Oracle Exadata Reviews

The most valuable feature is definitely the performance. However, it's also a platform for both performance and consolidation. Once you start leveraging Exadata with Database In-Memory and Multitenant, you've got a really solid platform for database enterprise computing.

If you have server footprint reduction or consolidation as a requirement, then you can consolidate several databases and configurations onto one platform. Combine that with performance, it becomes a great avenue for cost reduction in terms of OpEx and CapEx. Exadata cannot be one-dimensional solution, performance, consolidation, and scalability must be part of the overall solution.

I think Oracle Enterprise Manager has come a long way with monitoring and managing Exadata, but getting the patching down would go a long way. I think the patching is still lacking quite a bit. If we can get the patching and upgrade in place, that would make a huge impact in overall supportability. I realize there is new OEM functionality recently introduced to support this, but it needs to be flushed out and tested.

It's been great. The stability has really, really improved a lot over the last couple of years.

It's been fantastic. With all the additional flash, with the faster CPUs, the faster disks, it's really come a long ways. The introduction of the X6 is also going to be an interesting avenue.

Tech support has been really good. That goes a long way because you have some comfort, stability in the fact that you've got somebody that you can lean on. You don't always have those skill sets. Since we're a services company, we do have those skill sets in that area, but most customers may not have that.

These guys are very well versed in the technology. They understand not only the storage software part of it, but the database as well as the hardware aspect of it -end to end. The most surprising aspect of Exadata is really the support.

It is quite difficult, but again since we're a services company, we're pretty well versed in it. We actually help customers do that end-to-end. Not only do we help bring Exadata in, we help do the installation and configuration and migration to the Exadata, as well as sustainability for future.

It takes a lot of planning depending on your downtime for conversion, depending where [platform] you're coming from. All those things play a big part in what tools you use and how you use them.

It is an expensive stack, so there's those things to keep in mind. The upside is that once you've bought into the technology, you have to embrace it , if that's the direction you want to go.

It is really good for what it's supposed to do. It's a great technology for Oracle-based solutions. There's pluses and minuses in everything. Any time you get an engineered system like that, you have to be geared for organizational [boundary] changes. Understand how the technology is supposed to work, how it's going to change the way you do your day-to-day business.

There are several features I've found valuable, including Exadata Hybrid Columnar Compression, Exadata Smart Scan Technology, and Smart Flash Cache.

We have dramatically improved performance for the batch jobs, after we moved from the traditional Oracle 11G databases to the new Exadata servers.

Performance has improved several-fold and moving (consolidating many small databases from smaller Linux/Unix servers into Exadata cluster) has resulted in lower production support cost and effort for BAU DBAs.

There were some minor problems moving databases to Exadata, but it was more a problem with the internal processes with my current employer.

We've used it since August 2015.

We've not had many issues with deployment, except for the minor issues involving moving databases.

No problems, we have not had any unplanned down-time or performance issues.

We've had no problems with scalability.

Oracle was pretty good in original install and database clusters build, and was pretty helpful in all the requests and questions we posted to them.

I would say technical support is very good. I have extensive working relationships with the Oracle consultants who were deploying the Exadata clusters at Worksafe. We have not had any really major issues with our Exadata clusters so far.

Yes, I have worked as DBAs on traditional Oracle RDBMS versions 9I, 10G and 11G. My previous employer has deployed large DW database into Exadata with great success. Also, Worksafe has decided to move/consolidate many smaller servers/databases into large Exadata clusters. My opinion is that in both cases business users are pretty happy with the database performance and stability on Exadata servers so far.

Initial set-up was a bit complex, but everything was resolved pretty quickly.

Original implementation was done by Oracle, and I would rate the consultant competence as very high.

I was not involved with pricing and licensing.

I was not involved in any before evaluation process.

Exadata is very solid and robust machine, with great performance. Highly recommended for companies (who can afford it).

Exadata storage is very fast and it gives really good performance. Sometimes people buy a good server with a lot of CPU, pay a lot of money, but they have very poor storage performance and then they don't get enough performance from their system.

Exadata really gives good storage performance and our business applications run very fast.

It's perfect. I don't know what to improve in Exadata.

More than five years.

Very stable. In the last five years there was was just one occasion of downtime because one cell went down and because we had low free disk space. It was a little problem but it was solved.

I don't think it's so scalable because Exadata is a box. You can't do anything with this. It's a box, use it, that's all.

Support is much better for Exadata than for other products. Very fast response and sometimes much faster than for other systems. 

Sometimes if we have a bug on another database, we duplicate the database on Exadata, repeat the bug and they make a patch much faster.

We didn't set it up, Oracle set up Exadata. It's not permitted to set up Exadata by yourself. They bring it to you. It's ready for use.

I totally recommend buying Exadata. It's very good product. I haven't ever seen anything better than Exadata for Oracle Database.

The fact that it's an engineered system. It's a database in a box, storage, the networking, the compute engines. All of it's in one nice neat package. My DBAs like administering it. My application owners like its reliability on the back end.

Our ability to scale heavy workloads and our ability to consolidate lighter workloads and reduce our sprawl through the data sector.

Price. Extremely expensive. Maintenance is about industry average. They've got a pretty good upgrade roadmap. But it's been an expensive ride for us, but also a necessary one.

Very stable. No major issues. No downtime that was a result of bugs or some kind of defect in the platform.

It has scaled well.

As a member of IT management with business units breathing down our neck, when there is an issue we always feel the support can be faster but I don't get a lot of complaints. It's good support. Like everything, it could be faster. We'd want to be faster.

It was straightforward for us because we used an integrator partner to put it all in for us, and then our administrators stepped in and took over.

We're constantly looking at other products. We went with Exadata because we needed some muscle on the back end for an ERP implementation. We've been through Exadata first-generation, and right now we're putting in X6s. We've had X2s, X3s, X4s, and we're actually installing X6s right now as we lifecycle through.

It's a great investment for the large enterprise. I think with Exadata in the cloud, that's coming, that we're starting to look at - and they're obviously trying to push here at the conference - I think it'll open itself up to a lot of other customers that probably wouldn't have gone with such an expensive on-premise solution. We're excited about that, too. 

I would definitely recommend it to any colleagues.

Performance and storage is good.

Reduces cycle time for batch processing.

I would like to see better application performance.

We have been using this for six months.

There were no real deployment issues.

There were no stability issues so far.

There were no scalability issues so far.

Customer service is excellent.

Technical service is excellent.

We did not use a solution previous to this one.

The setup was straightforward, but porting applications to Exadata was complex.

We implemented through Oracle.

Our ROI was $500K savings.

These are on the high side.

We were really impressed with the performance of the applications.

The most valuable feature is the fact that it's an engineered system. It's a database in a box, storage, the networking, the compute engines. All of it's in one nice, neat package. My DBAs like administering it. My application owners like its reliability on the back end.

The benefits we see are our ability to scale heavy workloads, and our ability to consolidate lighter workloads and reduce our sprawl through the data center.

Price: It’s extremely expensive. Maintenance is about industry average. I think they've got a pretty good upgrade road map. It's been an expensive ride for us but a necessary one.

It is very stable; no major issues; no down time that was a result of bugs or some kind of defect in the platform.

It has scaled well to your needs.

As a member of IT management with business units breathing down our neck when there is an issue or something like that, we always feel the support can be faster but I don't get a lot of complaints. It's good support. Like everything, it could be faster. We'd want it to be faster.

Initial setup was straightforward for us because we used an integrator partner to put it all in for us, and then our administrators step in and take over.

We're constantly looking at other products.

We ultimately chose Exadata because we needed some muscle on the back end for an ERP implementation. We've been through Exadata first generation, and right now we're putting in X6s. We've had X2s, X3s, X4s, and we're actually installing X6s right now as we lifecycle through.

It's a great investment for the large enterprise. I think with Exadata in the cloud that's coming, that we're starting to look at and they are obviously trying to push at conferences, I think it'll open itself up to a lot of other customers that probably wouldn't have gone with such an expensive on-premise solution. We're excited about that, too. I would definitely recommend it to any colleagues.

We're very happy with it.

performance

This is an engineered system by Oracle. It provides very fast communication between the storage and database. A lot of data processing is done at the storage level.

This makes the queries and processing much faster than before; reports can run within minutes rather than hours.

Cost is very high. It needs to be made affordable to grab more customer base. A lot of the technical enhancements are being made by Oracle regularly. Now, it is available on the cloud also.

If you deploy a normal server setup with SAN or direct disks, the cost is very low. Exadata machine is supplied by Oracle and hardware also maintained by Oracle. They charge as per their standards and pricing. Its quite costly in that regard.

I have used this solution for five years, since about the time it was launched.

There were no stability issues.

There were no scalability issues. In fact, scalability is one of its prime features, it is very flexible.

The technical support is, as usual, good from Oracle.

Earlier, we used SAN and the traditional servers. That was also good and time-tested for decades. This is all together a new concept.

It was a normal Oracle database setup.

The price and license costs are high as compared to the normal database setup. It depends on the client's requirements and size of the databases. Clients/ buyers have to take the call.

No other options were available in this category at that time or even now.

You should evaluate your requirements and budget.

The solution offloads the storage. This gives us great performance without impacting the CPU.

We have improved the average response time between 36% and 85%, depending on the database after migrating to Exadata.

We have been using this for 18 months.

There were no deployment issues. However, the process of configuring with OEDA requires a lot of information beforehand.

We only had a few stability issues with unexpected reboots.

Customer service is very good.

Technical support is very good.

Exadata has great value. The storage CPUs do not count on the Oracle Database licenses.

If you are acquiring a larger configuration, I would advise you to consider getting two smaller ones, so you can:

• Get more memory
• Get additional, separate environments if required by your scenario. (You cannot virtualize OS on Exadata.)

Maybe you should not license every Oracle product if you do not need them on every database.