN And VxRail?
While both run on the vSAN technology from VMware, vSAN needs to be deployed on vSAN ready nodes while VxRail is an engineered system. The choice to choose which technology depends on two major fac...
What are the major differences between VxRail and Dell EMC PowerFlex?
VxRail vs. Dell EMC PowerFlex VxRail provides stable solutions for technical problems while at the same time not being too expensive for a company to invest in. Even if the user is working with a l...
 

Also Known As

No data available
VCE VxRail
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

PayPal, EBS, Organic Food Retailer, Garmin, University of Minnesota, Major Semiconductor Company, Deutsche Bank, Starwood, Ziraat Bank, SK Telecom, and P&G.
World Wide Technology Inc, Renault Sport Formula One Team, 8x8 Inc, Brownes, Canadian Pacific, Canopy, Denton, EDF, Unilin, Xerox
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