Oracle Exadata Reviews

I primarily use Exadata to handle the databases of critical applications.

Exadata's best features are its performance during redo logging and the elasticity of the database handling.

Exadata would be improved with single dashboard visibility.

I've been working with Exadata for six to seven years.

Exadata is stable.

Exadata is scalable.

The initial installation took around a week.

I would recommend Exadata to other users for its database management and would rate it eight out of ten.

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.

• Oracle OEM
• Analytic functions and Window functions
• Parallelism
• Hints to the optimizer
• Gather statistics
• Extended Statistics

We tuned so much code recently by using all the techniques above and it is working fantastic.

The Oracle tuning advisor could have been available to Developers so that they can send the advises to DBA's.

2 years

Nnope. It is usually we forget to mention the Schema names before the deployment and it fails when DBA's runs with Super user.

Some time in Last junuary we had an issue with when we upgrade the database and the queries are started running very slow and we have changed the way of running statistics with Oracle recommendations and it started running fine.

Nope not yet but we might have plans to move it to Cloud. we are not really sure. We have our own data center and we never had any problems with Scalability

It is good and sometimes we don't get exact recommendations even though we give all details but it was satisfactory.

it is good they are knowledgable enough to answer our questions.

We never used any other solutions before and we are only using Oracle form the beginning.

Nope. it was quite easy.

We have implemented through PWC. but it was pretty stable.

More performance techniques and latest updates that we are really existed about.

Pricing is fine because we are seeing an excellent results. we could have get the same things for lower prices but the Oracle service is really good.

Yes. 1. Performance, 2. Scalability 3. Cost

Oracle solutions are excellent and evolves according to the customer needs. Whenever there is a bug we recommend to the customers directly so that they are aware of whats going on rather they find out them selves. This helps service improvement as well customer relations hips.

Performance with use of storage compute.

Single appliance with no additional tooling required for deployment reduces overall maintenance and cost of ownership.

Cost, need for additional licenses for core Oracle products.

Two years.

Yes, Cisco switch is not a standard within our company. Need to deploy with Oracle switch, after initial validation and setup, un-plug all network, replace the Cisco switch, and recable. This is time consuming and should not be required if Oracle would simply put in a different Cisco switch.

No.

Yes, memory limitations, 756gb limits the performance of databases.

Platinum support services supplied with the Exadata is worthless.

If I have an application down, we do not call oracle support as their response times to get a qualified engineer on the phone take 4+ hours. We solve problems ourselves.

ODA and standalone.

Scalability and consolidation.

See the switch issue mentioned above.

Implemented in-house with the assistance of Technologent.

Negative.

Total ROI should include the HW and all the associated SW licenses required. With an EXA, the cost to implement is prohibitive when also performing replication as you have to procure two of these very expensive boxes.

ODAs.

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.

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.