Oracle Exadata Reviews

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.

Oracle Exadata is used to keep our data, which is related to the company. It collects it from the source system and stores it in the enterprise data warehouse platform. For storing the data itself and serving the data on a different platform for the company.

The most valuable feature of Oracle Exadata is its capabilities for storing and processing data. It is very good for our domain. 

The solution only requires one person for maintenance and support in an average-sized insurance company.

Oracle Exadata could improve the platform performance tuning should be easier, automated, and user-friendly.

In a future release, I would like to have new analytical capabilities.

I have been using Oracle Exadata for more than eight years.

The stability of Oracle Exadata is good.

Oracle Exadata is scalable.

We have data engineers and data scientists using this platform, and in my team, there are 25 of them, and all of them are using this platform.

We request a heath check for issues from the support and we have a deal with them to support us.

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

Oracle Exadata's initial setup is easy. Installing the solution on our system in the data center takes less than one day.

I would rate the initial setup of Oracle Exadata a four out of five.

We did the implementation using our team and a third-party company.

There is an annual license to use this solution. The solution is expensive.

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

I would recommend this solution to others.

I rate Oracle Exadata an eight out of ten. 

I was running an ERP system on Rackmount machines with critical databases on it. There is no way to scale-in and very expensive to scale-out as the system is growing countrywide. Replication between sites and branches not guaranteed. Also, the EOL of this infrastructure drives this huge change, and to avoid huge change management on the application point of view and the need to maintain the same database technology it was the biggest challenge that I ever faced during this times, moving from Version 9 to 11g and now to 19c.

It has improved the performance, now we run with more performance cores with less CPU to attend all the database demands. Reducing Time to Market, increase our ability to face the competition with speed and low cost. We improved the database availability while ensuring business continuity implementing efficient replication between main and DR site, so we decreased from one downtime in two months to zero downtime a year. So we can sleep as we are confident that data replication is running without any constraints. Multi-tenancy is one feature that can be used to guarantee the investment on this infra.

Business Continuity is the most valuable feature. The replication between the site via Data Guard is performing without any constraints, the agility to make tests of switchover, and back following disaster recovery procedure. The performance using this machine to providing database service is as easy as next to next database administrations. We can run AWR data collection for performance evaluation and problem-solving without any production performance constraints. Using Database partitioning and Cache Memory in each storage cell boost all we need as a database machine. The easy administration gives us time for training, improve our business understanding, and care about our competitors. Also, the container Database (CDB/PDB) together with other technologies (like Micro Services) can very improve the company core business.

The Oracle Support. I believe Oracle must improve its procedure to support the clients. The customer Ready Service must provide more use cases and benchmarks of their infrastructure to support client design decisions. Oracle must audit their partners regularly to guarantee they provide quality service even after been passed on partnership examination. Increase the FDP in the Southern Africa region can boost quality and competition on support service also increase product selling on these countries.

I have been using Oracle Exadata for bout nine years.

This machine are equipped with new edge of fault tolerance technologies ensuring business continuity. All servers have dual power supply and the hard drives are reliable. Following the Oracle procedure to assembly this hardware in your datacenter with clean power is one thing that guarantees the stability. Of course, a support contract must be signed off between client and oracle to predict all possible disruption on time.

There are many models of this engineering system, starting from X2 in 2011 to the last version X8M, you can choose a quarter, half and full, depending on your workload and budget. Starting with the quarter size you can scale it by adding more servers and storage until Full version or adding another box.

Every implementation is unique. I have been working with Oracle since 2005 and have not had issues regarding technical support. But Oracle must audit their implementation partners regularly to avoid major problems like a bad quality implementation that make clients raise a call.

The initial setup is not so complex as it is done by Oracle Experts and is validated by the senior engineers.

We implemented it through the vendor team. I worked with a very skilled personal, like project managers, ACS Support Leaders and technicians that have very experience in deploying this kind of systems

Using this infrastructure for a database as a service or Oracle Cloud at Customer/Service can be a good approx. to increase your ROI.

Going to EXADATA is not good advice for non-profit companies, like government institutions, all though this is a very safe infrastructure to guarantee security and availability for a long period. The OPEX must be well prepared for a period that can have all the return of the investment. Using EXADATA as a database as a Service (Multi-tenancy) can be an alternative to good ROI.

We also evaluated Postgress.

Workload offloading to the cell layer : Exadata is Oracle's engineered system which SW and HW are compatible and contains many layers (compute nodes – networking – storage or cells), so compute nodes receives request or transactions then offload their processing to the cell through InfiniBand switches and this storage or cells contains high speed flash memory and Exadata driver software that has many features that provide high performance.

High availability of each component and everything is redundant: as I mentioned before Exadata conations many layers each one of them is redundant for example at least there are two clustered compute nodes contains databases homes, instances, binaries...etc. these clustered nodes are active/active, so if one of the go down the work will continue so this is High availability and redundancy for compute nodes layer, this similar to InfiniBand Switches and storage failure groups.

Smart scan feature and the flash memory: it is part of Exadata driver software which is preinstalled on cells storage which provides the compute node with the required selected data or rows only not the whole tables as normal ASM, so filtering is done at the level cell by using the flash memory.

• Exadata accelerates the performance to whole applications in the environment at least by 2-3x times than the old hardware.
• One consolidated environment for all Oracle databases.

• The integration between Exadata and Enterprise Cloud Manager should be included out of the box by default and should be agent-less, just discovery only; or, add an embedded and dedicated monitoring and management UBI tool for all HW and SW of Exadata.
• Enhance the monitoring and alerts part related to Exadata with EM.
• All firmware, OS, cells SW, etc. (quarterly patching for Exadata) upgrade and patching should be easily done through EM.
• Physical KVM is required, as in the old version; Cisco management switch is the only single point of failure.

I have used it for three years.

Some steps failed during the deployment by using one command utility to do all deployment steps by one command; so, we divided the deployment steps, then solved each issue separately until we successfully finished the development.

We have not encountered any stability issues; it is a stable box.

Until now, we did not scale.

Customer service is 7/10.

Technical support is 6/10.

We previously used normal HW, then moved to VMware, then moved to Exadata to get good performance and consolidated platform for DBs.

The initial setup is clear but you have to be careful while filling out the OEDA (Oracle Exadata Deployment Assistant) tool as it will generate an XML file that contains all of the required configurations for everything, like networks, storage, clusters, etc.. This file will be used during the initial setup.

We implemented it through the vendor; I rate their level of expertise about 7/10.

At first glance, it is expensive because it contains many HW and SW components and provides high availability, as you have to buy licenses for DB, RAC, packs, and Exadata drivers SW per disk. But, if you are going to use it in a consolidated way for all Oracle databases, I think the price will be reasonable, as you have many DBs. There are many sizes for Exadata, so you have to choose the suitable one for your organization according to proper sizing. For licensing, the minimum license number is 8 cores, which are available for Exadata X5-2 and X6-2.

Before choosing this product, we also evaluated HPE HW including flash memory and SSD disks, but it was more expensive at that time.

The team should be familiar with RAC; some HW and network knowledge. The team should understand the new Exadata SW related to the cell layer.

Consider the COD feature to pay as you go. Integrating Exadata with Oracle Cloud Enterprise Manager gives you the power of monitoring and managing the box. You can also enable the notification mailer through EM or cell.

It's about consolidation of my infrastructure, scalability, high performance, and availability. These are the main factors that led me to choose this solution, as well as the cost. Exadata saves on my storage costs. All our costs were reduced significantly, and that was the reason why we went back to Exadata.

On the improvement side, they’re pretty much good. With the latest version, X6-2, we have enhanced the storage capacity. It was 4 TB each disk, now it’s 8 TB each disk; essentially same size appliance with more storage space. That request has been heard and we're able to mitigate that. Increased storage was one thing and they have definitely done better on the IO of flash storage. They implemented that; pretty much good stuff.

We have not had any major problems with stability.

From time to time, we scale capacity up and out. In system engineering terms, we can scale up to limit. The kind of features we just set it up, I've been able to fit my requirements into that.

We have Oracle’s Platinum support, which has been pretty good. However, the people are not always knowledgeable. I always rely on my best contacts in Oracle to get the right support. Even though we have Platinum Support, my last delay was my contacts in Oracle.

Initial setup was very much straightforward. Not as much manpower is required as we used to need. Before, if you wanted to manage a server, you had to have a server administrator, the storage administrator, and a DBA administrator. Now all three functions are combined into one person. A data administrator can perform the role of storage administrator, your host administrator, platform administrator, as well as database administrator. It's like several persons reduced to one.

I would definitely recommend this product if cost is not a factor. The implementation costs are, frankly, higher, but your return on investment over a period of time is less. If you're looking for that, then I would definitely advise to go for this product.

One of its most valuable features is the ease of managing infrastructure as a whole; software and hardware coming together in one place to manage all the architecture, networking, hardware, software, storage, etc.

Every year, there is definitely some incremental improvement; faster storage, more compute nodes, better networking, etc. At some point, regarding the whole computation model, instead of just having more and more CPUs, the core itself probably needs to get smarter. Instead of saying, “Oh, it's 16 cores. Now, it's 32. Now, it's 64.”, I would like to see the 16 cores able to do smarter work. That's what I think. I can see it's kind of heading that way, so we might get some improvement in that space.

I have been using it for a little bit over three years.

It's stable. We haven't had any, what I would call Sev 1-type, issues that have caused us a problem with Exadata.

It is a scalable solution. I think it's going to meet the company's needs moving forward, without problems.

Between 1 and 10, technical support is 7 or 8. Time to time, we do run into some issues, here and there, where it takes us a little while to get through, to make sure that engineers understand what's going on. For the most part, we don't have any major hiccups, I guess. Sometimes, the issue is finding the right person, getting to the right person to have that conversation. Once you have that then it's fine, but getting to it takes a little bit of time.

We previously just had commodity servers that we replaced with Exadata for the ease of convenience.

The initial infrastructure setup is straightforward because it is delivered in a box. It's all pre-configured for the most part. Again, I think it boils down to how each company does it after it's deployed at their site. That's where it gets a little bit challenging and that's where you have to put a little bit of effort in to make sure you lay it down right.

I would definitely recommend Exadata to someone in a similar job role as myself at a similar-sized company, but I would also them to understand the need of what they’re trying to do and not necessarily go to Exadata just because it's nice. They need to spend time on what they want to get out of it. Yes, it's a nicely engineered system but they also need to evaluate cost versus benefit. It's not cheap, I can tell you that.

We work on data warehouses and data marts.

The tool performs well with a large database. It is easy to integrate the tool with other ELT solutions. The performance and data transformation are excellent. We recommend it to our clients. The tool has good storage technologies.

The product must make more investments in object storage technologies. Six to seven years ago, the product had an SQL-based analytics feature that did not work well. The vendor must consider investing in it. The analytics features must be improved.

I have been using the solution for more than ten years.

Oracle Exadata is a robust product.

We must pay more money if we need more storage. I rate the product’s scalability a ten out of ten. The tool is suitable for enterprises and SMBs.

I rate the tool’s pricing a three out of ten. The solution is expensive.

Teradata is a competitor. If we use Teradata, we must use their data warehouse model.

I will recommend the tool to others. Overall, I rate the product a nine out of ten.

I work as an Oracle Database Admin supporting databases. 

Oracle Exadata has very good hardware and provides fast, and high performance.

To use Oracle Exadata's Smart Scans and have it perform faster, I have to adapt the database, the statement, and the tables.

Checking the Smart Scan issues is complicated, particularly troubleshooting the infinity band and the storage sales performance. In future releases, I would like to see more troubleshooting tools.

I have 15 years of experience working with Oracle.

Oracle support is very bad, it is not good at all. They do not provide a solution in suitable time.

The initial setup of Oracle Exadata is difficult, particularly if you want to repair the discs. 

The pricing of Oracle Exadata is too high. 

I evaluated IBM, the 15, to compare it with Oracle Exadata. I compared the processes and the process structure.

Overall, I would rate the solution an eight out of ten.