Oracle Exadata Reviews

We use Oracle Exadata for transaction processing and data warehousing.

What I like best about Oracle Exadata is its good performance. It's also a very fast solution.

A room for improvement in Oracle Exadata is that it's not very easy to use in a microservices environment. It's not easy to split databases, and if this was easier to do in Oracle Exadata, it would make the solution better.

What I'd like to see in the next release of Oracle Exadata is for it to become more modular, so you can use it in a context where the data layer is spread between many independent services.

I've been working with Oracle Exadata for ten years.

The stability of Oracle Exadata is okay, and on a scale of one to five, I'm giving it a four.

Oracle Exadata is a very scalable solution, and I'm rating it five out of five in terms of scalability.

We're happy with Oracle Exadata support, though there's always room for improvement. In the years we've contacted them, we've reached a good balance between pricing and service. They deserve a four out of five in terms of support.

We used AIX and Db2, and currently, we're still switching our databases over to Oracle Exadata.

I wasn't involved in setting up Oracle Exadata because there's a dedicated team responsible for the setup.

The deployment process took a bit of time because my company switched gradually from other technologies to Oracle Exadata, and at the moment, some of the databases are still being moved to the solution. It's a big installation because I work for a big company.

A mix of in-house teams and vendor teams was responsible for setting up and implementing Oracle Exadata.

I have no idea about the ROI from Oracle Exadata because my team doesn't calculate it.

Oracle Exadata is not a cheap solution. Pricing is a problem for Oracle, and every client, not just my company, would like the vendor to improve on the price, or lower the price.

My company paid for several years' worth of Oracle Exadata licenses. You need to pay for the technical support and other features separately, on different contracts.

In terms of affordability, my rating for Oracle Exadata is two out of five.

Oracle Exadata is deployed on the cloud, but for databases, deployment is on-premises.

My company has twenty thousand users of applications based on Oracle Exadata. My company develops internal applications given to users, and the applications have persistent layers in Oracle.

My rating for Oracle Exadata is eight out of ten.

My company is an Oracle customer.

My advice to new users is to start small and implement Oracle Exadata incrementally. Don't implement it with a big bang approach. Do it piece by piece. The solution is good for big companies because I belong to a big company, but my company did the implementation one piece at a time.

There's a plan to increase the usage of Oracle Exadata because some of the older databases still need to be moved from Unix. Some of the databases in Db2 will also be moved to Oracle Exadata.

The most valuable feature is the integration of the various components that make the performance soar. More specifically the presence of storage indexes along with the Exadata Storage Server software, which delivers process offloading, allows us to deliver better performance without indexes--saving space and CPU. This innovative feature is not something we would be able to replicate with other solutions. In addition, we consider the features smart scan, smart flashcache, smart flash log and hybrid columnar compression very useful.

Prior to Exadata, we were relying on daily ETLs from multiple source systems to load data into base tables, then we prepared a summary and materialized views from the base to data marts which were eventually exposed to the end users. This process used to take 18 hours. So, the data was always at least 18 hours late, and occasionally later, if the ETLs failed. This caused two issues: first, most managers simply were not able to make quick decisions because the data was stale and second, for most important functions, the users got the data from our OLTP system which taxed that system's capacity.

After Exadata, we observed three immediate benefits:

• The ETLs finish in 3 hours (down from 18), making the data fresh and enabling the managers to make quick decisions. Campaigns used to take days but take a few hours now
• Users no longer go to the OLTP system, reducing the impact there and saving us from upgrades
• There is no need to build summaries; so some of the data is available almost immediately, allowing most decisions to be taken on near-realtime data which was impossible pre-Exadata

There are three possible enhancements:

• Build a stronger, more responsive support team.
• Add a RAID-5 like storage layout for customers to save space with the full understanding that performance will be less (which could be fine for non-prod systems).
• Add storage level replication without the use of Data Guard, which is quite useful in case of organizations that rely on that technology for their Disaster Recovery effort.

I've used it for 4 years

Yes; mostly due to the database version being different. We were upgrading from 10g to Exadata which ran 11g; so there were some issues we had to overcome; but those were expected. Quite honestly, our deployment was smooth in Exadata itself due to our deep understanding of the technology. Without it, I am not sure if it would have been that smooth.

Yes; the initial versions had a lot of firmware issues that caused the cells to reboot, which caused the ASM software to rebalance the diskgroups. It mostly occurred in the X2 system. The X4 system has been quite stable. However, it's important to point out that Oracle generally releases firmware updates quite fast to remove any stability issues. We encountered them because we didn't apply these due to our internal reasons.

No; scalability has been pretty awesome.

It leaves a lot to be desired. It has improved; but still a lot to go. I rate it 6 on a 10 point scale.

I gave an overall rating of 9 to Exadata X4 due to the quality of support personnel during installation and after sales events. That is going up but still leaves something to be desired.

We used Oracle database on HPUX. We switched because it was impossible to deliver performance without additional indexes. Indexes took up space and slowed down data insertion performance. Exadata solved these by enhancing performance without the need for indexes.

Oracle sends professional installers for installation and deployment. So it was fairly simple. However, as I mentioned earlier, we do have a deep technical expertise base so it worked in our favor. Without that expertise, I can't be sure if would not have been complex.

We implemented everything with our in house team.

Yes, we did evaluate Teradata, Netezza and Greenplum.

First and foremost, develop or hire a deep technical talent base inhouse, even if it's just one person. The technical role is called Database Machine Administrator (DMA). Planning is winning half the battle. There are tiny little things that makes a big difference. For instance, how to decide whether to keep the indexes you have--it's not something you can outsource. Second, get the installation checklist (detailed) from Oracle and establish SLAs for each item meticulously along with the hand off details. Third, if you don't have it, consider Oracle Enterprise Manager Grid Control to manage the Exadata system. Fourth, decide to use Oracle Platinum Support (free for Exadata) from day one. Finally, get ready to be wowed.

The innovative use of all the technologies integrated so creatively and functionally that it provides an immense performance boost impossible to attain with do it yourself systems. For instance the secret sauce is Exadata Storage Server (ESS) software, which is unique to Exadata, can't be replicated even with other massively parallel systems.

The major use of Exadata is for running databases, big databases, and also for backing them up. It provides high availability and high performance specifically for databases, and not for applications, just Oracle databases.

High availability and high performance are very valuable aspects of the solution. The key capability of Exadata, which is not found in any other solution or appliance, is its enhancement specifically for databases.

I would like to add some features to run applications or microservices-based applications on Exadata.

I have been using this solution for approximately two or three years.

Exadata is based on Linux OS, which is more secure and more stable than other operating systems like Windows. It requires specific skills but is more secure and stable.

In Exadata, there are spine switches used for scalability. These switches allow the integration of a full rack to another full rack, enabling scalability. With these features, we can make a multi-rack setup to act as one appliance. I rate its scalability as nine.

Some aspects need optimization, such as quicker response times. Some cases take a long time for Oracle to respond to, and sometimes the solutions provided are more like workarounds rather than direct fixes.

Neutral

The initial setup is challenging. It can depend on various factors, such as whether we are dealing with a quarter, half, full, or eighth rack, but generally, if it goes straight forward, it takes around five days to a week. If there are issues, it can take longer.

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.

I'd rate the solution eight out of ten.

The solution is used in enterprise applications with large databases for database consolidation. It can be used in the banking, finance, insurance, and telecom domain where performance is of prime importance.

We like the tool’s features like Smart Scan, Hybrid Columnar Compression, and the TFA.

The solution takes a lot of time to clone the environment. I would like to see some improvement in the cloning support or the time it takes on the storage side.

I have been working with the solution since 2011.

I would rate the solution’s stability a ten out of ten. I haven’t seen any issues with the solution’s stability where it crashed.

I would rate the solution’s scalability a nine out of ten. We have around ten customers for the solution.

The solution’s tech support is good.

Positive

The deployment depends on the Exadata options. There are primarily three options which include, Exadata, Exadata Cloud@Customer, and Exadata Cloud Service. Out of these, Cloud Service requires the minimum effort. The deployment takes around two to three weeks to complete. For the deployment purpose, we need information on the user base where the access is going to happen. We would also require around four to five engineers and admins for the solution’s deployment and maintenance. This estimation is based on the workflow.

There are both monthly and yearly subscription options for the solution. The solution is expensive but it’s worth the cost of consolidating data. It is not a simple machine. However, a ten or fifteen percent discount can be good for customers.

I would rate the solution a ten out of ten. It is the best platform to consolidate data. You just need to pay for the number of codes that are required by your business.

We use Oracle Exadata to provide data for our analytics in our BI systems. It can be, BI, Tableau, or batch queries. It's a Russian system called 1C and we developed ETL procedures for Oracle Exadata. We don't use any ETL instruments. We only made some packages and control mechanisms that provide us to upload data into the aggregate tables and other usages.

The most valuable feature of Oracle Exadata is the smart scan. We have large TB sessions of approximately 100 per second for each of our three instances. The smart scan allows us the obtain data in time in the enterprise manager.

The solution overall is a complete system.

Oracle Exadata could improve the monitoring system in the enterprise manager, it could be more user-friendly. In most Oracle tools there is a lot of functionality, and sometimes you need to do five or six clicks to find metrics, and sometimes it's a waste of time.

I have been using Oracle Exadata for approximately four years.

Oracle Exadata is the most stable system I have used. The performance is very good.

Oracle Exadata is highly scalable. To scale the solution you contact Oracle for the scalability you want, they give you the details, and you set it up.

We have more than 100 people using this solution in my company.

We do not plan to increase our usage because here in Russia we have some restrictions and we will have to move on without it.

We have used the support from Oracle and it is very good.

I rate the support from Oracle Exadata a five out of five.

Positive

I have used other solutions, such as PostgreSQL, Amazon, and Microsoft. The features that Oracle Exadata has these other solutions do not, such as smart scan or monitoring. If we were to have the same performance as Oracle Exadata, we would have to have more hardware.

The initial setup of Oracle Exadata is very complex. It has steps that need someone with qualifications to be completed.

The price of Oracle Exadata is competitive. There are some features that are outside of the initial purchase license, such as some monitoring packages.

I rate the price of Oracle Exadata a four out of five.

We have DBA administrators that do the maintenance of this solution.

My advice to others is to take courses in Oracle database, Oracle Exadata administration, and other development guides. They need to know how to use the solution before they start.

I rate Oracle Exadata a nine out of ten.

Oracle Exadata provides very good performance and reliability. It's a highly reliable system and provides maximum performance.

The business outcomes are much faster; end users are very happy so they can focus on their day-to-day work rather than waiting for the computer, the response from the system. In many customer cases, reports that used to take 10-12 hours get completed in 1-2 hours, a massive reduction. A business cycle that used to take about 3-5 days to turn around can be turned around in 1 day, so that's where we optimize our business utilization; much more efficiency.

A major concern from customers is that it's very costly, but if they think about the total cost of ownership over 3-5 years, I think the total cost attests to the business readiness and it doesn't come out to be very costly.

Exadata is pretty stable. There are built-in high-availability features. For example, every component – including the power supply, the fan, the CPU, and the memory – is redundant; you're buying a highly available system.

It absolutely scales to our customers’ needs. You can start with a two-node configuration, and you can go as high as eight racks, I believe, connected together with eight nodes, so you can scale up to 64. That number might have changed recently. You can scale it very well.

Technical support is fantastic. Oracle supports Exadata customers as the top tier, and you get support when you need it. Oracle has separate Exadata support. Once you buy Exadata, you go to that dedicated team and the turnaround is very, very good.

Initial setup is complicated and you need to engage Oracle to do that. Obviously, nobody else can do that. It's complicated, but it's a part of the process.

It's a very good product. I think if you have a business use and can justify the cost, go and buy it. You'll never regret it.

My top 4 most important features of Exadata are:

1. Smart Scan, the ability to offload intensive SQL workloads to the storage servers. Queries are offloaded to the storage layer and only the result sets of relevant data are returned to the database server thus significantly improving performance.

2. Exadata Hybrid Columnar Compression, where we can compress data from 10x to 50x. Deploying databases on the Exadata can significantly reduce the amount of storage that is needed.

3. Exadata Smart Flash Cache automatically moves data between DRAM, flash and spinning SAS or SATA disks to provide best performance.

4. Virtualization is a new feature introduced to the X5-2 family. Now Oracle’s Database Machine can be catered to large enterprise mission critical databases and can house smaller databases that need isolation and now even application servers together with the database. We can connect data intensive applications to the database over low-latency, high throughput infiniband.

We are able to provide a complete solution to our customers from data center installation/configuration, firmware upgrades, ILOM upgrades, OS patching/upgrades, cluster patching/upgrades and database patching/upgrades. We can upgrade the entire stack in a single evening with minimal outage. Depending on the customer’s tolerance for downtime, we can either perform the patching or upgrade in a rolling fashion.

Patching and upgrade services have proven to be a value-add differentiator for SMB and mid-market customers where resources and budgets are often limited. A single consulting resource can patch/upgrade the entire Exadata stack because patching and maintenance has become reliable and simplified.

For the initial instantiation process, the Oracle Exadata Deployment Assistant (OEDA) could have better error checking and pre-check validation as you navigate through the tool. When executing the OneCommand utility, generated logs are decent but the logs are not detailed enough to pinpoint to where the error occurred in the stack. Oracle can do a better job with error isolation. After the OneCommand, other one-off commands have to happen (i.e. we have to login to the infiniband and cisco switch). Ideally, OEM could be leveraged to configure the remaining components of the Exadata after the OneCommand. The idea would be to reduce the number of people required to support the stack. If we leverage OEM, we can leverage a single resource that minimally understands the stack to support the workflow.

I've been using Exadata since V2 in 2009.

For new DBA's trying to understand the Exadata infrastructure, they struggle initially trying to understand all the components between ILOM, ASR, and OEM (what they manage, what they support, and what problem area that they detect) and which does what since they are overlapping. Consolidation management across the Exadata is another common issue on the Exadata. OEM is good at managing individual targets but not so great yet on identifying culprits across environments with heavily consolidated databases. When you look at the compute wholistically, it is difficult to identify what database is consuming most CPU and most I/O resources. Doing any kind of showback is difficult to do across instances.

I only see stability issues with Exadata when I see too much consolidation, and/or the Exadata is not sized properly. Often the customer tries to throw everything and anything on the Exadata, by over-parallelizing OLTP/batch processes without any resource management across any databases.

With the Exadata, if I see an issue with scalability, it is typically goes back to being a sizing issue. The real question I have to ask is: did you get the right Exadata configuration for your database(s). If your Exadata configuration is sized properly, you should not have scalability issues.

If you let every database see every CPU on the Exadata compute node, you can potentially run into scalability issues. Customers who do not take advantage of database resource manager or IO Resource Manager (IORM) often run into performance issues in a consolidated environment. Likewise, if a customer tries to over-parallelize their application code, it can cause scalability issues. We tend to see more issues with improper management of parallel execution on the Exadata because it is perceived as something you can throw anything at.

The Exadata stack is well known and has become a standard platform with Oracle customers; thus, triage to resolution has become much more streamlined. When you create a service ticket with Oracle Support, time to resolution is significantly reduced. On another note, Oracle Field Support engineers are remarkable. They have been quick to respond, flexible, knowledgeable, and willing to work with our schedule.

Oracle Support Engineers are outstanding but you have to know how to navigate the system. Oracle Support provides all the technical support for the Exadata including the database software, OS, and hardware. Not knowing how to navigate through Oracle’s support structure and escalation policies can leave you feeling stranded by the vendor. Logging a support ticket with any component of the Exadata is no different than logging a support ticket for a database issue. You need to know how to raise a severity for a service ticket and how to escalate a support issue with the duty manager when production issues occur. Having a seasoned DMA (database machine administrator) is crucial to a successful Exadata deployment.

Having said that, often with Exadata customers, they can create a service ticket with the wrong Oracle Support group. This can cause confusion and elongated response times at early stages of the Exadata deployment as the service ticket gets routed to different teams within Oracle Support.

Lot of our customers come from best of breed technologies (UCS/Dell/HP, EMC/Hitachi) to choosing Exadata. Typically, our customers choose Exadata for pure performance in IOPs, throughput, and low latency for their database workloads; however, we have seen a trend of customers choose the Exadata platform because they are short staffed, have high rates of attrition, and thus, have inability to support the hardware and software technologies.

The initial setup is straightforward with the Exadata X5-2. We have to re-image the factory Exadata and leverage OneCommand for configuring the compute and storage nodes.

A lot of the initial setup is configured by the Oracle ACS (Advanced Customer Support) organization; however, Viscosity is a certified Exadata implementation specialist and often perform the initial installation and configuration at the customer data center. By the time the customer receives a fully configured Exadata, they are ready to deploy databases as a RAC or non-RAC database.

For our customers, we are able to significantly reduce both CapEx and OpEx for customers for 3-5 years TCO. We are able to:

• Accelerate implementation to meet the functionality demand from the business users
• Deliver quick implementations to meet the market demands
• Lower implementation costs

Setup costs for the Exadata varies from customer to customer and depends on database size, number of databases, and number of applications. For our most recent customer in Dallas Texas, the cost rolled up to approximately 800k for 2 X Quarter racks, which include storage cell software, and 25k for setup services. To determine day-to-day cost, we estimated the cost to average about 7k per month for both QTR racks.

A lot of our customers typically look at two other options. We have seen customers perform side-by-side evaluations by building their own high performance system with EMC/Pure Storage/Violin All Flash Array and UCS/HP/Dell blades or perform comparisons with a converged system such as VCE‘s Vblock. Customers typically ask for a proof-of-concept demo and run performance benchmarks with their own database and application to see the immediate impact and value-add for their organization. Our last 3 customers have compared Exadata with the Vblock.

For new customers who are about to embark on the Exadata journey, they should consult with a vendor specializing in Exadata implementations for the first set of database migrations and technical direction. Customers should also do the proper sizing exercises either with Oracle or with the Exadata Specialty niche vendor to buy the suitable Exadata configuration what will suit their business needs for the next several years.

When purchasing Exadata, they should also look into purchasing either the ZFS Storage Appliance (ZFSSA) or the Zero Data Loss Recovery Appliance (ZDLRA) to offload their backups to leveraging Infiniband technology for maximum throughput.

OEM CC 12c provides a comprehensive monitoring and management of the Exadata platform. Not only can OEM monitor and maintain at the hardware level for compute, storage and network but also at the OS, cluster and database level. OEM Cloud Control can monitor all components of the Exadata.

The number one feature is the speed; it's InfiniBand. We're serving almost 3.2 million people; it's an eligibility system. We add on 80 TB of data that needs to be churned and processed. Previously, we used Sun Solaris, and then we moved to a Windows platform. It was really bad. We started the load on Tuesday, and sometime around noon on Wednesday it finished. Sometimes, it would crash. Right now, it all finishes within 4.5-5 hours. If it starts at 6 o’clock, it’s done by 9 o’clock. That is one big advantage we see.

The standard Oracle things that we have, such as compression, are also valuable.
Now, all of our development to pre-production – everything – is in one single rack, which is easier for us to do. Production is on another full rack. That's what we use it for.

Pretty much whatever we need from the database side, it is there. There are specific things from the application side. I do not have a list; they do have a list of what you can't see from the database side. Pretty much what we are looking for is part of the 12c that is coming out. Most developers are used to Microsoft .NET and SQL Server. We are all cutting out Oracle, so there is a shift within the developer's mind; how am I going to use it; starting from the modeling to how to use it; key items; for example, I need to have a temporary table to create a gdd; there's an identity column in SQL that automatically fills in, and it used to have triggers.

The 12c is coming. There are some good features coming that I'm looking for. At a conference earlier this year, I was part of the session on what is new in 12c. I'm really excited about that.

We're doing real-time analytics, so one other thing is whether NoSQL is the best fit or not. We need to evaluate that, which we have not done yet. Pretty much, we are thinking that we have Exadata, so we want to use that product.

I have been using it for 3.5-4 years.

It is absolutely a stable solution. After we moved to Exadata, the stability has been good. Number one is, we used to go through Microsoft patching every month. With Exadata and Linux, we only have to do the firmware once per quarter. We try to coordinate that with quarterly Oracle patches. It isn’t really required; we only do it because we are behind two firewalls. We don't have to apply all the patches.

It is absolutely scalable. We have five enterprise applications of our own. They're all public-facing systems. Going back to the performance, on any given day, anywhere between 5,000-8,000 internal people use it, and we do have a public-facing system. People apply for benefits, and it's entirely public, so they can use it. Compared to our previous system, if you look at the performance metrics, some of them show almost 30-40% improvement. Some of the batches are almost 70% improvement.

If you look at the backend side – logical export backups, RMANs, and disaster recovery; all of those things – there is a tremendous increase.

Technical support is pretty good. There are certain areas specific to the enterprise application where we might not be getting Oracle support. But for Oracle products, it is pretty good.

We brought Oracle in to set it up, so it still is with Oracle. We didn't go through the entire setup process because Oracle was part of it. Oracle itself did it, so it was pretty easy for us. Again, one good thing is, we don't have to really worry about the patching, OS levels, and other stuff. It is pretty easy for us.

There are still a few issues that we are working on, but from a performance point of view, ease of use, scalability and reliability, plus we took a performance option for the storage – we were at capacity, so now we are good with the capacity, too – overall, I feel like everybody is happy with the product.

When I am looking at vendors like Oracle, the primary criteria will be the support. When you go through an issue, we need an immediate solution; it’s a 24/7 application. We don't anticipate anything. For example, something like, when we were going through a patching, and suddenly I found an issue. I didn’t see it in my lower environments, and now my production is impacted. We created a severity one ticket. How soon? And can I trust it? That's number one.

There may be some custom solutions we may be looking at, but it's not part of the product. Depending on what type of solution it is, we might need additional support and also training. I think Oracle is growing. I've been using Oracle since 1991, so I know how much it grew outside the database. Training is one of the biggest issues that we are having. We moved from a Windows platform to a Linux platform. Also, how to manage the entire thing; Enterprise Manager completely changed. One is self-learning, another one is vendor-provided, low-cost training. Those are the things we are looking for.

On top of that, you can say there are certain things that can benefit us; there is a new release coming out. If they can provide another training session, like, "Hey, this worried us, and here are the documents." Something like that would really help our DBAs to be at the cutting edge, rather than they themselves having to explore. Those are all things.