Oracle Exadata Reviews

The separation between the database nodes and storage cells is the key feature of Exadata. The capabilities of the storage cells, the intelligence, are excellent. 

The speed is unbeatable. 

Exadata was mostly for data warehouses. However, in time with a model of powerful processors in database nodes, it's also an OLTP machine. It's very good. The latest versions offer even more performance, as they have a persistent memory and a lot of features.

The usage of the internal InfiniBand Switches is a key feature in Exadata. Everything is fast due to this separation at the database level and storage level. It's intelligently designed and has a very fast connection between all of the components of Exadata. 

We can use virtualization on Exadata. We can choose capacity on demand. There are a lot of new features that have turned up in the past two to four years. The solution is growing and becoming broader in its scope.

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.

From the software point of view, management point of view, it's okay right now. However, I don't understand why Exadata has no database nodes with SPARC processors. Oracle has SPARC servers that are on RISC processors and are more powerful processors than Intel processors. They never do Exadata with such processors on the database nodes level. However, they tested and it wasn't very useful. I would like to see Exadata with RISC processors on the database nodes if it's possible.

I've been working with the solution since 2012. It's been about nine years - almost a decade. It's been a while.

You can scale the solution. You can configure it how you like and buy more cells or nodes to add to it. 

The technical support has been okay. We've been satisfied with the level of service.

The initial setup isn't too complex. However, in the present, the initial setup of Exadata isn't made by Oracle partners or the client. There is an advanced ACS department, Oracle Advanced Customer Support, that handles the implementation. In this team, there are very good specialists on Exadata. These specialists from the ACS department are the guys who will install Exadata for the first time for the client. 

It's not something very complex and something which cannot be done by others, however. Our team, for example, was installing Exadata. It's possible to be done by other teams with, of course, the appropriate competencies. The implementation sits somewhere between simple and complex. The machine is complex. We cannot set up a machine like this with more components and different components like a laptop, for example. 

There is a specialized team that handles the implementation for the client.

I don't evaluate the fees involved in using the solution. It's too big. However, it's my understanding that you need to pay for the hardware, the nodes, and the cells. That said, you can configure it however you want. You can easily buy and increase the capacity in only the nodes or only the cells if you prefer. It's worth the money you spend. The value is there.

I've looked at other options. For a data warehouse, it's a better solution. It's better than Teradata, for example, or other complex machines from the competitors. Migrating data warehouses from other infrastructures to Exadata has a good success rate. I wouldn't say that it is the better solution for an OLTP system, however, for an OLAP system, it's a better option.

We've been Oracle partners for around ten years or so. I'm a project manager, and not overly technical. 

We don't have Exadata in our company, however, we have Exadata via a client. The current company where I work is the first company in Romania to sell Exadata in Romania. There are a number of Exadata solutions sold in Romania - which is why my colleague has achieved past competencies and certification in Exadata machines. They are very good, and they are delivering the present services on Exadata. I manage the projects where they deliver services on Exadata only for the customer, not in our company.

I'd advise users to consider the solution. You pay more money on the machine, however, you pay less for the licenses. On top of that, you have enough room to put a lot of data there. You can virtualize some machines and you put items on the application level, however, I don't recommend this. 

If you already have separate machines, and you have licenses for all these machines and you want to put new hardware in place, it's better to put Exadata in place instead of a lot of other machines. That way, you can consolidate the database here and you will pay less on database software licenses.

I'd rate the solution at a ten out of ten. I've been very satisfied with the product overall.

I have been using Oracle Exadata for a data warehouse using only a Linux environment.

The most valuable feature of Oracle Exadata is the integration with other solutions, such as SAN storage and shared VLAN network.

Oracle Exadata could improve by decreasing the price.

I have been using Oracle Exadata for approximately six years.

The Oracle Exadata environment design is very reliable. I have not had any issues with the solution on the cloud or on-premise.

Oracle Exadata is highly scalable. You can increase the network and everything works well.

We have approximately 10 clients using the solution in the finance sector.

The support from Oracle Exadata is good.

The initial setup of Oracle Exadata is done by well-trained engineers. I have to prepare the environment with all the systems, active environments, and IoT networks. After the preparation, the engineers can do the scripting. Once installed from the scripts we can work with it.

The whole implementation process can take between two and three hours.

We used the support from Oracle Exadata to complete the implementation.

Mainly all the patching and updates are handled directly by the Oracle support team.

The price of Oracle Exadata is expensive. It is not competitive with other solutions some of the times.

I would recommend the solution to others.

I rate Oracle Exadata a seven out of ten.

The performance on the databases is good.

You get less timing and latency with this product. When you compare the solution to some other devices as compared to this Exadata, the latency units are very high on them. When you talk about the performance of this specific solution, it's excellent.

The solution is very stable.

The scalability is good.

Technical support is helpful.

The setup is a little bit complex. We would like to see the installation part get easier. Also, this installation is only for the OEM. They need partners.

Some liberty should be given to the customer when we talk about licensing. They should work to make it more flexible and give customers more options.

I've been using the solution for almost five and a half years.

The solution is very stable. The performance is good. there are no bugs or glitches. It doesn't crash or freeze. 

The scalability of the solution is quite good.

Technical support is fine. It is okay.

We are only working with Oracle. We haven't used a different solution. 

I didn't handle any aspect of the initial setup. That said, it's my understanding that the initial setup is a bit complex and difficult.

We are not doing the installation right now. Everything is done by Oracle only. Exadata doesn't get involved in it.

When you talk about the pricing, the pricing is on the higher side. That said, if you're looking for good performance, then you definitely need to pay the price. Therefore, the price is reasonable.

We are a distributor. We are a global distributor for this Oracle, and we have a partnership with them.

If you're looking for excellent, performance Exadata is definitely the best option to go for.

I'd rate the solution at a ten out of ten.

Performance.

Excavation is purely for the storage of the data warehouses. It does what it needs to do. It performs. We have an active-passive DR. We tested it, it works. We can switch datacenters within reasonable time and go completely live in another data center on the technology we have.

We bought the whole stack, so we have extra discs. We have one month to show that an application doesn't work. We found out that installing and running the software on Oracle, was better than on the other platforms we used before.

Off the top of my head I can't think of anything.

A year and a half to two years.

No downtime.

In my eyes, it is going to meet the company's needs moving forward.

We have some very good internal guys who handle most of the issues. Actually, we haven't had many issues at all.

No vendor is reliable. We say there's a difference between proven in PowerPoint and proven in practice. We always find out in practice if it really works.

Personally, what I like to see is somebody who understands the business. What I see is that a lot of vendors are mainly focused on technology and not on the business functions you want to build. I believe that technology can be bought while the intellectual property is in the business services that you deliver to an organization. That's what I look for.

The most valuable feature is supposed to be speed. I like the consolidation with the memory, the SSD and the InfiniBand, and the algorithms that they use internally to take different paths through for the database traffic. All of those features are why we went with it.

We've just started to convert over and the performance out of it was not as much as we had expected. We're seeing only, probably, one-third faster than where we were at. I don't know if we'll get the benefit that we had anticipated out of it.

I think their platinum support needs to be improved. It's very difficult after you've got the product in-house. They’ve got great service up until you get the product. Then, you get the product, and trying to find someone to help you with configuration or setup, or even just opening up an SR, was not there.

With patching, it takes 6-8 weeks to get it onto their schedule, in order to get something patched. Then, it's rush, rush, rush at the very end. It's a big mystery as to what exactly are they doing. That's the biggest problem that we've had.

We have not had any down time. We've run into bugs, which we had not anticipated. When we upgraded software, depending on the version, if you're not with the current patch release, you have huge problems. You can't even run. We can't even run our application right now because we ran into a patch problem.

For as far as we've gotten with it, it has scaled to our needs; so far so good.

Before choosing this product, I did not evaluate other options. This was a CIO decision and we went with Exadata.

You want to get everything set up before it comes in the door. While you still have that sales support with you, you want to get all of your additional support, because you have to be added in for the platinum support area. Get all of that set up before you get your product in.

It's not as good as we expected, but it's definitely better than what I've seen with other companies.

It is fast and integrated. It combines hardware with the software that we use from Oracle. It's a complete stack, not only for the hardware but the full implementation and delivery, so it’s really good for IT.

We have seen performance and reliability benefits. It's also beneficial from a cost perspective.

We are using it now predominantly as a hardware stack managed by our company. We would love to see it more as a service; a database-as-a-service offering.

It is very stable; no stability issues.

No problems with scalability.

The SRs that we raise are not always resolved in a timely fashion. Often I'm unhappy.

At this moment in time, it is pretty much a straightforward, almost-manual installation. We're looking for some automation around it.

We also looked at other organizations or vendors, as well. We also looked at the database appliance from Oracle.

We decided to go with the Exadata product because of the size of our company.

The Nike one: Just do it.

SmartScan and Cell Offloading, which can drastically reduce I/O from queries, improving response time.

My company's data warehouse was consolidated on a single database with improved capability and performance. Maintenance tasks and jobs start to execute much faster on the new environment. Now our company is acquiring a new hardware to support our SAS application.

Massive updates statements should not disable HCC.

I've used it for over two years.

When the workload increases on the cells, Cell Offloading may not happen.

No issues encountered.

8/10.

8/10.

No previous solution was used.

The setup is conducted by Oracle, which is a requirement.

We've not measured it.

It can simplify your IT environment, reducing the costs with maintenance operations if you have the Platinum offering.

We looked at Fusion I/O, but Exadata Storage was so much faster.

It really fit our mixed environment and it is totally directed to DW/DSS environment, as most of the heavy queries would be performed on the storage server.

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.