Oracle Exadata Reviews

It's pretty simple in my opinion. It's called out the box, and it's called support. Sometimes with the engineered systems based on the support agreement that you have with the vendor, sometimes you hear about problems with your system from them rather than your applications experiencing some issues, and you're having to log a support ticket with Oracle. I think that's huge.

The thing that attracts them to the two products but mainly the Exadata is the storage technology is revolutionary whether it's the only solution of that flavor on the market or not, I'm not familiar with. It's the storage solution, it's the speed, and it's the high availability. If somebody wants 5 or 6 9s worth of availability, a very good place for them to be is with one of Oracles engineered system solutions.

As is always the case with Oracle, when some late-breaking fancy technology gets under their radar, self-invented or perhaps something that they're picking up that they'd like to compete with from another vendor, they're all over it. I can't specifically think of anything myself. Outside I guess of speed and maybe the other two things I could think of are speed and speed, but I'm not suggesting that speed is an enhancement because there's anything wrong with the speed of the system now, but of course we always like to do things in four nanoseconds rather than seven.

I think I would probably give it a capital S. People here peripherally hear about informational stuff that may be going on in the cluster, but as far as catastrophic events that may happen with the cluster, a lot of them in some way, shape or form are not far from self-healing. I think that's a huge advantage of an engineered system.

If you buy a quarter rack, you feel like you need more computing power, you upgrade to a half rack. You go to a 3/4 or a full rack. It's basically I guess we used to call it plug and play except a lot of us found it in the olden days, it was plug and pray. I think they've got that one licked to the max.

Sometimes it's them calling us on behalf of one of our clients, but I would find that once one figures out the best way to work with their support organization in general, but their engineered systems support organization in particular, I can't think anything outside of a world class organization. I would admit that I don't have a lot, if any, experience with the competition, but I don't feel like I need any experience with the competition because of the way they do support those two products.

A lot of the times it ends up being complaints from the user community, and difficulty with strategic activities that the system performs. If you're running a commercial off the shelf application against these engineered system, sometimes it's a little more complex to work with a third party vendor, to speed things up. Mainly it's complaints from the user community. You and I both know that if something takes four seconds all the time and takes seven seconds some of the time, all the people are going to remember is the seven seconds.

I haven't done it on a hands-on basis, but I believe that what I mentioned at the beginning about out of the box is just that. Oracle from my recollection first tried to venture into some form of engineered system in the '90s with HP. It was a red box that you basically took out of the carton and plugged in. I think that's pretty much close to what once you brought it onto the network, exactly what you're going to do with their systems, so I thinks it's plug and play.

Choosing a vendor: obviously cost, high availability, and the strength of the rack technology. It's a corner of the Oracle technology that basically not exactly gets reinvented, but the new features and the new ways of going about to do things and the capabilities of failover and all that is a huge concentration as the product matures, not that it is immature. I think that's a primary reason that people might consider looking at this. There's absolutely no doubt, it's not far from an upgrade basically being done on the fly. There's so many things that can be done online. The plague of course of the '90s and the early-2000s was downtime.

Rating: I'd call it about a 12 out of 10. Of course you have to be able to afford the box. You have to be able to afford the configuration that you're going to be getting into. It's cost-effective for a lot of organizations, but I would rate the technology very high. Some of the specialized mechanisms that Oracle has put in place, especially with respect to Exadata and the late-breaking version of Exadata in particular.

As I said before, I'm not intimately or even somewhat peripherally familiar with the competition, but these guys know what they're doing, and my experience has been in the past that if Oracle ever plays catch-up in a technology spectrum with the competition, watch out. We all know that it's now cheap. It's affordable for a lot of organizations. If cost is going to be something, it's going to ultimately drive an organization's buy or no buy decision. The benefit after the money is spent and an ongoing outflow of cash to the vendor, if it makes business sense for somebody, I don't think they can be in a better place.

Make sure it's the right solution. Make sure that you do indeed need their real application cluster solution, which we affectionately call rack. Make sure it's right for you. It sounds corny, and it's sounds like a cliché, but it applied when I got started in IT in the 1800s, and it still applies. If it's cost-effective, go for it.

My primary use case is for EIMS (Enterprise Information Management Systems). We run this in the night time, and every day in the morning. Then the reports are readily available, so there is zero failure.

This improves the way our organization functions because it is on X86 machines. The X86 machines and also because the internal fiber channels are internally integrated, but while you want to have it in the network because integrating with the network, that is the external network(the tape drives and all). Those things are really cumbersome.

The reports are always readily available. The backup solution that is the data file system is available for a 30 day insert. There is really no other software solution that gives us the same quality backup and restoration like this.

We have had issues with system restoration. If there is a system fail, the internal drives are useless. We need Exadata to integrate with that one, and to restore it back. But there should be something in place in case of system failure. One of the systems should have the facilities to troubleshoot from the other nodes to this note remotely. Or, even if not remotely, just to troubleshoot at least among the thrusters. 

There is no system collectively. Let us say this system failed; do we have any disks? Total disks, let's just say 100 disks. Five disks are failed. 100 disk measuring is not data top. If mirroring is that, like we can HRCMR. Let's say IBM CRM are CTC shadow image, REMC like that, the storage level they are giving the facilities inserted data mirroring, so immediately we can bring the DR. But internally, the Exadata doesn't have such features. Maybe they can think through that mirroring of collective system. Insert automatic measuring. If we have a collective recovery, let's say system-to-system, that DR solution, though they are giving a data guard, we have to set it up into the second system and the Data guard is a software solution. There is a really high skill required for a DBA to bring up the database. So a non-skilled person, like the storage engineer, can bring up for shadow images. HRCMI, HRCMR, like that. But in the case of Oracle, you must be really specialized to to bring up the data guard.

In addition, they should insert automatic measuring. AM is, let's say, one table fail. Okay, you can recover it. Or one disk failed, then they can troubleshoot it. But automatic recovery, fine, but if we have a collective recovery, let's say system-to-system, that DR solution, though they are giving a data guard. We have to set it up into the second system and the Data guard is a software solution. There is a really high skill required for a DBA to bring up the database. For a non-skilled person, like the storage engineer can bring up for shadow images. HRCMI, HRCMR, like that. But in case of Oracle, you need to be really specialized to  to bring up the data guard.

It is really super-stable.

The scale is somewhat limited. The existing axis can only have four blades.  So, there are limitations. The storage is around 200TB to 400TB, which is not infinite storage.

The technical support team are real professionals. I admire their technical skills and supports. Their supports are really admirable.

We had very complex situation, actually, with our Exadata migrations. Due to the shortage of our manpower, one of our engineers and one and also Oracle did migrations. During the migration phase, they have a lot of discussion and talks and deviation. But, they had someone help us migrate excellently. Because we have a data that's set up and also because it is not one-to-one relationships. End-to-end relationships, we had it over there. Database level, not table level. Database level, we have physical data within some other machine. The secondary data will be here. The data guard will be inside the Exadata, and the Exadata itself have the data guards and it's really nurtured relationships further, but some start up guys also have come back to the preparatory work center. 

All in all, in Oracle, you need a skill set for implementation. I don't say it is difficult, but you need a skill set for it.

When considering a product, I make sure that I have:

• Manpower resource available.
• The number of DBAs available in the market

The price is very high. But, it is worth it.

I am using Oracle Exadata for financial projects.

Parallelism is the most valuable feature.

The scalability can be improved as it is not a parallel execution.

The license is expensive and has room for improvement.

I have been using Oracle Exadata for 15 years.

I give the stability of Oracle Exadata an eight out of ten.

I give the scalability of Oracle Exadata an eight out of ten.

We are a platinum member for support.

The initial setup is straightforward. The deployment was done by a consultant and took one hour.

The implementation was completed by a consultant.

We pay for an annual license and it is expensive.

I give Oracle Exadata a nine out of ten.

We have around 10,000 users.

We have 15 administrators and three consultants that help with maintenance.

I recommend Oracle Exadata.

As we are a service provider for the government our job is to stabilize the database layer. We need to make sure all our data is secure. That's why we like to work with a robust environment like Exadata to make sure that our response time and our reliability are good.

Oracle Exadata's performance is one of its best features. We very satisfied with it. The previous equipment used to make a payment for all the government employees used to take at least two days for some of the transactions. Now, it will take hours to make the same amount of payments. Another thing is the flexibility to organize all of our databases. We can use it with new features that come with this version of Oracle 19c, which is the container database. With container databases, we can work with many databases, organized and segregated, and still access the functions and management, the things that most of the technical people like to have in place.

Regarding the technical side of the machine itself, I don't see much that needs improvement. In terms of the kind of service and support that most of the clients need, it is huge investments. I would like to emphasize that the clients that use these technologies from Oracle must be well supported by the Oracle company. This is one thing that I would like to address. They could have better support.

Additionally, the price for the Exadata is quite high. This is one thing that Oracle must think about. You can find the same features and the same performance that Oracle provides in other kinds of technology. So it depends on the client. If you want to use an Oracle engineered system, then you know that you have to pay.

Otherwise, you'll need to buy more for performance, replications, and the availability of these kinds of things. But you don't want to pay a lot. You have another option that Oracle support calls Oracle ODA. With ODA, you don't have to use machines, but you have the same kind of features and key performances. However, you may have reduced options for scalability with these kinds of Oracle solutions compared to the engineering system like Exadata. After buying these, you have the support that you need to maintain all these environments. This is what I want to address.

I will mention security. I know that there is a feature for security, but it is not included in the first purchase of this solution. That means if you need to increase the security, you need to buy the security feature which doesn't come by default on these solutions. As you may know, there are a lot of security problems all over the world with this kind of environment. Based on the fact that we are serving the government, we need to have security issues solved from the beginning and take care of security immediately. It would be better if Oracle could have some solutions that would bring us the confidence with their security at the outset. That's one thing I would like to address.

I'm not saying that there is no security on this machine. There is good security on the version of Oracle which is running on these machines, it's very nice. But I'm saying this because I know that Oracle can do more than that and bring the substation to the clients.

I have been using Oracle Exadata since 2010.

Even with the old machines, we didn't have any constraints with the stability. There were some problems regarding the hardware that you must change because they are getting holes and they fail more frequently. When the life cycle goes, it's the end. But on the other side, this machine is very stable.

Since we have had these machines in production, we haven't had any downtime. Over the last two years, we had a lot of downtime with the old machines because they were very old and did not have enough performance to solve the demands of the database. But we don't have any constraints about the stability with these new machines.

The strategy of the company was not to pay a lot, because we don't have much money. So we began with the scalability approach. We bought enough resources to sustain the demands of all our clients.

If the demands increase, we can also increase the resources and close off the cabinets. We can scale this machine anytime that we need. We can go until the version that they allowed for scalability. Then, if you need to maintain this technology, you can scale out and have two machines working together side by side.

This is a database machine. We have a system that hosts more than 20,000 citizens. So most of the time we have more than 3,000 transactions per day. As a service company for the government, every database resource is on this machine. We have at least three or four databases running on this machine and we have many applications that are running through this machine as well, so it serves all the countries.

The first line of maintenance is done by my team, including day to day operation. Support from Oracle is for things which are beyond our knowledge of database administration. Most of the time, the maintenance is done by us. But there is a point you must understand regarding the hardware maintenance. We are not allowed to do hardware maintenance, this belongs exclusively to the Oracle Team. The Oracle Team must be the one that does the hardware maintenance on these machines. Of course, we have a partner here in Mozambique who represents Oracle. This company is the one that is the second line of support. If they find something, they can escalate it to Oracle or they can solve it themselves.

When we started the company, we thought about the responsibilities that the company would have attending to all the requests from the government and that we would need to go to robot technology. We thought in 2002 to go directly to work with the Oracle database. So Oracle database was the first database technology we decided to use as our strategic plan for the stability of the company.

At that time, we start working with the small machines and after two or three years, we realized that there are a lot of scalability problems with those kinds of machines and stability issues with this kind of hardware. So that's why we we had lots of downtime and we spent lots of time correcting these kinds of problems instead of thinking about growing the business. So we moved these small machines to a bigger one in 2010. That's all extra data with the X-2 version, but these kinds of machines are getting old and they are out of order now. We cannot buy the spare parts or anything else we need. So we decided to keep using all of the technology, but moved from that environment to a new machine with a better performance.

This has seen better performance. That's why we are still working with only one technology, Oracle.

For Oracle Exadata, there are two main profiles that you have to take care of. One is the installation itself, like assembling the machines, which need some kind of expertise. The other is the installation of the software and creating the database, which need other kinds of equipment. From our perspective, our main goal within all of this is not about these two profiles. It's about the database engineering. Because we are coming from using an old machine, which is running an old version of Oracle, you will need to properly create not only the environment to host the database, you will also need to migrate from an old version of Oracle, like 11g, to 19c. This is another challenge that we have during implementation of these projects.

I can say that from acquisition it took at least, but not more than, five months to implement.

At acquisition we need to design the tenders and the rules of the company. The tender goes out, then it is published, then we evaluate all the tenders, then someone must win the tender. All this takes a lot of times. Then you go to the implementation phase. We did a workshop to design the solution. It took at least three weeks. Then it starts implementing the infrastructure. Migrating the database is another point because one database can take at least two days. That's the situation. But start to finish takes five months.

We did the assembling and installing of all these with the support of Oracle ACS, which is a very nice team that gives personal support for us. It was very good working with them. The other thing is the migrating itself. Migrating depends on each company because not all the companies have the same database architecture or the same data. That's why at the migration stage, 60% of the intervention of migrating from the old version of Oracle to the new version was done by my team. But the Oracle STS support was with us the whole time.

I would of course recommend Oracle Exadata to other people who are looking into implementing such solutions. They need to know what happens with this solution, what can be done with it, because as the government we cannot give out that information because it's not allowed. But, I would recommend it if a company wants to use these solutions, wants to have stability with their equipment, with their applications, and with their systems. If a company wants to be competitive in the market and have a good name, reputation and everything else, I think using Oracle, with the Oracle Exadata machine, is the best way to achieve that.

On a scale of one to ten, I can give Oracle Exadata a 9.

We are using Oracle Exadata as a warehouse for historical reporting to provide the historical data that can be utilized by Power BI for reporting.

This solution meets all of my expectations.

The performance of the data is the most important part. It's quite good, and the security features are also quite good.

The management monitoring tools are quite important and an area that needs some improvement. The monitoring or consoles that are available should be available across the platform, and not only seen when logging onto the server.

The availability of the monitoring should be responsive and available all of the time.

I am planning to switch from Oracle Exadata to one of Microsoft's solutions, such as Synapse Analytics, to improve the performance. 

We have our Power BI and other parts in the cloud. 

The Exadata, being on-premises, creates problems at times because of the gateway.

I recommend that Oracle come up with connectors that can be utilized by Oracle Exadata to convert the data that we have in Oracle to MySQL. We can extend the reach of Exadata to other toolsets.

I have been working with Oracle Exadata for three years.

It's stable and I have not experienced any issues.

This solution is scalable.

I have been working with Oracle support for the last 15 years. I have no issues with support.

The initial setup was done by my infrastructure team and I don't think that they found any difficulty in it. They are knowledgeable in Oracle, so they didn't have any problems.

We are okay with the licensing, as it's not much. Oracle is always costly but it's fine.

The ecosystem that we have in our company is majorly Microsoft-based. When I refer to power BI or other integrated tools, they are by Microsoft.

I would certainly recommend using Oracle. They have their cloud applications and I would say that it is not a good idea to go with an on-premises deployment. My suggestion is that people go with OCI instead.

I would rate this solution an eight out of ten.

Most, if not all of the time, a database workload is a disk I/O-bound, not CPU nor memory. The most time spent in a database operation is reading a data block from or writing a data block to physical disks. This is true for any type of workloads -- small or large block read and write, sequential or random access. The Exadata technology minimizes this bottleneck by utilizing

1. Oracle's proprietary intelligent storage software which understands Oracle database I/O characteristics and thus is able to minimize number of disk I/O, and
2. High-speed Infiniband network for storage network (40 Gb/sec throughput, 5 times higher than the typical fibre channel used for SAN).

There are several scenarios in which this technology can help. Most package (COTS) software are not designed, and therefore are not optimized, for a specific database platform, e.g. Oracle. Performance starts becoming a problem when the database size and workload (e.g. transaction rate) are high. Even if you, as a customer, have reached out to vendor support, chances are they are not going to customize their code just for one database platform, Oracle. They may help you to do small tuning here and there, but without optimizing the application code, the result is limited. Exadata comes as a quick fix in this situation. Oracle Exadata will sweep the problem under the carpet.

Secondly, most applications have a mixed-workload, not purely OLTP and not purely batch/reporting. Unfortunately in many aspects, database tuning for the fastest response (as in OLTP workload) and for the highest throughput (as in reporting/DSS workload) are a contradiction. Again, Oracle Exadata can be a quick fix by minimizing the number of I/O on a fast and high-throughput storage network. It helps on any kind of workloads.

With its value proposition, Exadata is being used to run mission-critical, 24x7 applications. Unfortunately, not all hardware in the Exadata rack are hot-swappable (such as memory, processor and battery maintenance in older models), and therefore business application downtime may be required for those hardware replacements.

Infiniband cabling work may need a complete downtime as well, for example, when we need to connect multiple racks.

I have been working with Exadata, since its X2 generation about five years ago. Since then, I have worked with its X3, X4 and, currently, the latest X5 generation. Each generation comes in three models based on the number of sockets in each of database server, -2 (for example X5-2) and -8 (for example X4-8). I have not had a chance to work with the X5-8 model, which was released less than five months ago. However, there is no fundamental difference from the previous generation X4-8, other than more processing power and memory due to newer hardware.

As in any technology deployment, software bugs and misconfiguration are possible. I have dealt with a few bugs and misconfigurations that have caused application downtime in the past.

We have no issues with its stability.

You should start with a small footprint (for example, a quarter-rack Exadata) and then grow to a full-rack or even multi-rack Exadata. The only challenge is that by the time you need to expand, the Exadata generation may have evolved (every one to two years, so far). You may end up with a full-rack of Exadata that contains multiple generations, each with a different CPU, memory, and disk capacity. This may not be a big problem, but you have to come up with a strategy to distribute the workload.

Oracle Exadata comes with Platinum Support, which is a premium support and includes regular (quarterly) patching/version upgrade activity and fault monitoring. I think this is a right approach by Oracle. As an engineered system, there is a lot of version compatibility between firmwares, operating systems, and softwares that must be taken care of for a patching and image upgrade. This definitely would be a huge responsibility if customers had to deal with this.

What everyone needs to understand is that Exadata is a database consolidation platform, and is not designed as a virtualization platform. Therefore, there are security considerations if you plan to use Exadata to host multiple applications that require certain levels of segregation at the network, storage, and operating system levels.

What makes Exadata different than competitors is that it is not designed only for a specific application (as in SAP HANA), and is not only for a certain type of workload (as in Teradata).

It is called an engineered system, but there are options that Oracle offers to its customers. Customers need to complete a configuration generator tool called Oracle Exadata Deployment Assistant (OEDA). Based on the selection made on the tool, configuration file is generated and this will be a 'binding contract' between customers and field engineers who will do the initial setup. The problem is that it is the customer's responsibility to make the right options and some of them are not easy to understand. I suggest the customer not to hesitate to get assistance from Oracle Pre-sales and to go through each of possible options in detail and to understand all consequences.

Initial setup is always done by an Oracle field engineer, up to creation of an empty database. Infrastructure cabling and data center power are usually done by contractors. From the support standpoint, Exadata is just the same Oracle database servers and Linux/Solaris servers.

The solution is relatively easy and fast to deploy. It typically takes less than three weeks from hardware delivery to having functional database servers with a built-in high-availability feature. Most importantly, it delivers an excellent Oracle database performance for any type of workload (OLTP or batch/OLAP). I have seen from 3x to 10x performance improvement for various workloads compared to previous versions. The reason I didn't give a perfect 10 rating is because some hardware are not hot-swappable, such as battery (for older models), memory and processor. While as a matter of fact, this is an important feature of a platform for an enterprise mission-critical application.

What often is confusing for many is the support model of Exadata. Many think Exadata is a black box or appliance that will be supported entirely by Oracle. It is not an appliance or a black box. It is just a bunch of regular Oracle database servers and Linux (or Solaris) servers as storage servers. It needs DBAs and system administrators to take care of it and work with vendor support in case of incidents or patching.

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.

Oracle Exadata is our calling and banking solution that provides an emergency financial system for our process. The system also collects data from Oracle databases, which requires the manpower of qualified engineers.

According to the engineering team, and I agree, the most valuable features are the voucher, certification, and quick support. 

The problem resolution times with the solution are much higher. This information is based on our databases and our drive.

The cost of the solution is high and can be improved.

I have been using the solution for ten years.

I give the stability of the solution an eight out of ten.

To scale up with Oracle we have to purchase new infrastructure. I give the scalability a six out of ten.

We previously used Sophos for a ten-year run.

The solution is already reconfigured but not the system, only the semantics. Our network cables and the valves, the main areas such as the connectivity part, that's the network. Once they are completed and databases are accessible the configuration part has to be done. Overall the initial setup is straightforward and according to the manager's words, it's convenient to be able to reconfigure the system on the solution.

The ease of setup is an eight out of ten.

The deployment is not done overnight. In order to ensure our system management has little impact on the business area, the deployment is done in stages. Bringing on a new version update would only take a few days to test and test the environment. We have to verify and extract some information in order to improve the environment. Once all the testing is complete, we can move into the live environment. Full deployment will take one and a half to two months.

I give the pricing of the solution a five out of ten.

I give the solution an eight out of ten.

When it comes to Oracle, I think it's a good investment. I know it's not cheap, but they offer excellent service and support. They are always looking to improve and customize their services, which is why my organization continues to use Oracle.

We have 5,000 employees in the organization. More than 2,000 people use our platform daily. This means my team, supported by Oracle and our co-banking system running on Oracle, is prepared for at least 2,000 people to use the solution daily.

New users should have the proper technical knowledge of the operator and that only requires having the right tools and contacting Oracle for support. Another important factor is the company's aftersales support. This ensures that we will be able to get the necessary care and service we need in order to keep our solution running smoothly. Plus, it's always good to have a company we can count on for renewing our solution the following year.