Oracle Exadata Reviews

• Smart Flash Cache
• Storage Index
• Smart Scan
• Hybrid Columnar Compression
• Oracle ASM
• Security with encryption
• Oracle platinum support

We were using a normal RAC on a Linux server for online applications and Oracle on the same platform for data warehousing. After moving to Oracle Exadata, we were able to add more users, and queries get executed very quickly for data warehousing, around one quarter to half the time when compared to our previous solution under normal conditions.

• Shared RAM for multiple instances
• Hardware update in terms of storage
• Ability to migrate a database to Exadata from a normal environment

I've been using it for five years, including in my previous company.

During migration, we approached transportable tablespace and Oracle database along with GoldenGate.

There have been no issues with stability.

It's been able to scale for our needs.

10/10 because we have Oracle Platinum Support.

Previously, we used SQL tuning, server tuning along with network tuning with huge storage and higher CPUs. It was a management decision, along with our recommendations, to move to Exadata.

It was a complex setup because we were implementing the online application as well as data warehousing on the same machine. Lots of planning took place before moving to Exadata, and we did regression testing for each application on an Oracle provided Exadata machine. After verification from our application team and management, we verified our test results.

We did it in-house with help from Oracle.

It's too costly.

I have seen, and it's my personal experience, that if your application runs on half a rack don't go for a full rack. After all, you can upgrade from half a rack to a full rack if needed, and there is no point to move directly onto a full rack.

Check with Oracle and do testing on the lower version rack first. Although sales people from Oracle will convince you to go for a higher version, which is not needed unless your design, architecture, and applications needed .

The intelligent features have been built to utilize the storage layer in a much better way.

It's one of the most stable, high-performing products I've used.

More control for database admins is needed for storage indexes and pricing.

I've used it for close to five years.

No issues encountered.

No issues encountered.

No issues encountered.

Customer Service:

It's average.

Technical Support:

It's average.

We switched because we get better reliability and scalablity, as well as improved performance and a smaller footprint in the datacenter.

It was straightforward.

We implemented it in-house.

It's close to 40% in terms of cost saving.

Oracle's pricing and licensing is always costly.

No issues encountered.

If you are running Oracle databases, this is the best solution.

Smart Scan, HCC Compression, Storage Indexes, Flash Cache, Flash Log and the two server types, i.e., High Performance and High Capacity are the most valuable features.

It provides terrific performance, huge space savings in compressed backups and lesser backup duration with parallelism.

Gathering various logs during the performance issues needs to improve.

I have used this solution for six years.

Initially, we did experience stability issue but thereafter, it was well-stabilized.

There were no scalability issues.

An excellent support is provided by Oracle, it is based on the support model paid for.

Previously, we were using the standard UNIX clustering servers. Performance and scalability are the reasons as to why we switched over to this solution.

The vendor does the setup.

This is a really good solution. Initially, query issues are expected but once stabilized, an amazing performance is expected.

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.

I like mainly the performance. Also, we have enabled RAC clusters. That's one of the main things, as well as high availability. The performance and high availability are really awesome.

The main benefit is that everything is powered by Oracle; the whole box, hardware, software, and storage. So we have the flexibility of going to one vendor directly instead of going to multiple vendors if we had any issues. If we have a storage issue, we go to them. If we have a database issue, we go to them. And if there are any patches or other updates, everything is combined as a single patch. We can apply it and it's easy to apply with a single command and easy to coordinate and support.

In the current version we're using, we had lots of storage issues, disk failures, etc. We think in the future, we'd like to see that reduced. That will reduce the cost and everything for the client.

It is stable.

We had an issue where we had to increase the storage and we got the new cells from Oracle. Then we scaled outward.

We have used technical support many times. Most of time it's okay, but sometimes there's a delay in the response. Then we have to escalate and get it done.

We didn’t have any previous solution. We had different vendors, like a storage vendor, and the DB software was from Oracle. As a security company, we want to maintain our compliance by applying the latest patches. That's why we chose this engineered system: so that we have a single vendor we can contact easily.

For setup, we had a consultant come in. They trained us initially and helped us with the set up. Then, after that, we started working on everything.

It's very costly.

I would suggest going with the product, but again it depends on the application, the budgeting and all that. The budget for the application depends on how critical the application is. If it's really critical and revenue generating, then I'll recommend going with this product. But if it is not so critical, then I'll recommend going with something is less costly.

Mainly, we already had experience with the Oracle database and that's why we chose this one.

Technical support is one of the things we look for in a vendor, because any issue we get we want to get a response as soon as possible. We also consider the stability of the product.

It's a fast solution, though it does take some work to ensure that queries are offloading using bloom filters, etc.

It replaced a legacy database (SAND) and was part of a major overhaul. It didn't change the way the company worked per se, but it did force the creation of an Exadata compatible reporting framework, and it was that framework which enabled a leaner rewrite of the existing reports and provided a basis for new ones.

As soon as your joins get complicated, things start to go wrong. You lose much of the offloading and start spilling into temp space. We were reporting on billions of rows and it was a constant problem so a custom reporting framework had to be created. Parallel queries need to be carefully managed and the DBAs need to be right on top of the resource manager, as if you aren't managed properly as a user, you can end up waiting behind others. 

We've had no issues with deployment.

We've had no issues with stability.

We've had no issues with scalability.

There was quite a learning curve despite knowing that "things are different" with Exadata.

I do know it's eye-wateringly expensive and that we struggled to get it to do what we wanted it to do.

I'd be interested to see how the run times stack up against Hadoop or similar - but once you've spent the money, there's no going back!.

• Exadata provides great improvement in terms of read/write response time. The response time is approximately 10x the performance of a regular disk. • Tuning is automatic. • SQL operations run faster, because large I/O operations are replaced by group operations. • Ideal for data warehousing since it supports bulk load operations. • Good storage capacity

• Licensing is per CPU and relatively expensive. • It is specifically designed for data warehouse and OLTP platforms; so, it is not cost effective when investing in it for low data transactions. • The hardware runs only Oracle Software Exadata is a proprietary system from Oracle, that combines both hardware and software requirements for data warehousing and OLTP applications. Oracle utilizes the improvement in disk technology, to produce one of the best machines, ideal not only for data warehousing, but good for private cloud.

Smart Scan , Smart Flash, storage Index, Hybrid Columnar Compression, Resource Manager and Smart Scan of Data mining Model Scoring technologies are the features that places Exadata machine ahead of similar products. If you are looking for a data warehouse machine with large storage capacity, high performance, and manageability, Exadata is the best suite. But, you have to mentally prepare yourself for the fact that Exadata hardware only runs oracle software.