Oracle Exadata Reviews

The most valuable feature of the overall system is the way it is engineered. It basically gives you the best performance. The most important thing that you will see in the database, especially an Oracle database, is the latency because of IO. Because of the built-in flash, the latency is really reduced quite drastically.

We do see very good performance, at least 30% better performance in our overall response time when we use Exadata.

It's very specialized hardware. It really meets very critical needs, but it is very expensive. When I was working for another company, which was a mid-sized company, they did not even consider Exadata just because of cost. Making it more cost effective might help them.

Other than that, from a technical point of view, I can't think of any area with room for improvement.

I have been using it for one year.

I believe it's a stable solution because we haven't seen any issues, so far.

It is scalable, given the way you can add more and more Exadata to your configuration, but it gets expensive. However, I'm not the right person to comment on whether it provides enough value for the money.

I don't know too much about their support because I'm not the person who directly interacts with Oracle support on any issues. Nonetheless, one thing I learned is, for any maintenance, we have to call an Oracle technician. That's in our contract and that gets expensive. For small and mid-sized companies, that might be a factor they might want to consider.

If they are really looking for performance, and performance is the only thing that matters to them, while having a very stable system, this product is engineered within Oracle, who knows their database more than anyone else. A combination of hardware and software from the same vendor, it is specifically designed for Oracle Database, so I definitely recommend it, if it meets all their other cost and other requirements.

Scalability and high performance, real high performance.

The most basic business solutions run more quickly.

I don't know. We've only just started using it. It's a new solution for us.

It's stable.

We can extend the data without any trouble, just put something new in and go on. That's great. There's no problem of that kind with this solution, for us.

Good quality support.

We just switched from another older version of Exadata to the newest one.

It's complex. We integrated an existing solution to Exadata.

Our short list was HP and IBM. We went with Oracle because we needed a unified solution like Exadata. No one else could provide a solution with this performance, for us.

When looking at vendors to work with we look for good, fast implementation of the solution, reliable support, and lower cost.

It's a good solution for a data warehhouse, analytics, etc. It's just a good, reliable solution.

The scale of the product is the most valuable feature. We use it for data warehouse and for that, we need to process a whole bunch of data faster. That is one of the features that we use this product most.

We use it for bringing data from all the different systems into it and then process it there. It is relatively faster. I always want the fastest speed, but despite all the claims made, it is fast. This product meets our scale and volume requirements.

It has enabled us to implement business intelligence. That is the most important function that we are using it for. It has helped us line-up. Earlier, we used to take close to 24 hours in some cases. Now, it's a matter of a couple of hours.

They can make it faster and more scalable. Currently, it is not. Actually, we carried out a benchmark against another company's product. Oracle took about 14 hours and that company's product took only thirty minutes. It is like a day and night difference.

It's pretty stable.

This product does not scale like we want it to.

There is another company that we use for this purpose and it does a much better job.

It's pretty good. I don't have any problems in that area.

We were not using any other solution prior to this. The reason why we chose this product is because we had already invested in Oracle and they had this to offer, so we continued with it.

If we needed to use it for batch requirements like before, it is still one of the best solutions. But, right now with the needs that we have, it isn't enough. If you are looking for batch processing, this solution is the way to go. However, if you are looking to do what we do, which not many companies do, then it is not suitable. We are into the internet business and we process trillions of records in a day all over the world. So, probably it is not for us. But for most of the companies, it is suitable. In my previous company, we had this solution.

Actually, the product rating all depends on the timing. Initially when it was bought, at the time, there was no other solution like this. At that time, I would have rated it higher. However, with our current requirements we need to be able to process billions of records in almost real-time, which this database doesn't meet.

Oracle products are pretty stable. They are leaders in database. As we looked into data warehouse products, they are the natural choice. We did not want to bring something new.

The Exadata system is specifically optimized for database workloads. But
the key [Exadata specific] features that we leverage for our workloads is
Exadata Smart Scan, Smart Flash Cache, Hybrid Columnar Compression, and of
course all the 12c Oracle Database which are integrated with Exadata stack;
e.g, Multitenant/PDB.

We have consolidated a large portion of our disparate database deployments
from across the enterprise onto the Exadata. This has saved us and our
customers Capex and datacenter floor space. But more importantly, it's
forced us to rationalize and standardize on a specific software stack. For
example, earlier we had eight or nine different versions of Oracle Grid
Infrastructure and Oracle Database. By going to Exadata platform, we forced
the best practice to a single stack version.

The key areas of improvements are better documentation, Exadata hardware
stack monitoring, and improved awareness (self-tuning) application/SQL for
Exadata. For monitoring, most of the admins had difficultly with the OEM
Exadata Plugin, and thus we wrote our own monitoring. In addition, most
customers have custom network configurations, these don’t always fit into
the Exadata “out-of-box” supportability. Oracle ACS had to work
particularly closely with Network team to resolve firewall, port-forwarding,
DNS name resolution issues, etc.

We have had issues with storage cells failing and rebooting, but with proper
configuration and redundancy decisions (upfront) we barely noticed the
event. Nevertheless, when we had component failures it was difficult to
diagnose and triage.

No, this is one issue we didn’t encounter. We decided on the appropriate
Exadata configuration and we deployed and consolidated. Moreover, Exadata
has Elastic configurations as well. Nevertheless, there are some internal
areas where the admins need to set and rationalize perception. Some SQL
is poorly written and even Exadata can’t fix that. The perception is that
Exadata is a single “red” pill to cure bad code, that’s just not the case.

Oracle Exadata Tech Support has been great. We had many issues with Oracle
ACS and Platinum Support; specifically around the areas of scheduling
patching and upgrades. For these reasons, we ended building that skillset
in house.

We had disparate configurations, ranging from IBM AIX P-series, HP systems,
and older Solaris systems. We began our consolidation approach and
standardized on the Exadata for our Oracle Database 11.2 and above systems.

The initial setup required a lot of planning from all stack parties. All
features and configuration need to be discussed upfront. However, with
detail planning, the execution and deployment, via “OneCommand” process, was fairly straightforward.

This is where the Exadata hangup occurs. Not only are users paying for
Oracle EE and options such as RAC, and most of the must-have features such
as Advanced Compression, and Partitioning; but also the Exadata Storage
software. Add in the Support costs for all that storage. However, Oracle doesoffer “capacity on-demand” options, which do mollify the compute
licenses (not storage licenses) to an extent.

Yes, we looked at Hyper-Converged Systems and UCS compute with
All-Flash-Arrays. And we did buy those systems for specific applications
that didn’t fit the Exadata solution.

Understand pricing and cost of skillset acquisition. In addition, define the
organizational layout for supporting the Exadata, since Exadata is a
“converged and engineered system” per se.

For me, the most valuable feature is the fact that it’s an integrated system of software and hardware together.

We see cost saving due to the reduced footprint in the data center and improved performance.

There has been great improvement from the X2 to the X6 versions. There is a lot of improvement every time. CPU power is always doubled every time and memory power is doubled, so they are on the right track.

Monitoring might be a good option for improvement.

The solution is very stable.

We have had no issues with scalability.

We have opened tickets with Oracle technical support and so far, no problems.

We looked at a custom-built solution.

Engage me.

We are evaluating this solution to see how it compares to others. We are attempting to see the challenges and advantages and we are preparing experiments and doing tests. The solution is popular in the banking and financial insurance domains.

Oracle has reliable solutions and this one is no different.

We have experienced some performance-related challenges. I think the security could be better in the cloud at the moment from our tests. 

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.

I have been using this solution for approximately two years.

It is a very stable solution.

I have found the solution to be scalable.

The deployment of the solution could be made easier.

The implementation is a process and we are still working through it. It involves a lot of testing. We currently have a five-member maintenance team.

One of the key factors determining if we use the solution is how secure is our information going to be in the cloud which we have not come to a full conclusion yet. However, the solution is really reliable and I would recommend it.

I rate Oracle Exadata an eight out of ten.

Omnichannel multiprocessing.

It provides efficient runtime processing.

Hybrid columnar compression.

Try to diminish the logging service.