Oracle Exadata Reviews

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.

We use Oracle Exadata for Oracle databases.

I have been using Oracle Exadata for approximately five years.

Oracle Exadata is stable.

I have found Oracle Exadata to be scalable. However, you have to purchase more hardware, such as memory.

Everyone in the organization is using the solution in my organization.

The technical support is good, we have not had a problem.

The initial installation is not difficult, it took two to three days to complete.

We used an integrator for the implementation of Oracle Exadata. We have qualified integrators in Morocco.

We have a few engineers and administrators doing the maintenance and support of the solution.

You have to pay for the storage and the database in Oracle Exadata. It cost a lot, but it is worth it. It would be a benefit if we could reduce the price for the number of CPUs and extend the memory.

I would recommend this solution to others.

I rate Oracle Exadata a ten out of ten.

• 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.

The tool's performance is good. 

The solution's pricing is very high. 

I have been using the tool for four years. 

I would rate the tool's stability an eight out of ten. 

I would rate the tool's scalability an eight out of ten. Certain companies in my organization use the solution like the marketing, IT, and analytics departments. 

The product's setup takes around two to three days to complete. 

We rely on the local vendor company to help us with the installation. 

I would rate the tool's pricing a nine out of ten. 

I would rate the product a nine out of ten. 

We do use it in conjunction with Hadoop due to limitations. We have around 50 users supported by this solution. All sources of required data from various sources and systems are prepared in Oracle Exadata. We write down the SQL queries and take the required output from the Oracle Exadata database. Tableau is connected to the Oracle Exadata database and we complete all analysis, reports and visualization using Tableau. Overall, this is a good solution.

We have used this solution for a long period of time so it has become easy for us to query any kind of data from Oracle Exadata which has been valuable. 

We have experienced some issues with processing unstructured data on Exadata. This is an important requirement for our AIML based use case. Reactive analytics data can not be prepared easily in Oracle Exadata.

I have been using this solution for seven years.

I would rate this solution an eight out of ten. 

Stability, high ROI and low TCO. Plus performance, of course. Being able to compress the data, especially in big size databases, has been extremely useful as HCC can deliver quite high compression rates. The business benefits of OES are as many as the pure technical benefits/features.

Exadata with the In-Memory option is several levels about SAP HANA.

In the past, Infrastructure units were mostly organized in teams like the Database team, the Storage team, the Backup team, the Unix team, the Monitoring team, etc. Now, with Exadata, they have become sort of obsolete. Only one unit is needed for administering the whole stack, which means a lot of savings on IT level.

The Initial investment price could use improvement. It is often the stumbling block. Many organizations have limited or small budgets for the initial investment. This has somehow changed with X5 when the entire Exadata configuration no longer needs to be licensed when using OracleVM.

I've used this solution since 2008. For the past 4 years, Exadata and more broadly speaking, Oracle Engineered Systems, are occupying almost all my working time so my exposure to the product is as much as one can get. My review answers also include my experiences with other Oracle products, including Oracle SuperCluster T5-8 and Zero Data Loss Recovery Appliance X5.

Only during the first month or so of new generation Exadata machines, when the initial scripts have not been properly modified to reflect the new generation machine. Often, when proper sizing isn't done in advance, or even worse when sizing hasn't been done at all, the load can been too much for the servers. This is however an extreme case and has nothing to done with the Exadata frames.

No. Their stability, in fact, is the main benefit from Exadata. When Exadata is in production, what clients tend to agree upon is that stability is of paramount importance. Several clients have had absolutely no downtime after deployment. Downtime nowadays for most enterprises, to put it simply, is money. Not to mention the image and the reputation. This is so hard to be included in pre-TCO studies as estimating such losses is rather difficult. The stability that Exadata brings solves this major issue entirely.

No. It is quite simple to extend the configurations if needed, more databases can easily be added. With Exadata less memory is needed so we see clients running even close to 100 databases on a small 1/8^th frame. With large databases, clients can sometimes run out of storage, but additional storage can easily be added with the help of storage expansion racks.

The Platinum support has been useful to most of the clients. It helps IT organization eliminate the internal need to spend time and efforts on patching and monitoring the Exadata boxes. It allows them to concentrate on other tasks.

Sometimes it takes too long time to get help with technical issues. At times, clients get frustrated with being asked the same questions multiple times. I would rate the Oracle technical support as good.

In the past, the complexity of building your own database environment was a long and tedious process. From deciding on the hardware and the operating system, to installation, patching, creating and configuring the database... It took such a long time that the benefits of the Exadata appliance are more than obvious nowadays. In a make-it-all-yourself solution, identifying the problems took a long time, and sometimes issues were never identified. The all-by-one-vendor approach has its benefits. Put all your eggs in one basket and watch that basket, is what I would say.

It depends on who does the initial setup. The process is definitely straightforward and not that complex at all. For example, the Accenture Enkitec Group is strongly specialized in these types of setups.

The Accenture Enkitec Group, with 450+ implementation, is by far the leading team in performing such tasks. There is a separate team within AEG specialized in patching and configuring Oracle Engineered Systems.

It varies from client to client depending on several factors but it is almost always when the cut-even period is approx. 12-18 months after the initial investment. The TCO of OES is much lower than similar systems like VCE’s Vblock, HP’s Converged system, and IBM’s PureFlex system, Teradata, etc.

The TCO of the Exadata Cloud Service is even better than the one of on-premise!

There is no single answer to this question. It varies from client to client depending on the size of the systems included in the setup.

IBM POWER, SAP HANA, VCE Vblock and Teradata.

If a company is looking into Oracle Engineered Systems, I would suggest first that a health check is performed on the current system, in addition to making a PoC on the (new) systems under consideration.

In the history of Oracle Corporation, there seldom has been a product so successful, complete and flawless. Client satisfaction is extremely high and stability of systems using Exadata is close to infinite availability.

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.

Oracle Engineered Systems are the best solution for Oracle and non-Oracle applications: hardware and software are combined together to ensure high availability and maximum performance. Oracle Exadata contains all the advantages of standard Oracle Database, but on top of that there are exclusive features such as IORM (IO Resource Manager) and HCC (Hybrid Columnar Compression). IORM (in combination with Database Resource Manager (DBRM)) permits you to isolate I/O requests to avoid I/O saturation. HCC provides different levels of compression to reduce space allocation and to decrease I/O.

Oracle Exadata and Oracle Exalogic are standard-based. Customers can easily migrate their existing applications based on Oracle Database and Oracle WebLogic: they can take advantages of Engineered Systems with minimal effort during the migration process. Customers can benefit from high performance without modifying Java or SQL code and they can decide to use specific features after migrating to Exadata/Exalogic. Also, Engineered Systems can be used to consolidate complex environments: for example, our customer was able to decommission about 20 blades, using a single 1/8 Exalogic x4-2. Finally, Exadata and Exalogic simplifies patching/upgrading process, unifying firmware upgrades, ILOM upgrades, OS patching, Database/WebLogic upgrade/patching in one "single-vendor" activity.

We installed the first Exadata in 2011.

The most critical issue was due to a bug with SDP (Sockets Direct Protocol): after connecting Exalogic and Exadata to the same Infiniband fabric and after enabling SDP listeners on Exadata compute nodes, we faced unexpected and random crashes of database hosts. Fortunately, we discovered that SDP caused the reboot, so we disabled it. We permanently resolved the issue with the latest firmware of Exadata, and after that we can take advantage in terms of performance, of SDP protocol.

We used to perform upgrades of Exadata from quarter to half in order to increase CPU/storage capacity. When Exadata hardware is too old (for example, if you want to upgrade from Exadata X3-2 quarter to half, adding x6-2 hardware), you should evaluate the possibility of installing a new Exadata and using Oracle Data Guard to move Oracle Databases.

6/10

There was no solution in place previously.

Using Exadata and Exalogic, you can get the best performance optimizing the number of CPUs, saving costs on software licensing. Also, if you consolidate your environment using Engineered Systems, you can save money on hardware (storage/compute capacity).

No other options were looked at.

As best practice, before starting the installation you should have a look at the Oracle Documentation. Oracle provides a "Getting Started Guide" to get up-to-date checklists to verify requirements (for example IP addresses, name syntax, etc.) and to be sure your infrastructure is ready for the installation. Also, we recommend to install Oracle Enterprise Manager as a monitoring solution: it is fully integrated with Oracle Exadata and Oracle Exalogic, you can monitor hardware (compute nodes, switches, ILKOM etc.) and software (operating system, Database, WebLogic, business applications etc.).