Oracle Exadata Reviews

Oracle Exadata is a flash disk, so my company's primary use case is achieving target performance on the database level.

What I like most about Oracle Exadata is its smart scan feature.

I also like that it supports higher capacities and it's high-performing, so my company can use Oracle Exadata for massive databases.

Oracle Exadata is one of the best products of Oracle, with the best engineering.

One small area for improvement in Oracle Exadata is integration, particularly at the consolidated application level.

Additional features I would like to see in Oracle Exadata in its next version include a cloud interface and GUI.

I have around one year of experience with Oracle Exadata, and I'm still working with it.

Oracle Exadata is a nine on a scale of one to ten, stability-wise.

Oracle Exadata scalability is a nine out of ten.

The initial setup for Oracle Exadata is straightforward and user-friendly because it has a great feature called OneCommand, which makes installation automated.

Both in-house and vendor teams implemented Oracle Exadata.

I'm giving Oracle Exadata five out of ten in terms of pricing. Its price could be lower.

Compared to other solutions, Oracle Exadata is more valuable because it has excellent features and it's a one-box solution.

I've worked with different versions of Oracle Exadata, such as X7, X8, and X9.

My customers use Oracle PCA (Private Cloud Appliance) for Oracle Exadata deployment. Banks use a private cloud, not a public cloud.

My company is a platinum partner of Oracle, with sixty to seventy customers using Oracle Exadata. In terms of maintenance, forty to fifty technical staff handle the maintenance for all customers.

My company is an Oracle vendor working with customers on implementation and deployment projects. The company is a reseller of Oracle Exadata.

I'm rating Oracle Exadata as eight 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. 

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.

We have implemented Oracle EBS on Exadata several times. We mostly used Exadata as the data layer. The most significant gain was in the area of performance. Performance increased significantly both for OLTP and batch works.

In addition to the performance increase, we saw a significant decrease in IT operations, because the necessity of SQL tunning is decreased, the total work that is spent on administration operations decreased, and so on.
Another significant gain was the efficiency of the administration. In Exadata environments, one database machine admin (or DBA team) could manage not only the database, but storage (cells) and the OS as well.

As the Exadata is hardened by Oracle and it is the most important one among the system in the engineered systems group of Oracle, we haven't seen any big Exadata specific problems that could not be solved, yet. The latest Exadata machine is generation 6 (X-6) so there is a current knowledge base.

• Backup/Restore performance: Fast backups, fast restores (especially useful for creating clone environments)
• Low Memory utilization on database nodes: The database performs less work, especially for I/O. This is due to the ability to offload processing from the database nodes (compute nodes) to the storage nodes (cells).
• Decrease in I/O (from the perspective of database nodes): thanks to smart scan, the amount of data transferred from storage to database nodes significantly decreases.
• High I/O performance: Due to Smart Scan, storage indexes and intelligent storage server nodes and storage server software(cells).
• Decrease in database size and decrease in I/O: Due to Exadata specific compression techniques, database size decreases. In addition, the amount of I/O that is done for querying the same amount of data is decreased, as well. (This one also increases performance of the queries.)
• Increase in redo write speed: Smart flash logs provide better LGWR performance, as LGWR writes redo data both flash and disk in parallel. It considers whichever of these writes completes first as done.
• Smart Flash Logs are a new feature that comes with 11.2.2.2.4 cell software. They are not for reading. They are used like a circular buffer for redo writes. Smart Flash Logs can enhance the performance of an OLTP database.
• Ability to prioritize I/O using IORM: IORM is used for managing the Storage I/O resources. We can manage our I/O resources based on the Categories, Databases and Consumer Groups. The hierarchy that we build, used to distribute I/O.
• IORM must be used on Exadata if you have a lot of databases running on an Exadata Machine. IORM is a friend of consolidation projects, in my opinion.
• Automatic SR creation using ASR: Decreases management costs. Oracle Auto Service Request (ASR) is a secure, scalable, customer-installable software feature of warranty and Oracle Support Services that provides auto-case generation when common hardware component faults occur. ASR manager can be installed on an external Oracle Linux or Oracle Solaris server. Also, you can use one of the Exadata database nodes for installing ASR manager (not preferred).
• Implementing QOS for CPU using Instance caging: Instance caging can be used to limit the CPU usage in the database level. It is a good thing for building consolidation environment. It can be configured for preventing the non production residing on the same Exadata database machine to allocate the resources excessively, leaving no space in CPU queues for the production environments.
• Fast support by Oracle: Maybe it is because it is an engineered system or maybe it is because of another reason, the quality and speed of Oracle support is very satisfactory.
• Single vendor support: Software and hardware support by Oracle.
• High Availability: It is a Highly available database machine. It provides built-in high availability, at both software (for example: Oracle RAC) and hardware levels.
• Scalability: Exadata is a scale-out compute and storage platform.
• Ability to create tablespaces and datafiles very quickly.
• Offers a database environment built by Oracle: An Oracle database machine, that is built, optimized, certified and supported by the RDBMS vendor (Oracle). (Oracle RDBMS is the concern of this machine. Exadata is built for it.)
• InfiniBand network for RAC private interconnect: InfiniBand functionality. CPU cycles of the servers are not used for InfiniBand transport.

Product specific documentation is satisfactory, but the interoperability documents should be improved. For example, there should be a step-by-step installation document for installing EBS on Exadata. Similarly, the documentation should be revised and Exadata specific notes should be added where necessary. We saw this need while installing EBS 12.2 database tier on Exadata. The document was written for the subject “Installing EBS 12.2 on Linux X86-64 (Exadata fits this category)". However; the OS RPMs that the document instructs to install, were not not present even in the latest Exadata. However, as Oracle says, Exadata has all the RPMs and they are up-to-date, so we were confused. We created several SRs, and even today it is not certain. We installed the RPMs specified in the document into Exadata. This was okay, but they may not even be necessary at all.

Certification should also be improved. Today, Oracle doesn't certify applications with engineered systems. We just check the RDBMS and OS certification to decide whether our application's database is cerfied with Exadata. This is actually enough for most of the cases. However, certifying specific data layers of certain applications (like EBS's database tier) on Exadata and adding some notes and recommendations (especially for performance) and restrictions (where necessary) can be a good move.

I have used this since 2011.

We have not had any stability issues.

We have not had any scalability issues. Oracle Real Application Clusters on Extended Distance Clusters is not supported with Exadata. So, basically, it is not supported to build RAC extended clusters on multiple Exadata machines. The good news is that RAC extended clusters will probably be supported with Exadata in Oracle Database 12.2 (12CR2). It is not certain yet, but it is expected, so we will see.

Actually, a consulting company (Oracle Partner) giving the technical support of this product, we didn't encounter any problems by getting advanced support by Oracle and we didn't get any unrecoverable problems while implementing what we learnt from the user guides and Oracle support documents.
The technical support of Exadata is quite good (if it is given by the IT professionals who know what they are doing).

Our customers were using conventional converged infrastructures and standalone servers. The reason they switched can be explained with the following list of items:

• Exadata is optimized by Oracle for Oracle databases.
• All the costs, capabilities and expected results are actually already defined for Exadata. No big surprises.
• Single vendor support for the whole stack.
• Unique and innovative capabilities, such as Smart Scan, Exabus and HCC.

Setup is straightforward. You just fill out a deployment form that Oracle sends you. By filling out this deployment form, you actually give all the necessary inputs for the deployment (such as IP addresses, host names, NTP server IP addresses, DNS server names, etc.)

Most of the time, Oracle field engineers, who are well-trained for deploying Exadata, do the setup on-site. After the initial setup, any experienced admin who knows Oracle RAC and Oracle RDBMS, can go further to provision databases (create databases, do performance related configurations and so on) on Exadata or they can even further migrate databases to Exacta.

After the first setup, Oracle still answers your questions and supports you to make sure that deployment meets the customer requirements.

I recommend a proper sizing. A proper sizing makes you decide how big (1/8,1/4 etc) your Exadata should be. In the sizing phase, you can also decide whether to license all cores, or reduce the number cores using capacity-on-demand features of Exadata, as well. This has a direct impact on licensing.

In general, our customers are generally interested in Exadata. But, there are cases where the power of Exadata is just too much. Especially when the databases are not so big and when the transaction counts are low.

From an Oracle perspective, our customers also evaluate the Oracle Database Appliance (ODA). The decision is made according to the needs. If ODA is not enough for the customer’s needs, they consider Exadata.

I recommend others to define their needs and the things they expect from Exadata. I strongly recommend doing a PoC to ensure that Exadata meets their expectations.

Of course, reviewing the Exadata related documents and real life stories will give a better idea about the tasks that are done for implementing an Exadata environment and the tasks that are done to get the most benefit from Exadata.

The system is engineered to run both databases and enterprise applications unlike other engineered systems, which are either tailored only for databases or only for applications. The ability to consolidate all of the databases is a big plus.

The SuperCluster provides best of both worlds – Oracle Exadata functionality along with virtualization at the firmware and the OS kernel layers.

On the Exadata side the features most valuable are – Hybrid Columnar Compression (HCC) for both Data Warehouse and OLTP workloads, Storage Indexes for Smart Scan, ability to use Flash Cache for DB storage, and more.

With SuperCluster and Exadata, all of the servers and storage are integrated within the same rack. This reduces the configuration and setup time, increases performance, and makes maintenance and patching easy. We are able to consolidate all of the databases and application stack on a single SuperCluster with Exadata.

In the area of Solaris zone-level virtualization, it would be good to have memory capping as a tool for memory management. Currently for 11g databases running on Exadata with smart scan against hybrid columnar compressed (HCC), tables could result in errors. It would be nice to have a patch rather than the current solution of upgrading the databases to 12c.

Currently, we have a Half-Rack SuperCluster with 2 SPARC T5-8 Compute Nodes and 4 Exadata Storage Servers. Current version of Exadata is 12.1.2.1.3. The compute nodes are running Solaris 11.2 with Oracle11g 11.2.0.4 databases. We've been using it for close to three years.

We had few issues while deploying DB zones. This virtualization has to be carried out differently when compared to DB LDOM virtualization.

There have been no major problems so far with stability.

There have been no major problems so far with scalability.

Overall it has been good so far.

Overall it has been good so far. In the case of engineered systems like SuperCluster/Exadata, the patching has to go through the support team and there is definitely room for improvements in this area.

Previously, we had multiple servers both with and without physical partitioning. The storage for all of the servers had to be zoned to a SAN. The servers and the storage previously were from different vendors and we had to integrate those. Other product offerings were evaluated, but with all of those we had to explicitly integrate the compute, storage, and networking components. In addition, we could not get the benefits of database optimizations with Exadata and have to pay the penalty for virtualization overhead and network traffic between compute and storage layers.

There is a certain degree of complexity with respect to the initial design of the Exadata storage cell disks and grid disks to meet the customer’s application needs. This especially true when migrating from an existing setup. Care has to be taken with regard to the initial domain configurations since this will determine the LDOM and zone-level virtualization. The Exadata disks have to be exposed to both the DB LDOMS and DB Zones.

The initial setup was from the vendor team (for any engineered systems from Oracle). But later we had to continue the setup to cater to our application and business needs. Prior to the implementation, all of the IP allocations are to be completed for the three layers – Client/Public network, InfiniBand private network, and the Management network.

At this time, I do not have the actual numbers but would rate the ROI is pretty good.

In the long run one can consolidate the various DB related licenses. The number of cores required to run the DBs and applications is much lower on a SuperCluster with Exadata, thereby leading to fewer licenses and reduced cost. Since the entire stack is owned by one vendor (in this case Oracle) the core factor for licensing is 0.5 leading to fewer licenses for the software components.

The SuperCluster in addition to Exadata storage also comes with ZFS storage cluster. Since the compute nodes, storage and networking components are fully integrated with InfiniBand I/O fabric this provides very high performance between various components. Also, it has built-in hardware encryption to provide data security.

There are so many it’s hard to just name a few but -

• Cell off-loading
• Reliability
• ExaCheck
• InfiniBand

Many diverse applications were migrated to the Exadata platform that had either performance or stability issues. All have had very reliable and performance since.

Their hardware engineers can’t be beat. They are the best people I have ever worked with and parts are installed very quickly and efficiently. They’re very easy to work with, schedule jobs with, and get things done. Also, they are very proactive as well.

Most of my suggestions for Exadata itself have been addressed in X5. Oracle keeps improving the reliability and adding more hot swappable parts for the hardware and software.

The only improvements left are not with the product itself but with MOS support, ASR and patching. For MOS software support, there are some very talented people there, but not enough of them. They need more software engineers with in depth training on how to use the ASR system and the jump gate.

When the jump gate is updated or patched, it seems to take a bit to get things working properly again so patching and ASRs can be done. Platinum patching continues to improve but it is not a hands off solution.There is quite a bit of manual effort involved with each patch cycle to co-ordinate the patching. With some of the patching there, is downtime, and most of it is rolling but there are a few cases where you do need have downtime.

Since v1, almost six years.

Just the normal software bugs, nothing major. In fact considering the complexity, there are very few bugs at hardware/software level. The ASR system with the jump gate was more problematic than the Exadata setup.

No, very stable and reliable. On one quarter-rack we have 27 databases running, which astounds me every time I patch and do maintenance.

We have added more memory and additional storage arrays, and adding more memory is very easy, while adding a storage array takes some time, but it is not as complicated as I expected. We will be expanding our local file system soon not sure how complex this will be. Adding ZFS is fairly straightforward and has become easier since I first did it three years ago.

My hardware support is beyond compare. The MOS software support is good but there are just too few experienced people.

AIX, and we switched partly due to a hardware refresh, and partly due to performance, and the growth of some of the applications.

Documents are very clear, and there were many software and hardware engineers available to provide assistance and guidance along the way. The most difficult piece was the ASR system set up with the jump gate, password vault and set up in OEM. The other difficulty was the network, and some of that was due to my lack of experience in that area.

We had one application that went down constantly and since we moved to the Exadata there have been few issues outages and incidents.Huge performance gains as well.

Really evaluate your needs from a hardware and software end. Buy what you will need for between three and five years down the line, in terms of storage and memory. Buy products either before Oracle’s fiscal year end (May) or Open World. You can bundle all of your Oracle products into one agreement to get the best discounts. Try to get training and some consulting time into the agreement.Some companies leverage the partner or beta programs. I did one such beta test and was glad I did because I made improvements.

We had tried other storage and hardware options but nothing really got us performance we needed for some of our applications. We migrated applications from AIX to Linux VM and Exadata. The most critical or resource intensive applications go to Exadata.

There is a learning curve to this product and it is complex at the hardware, network and software levels. Train all your staff, not just the database administrations as the network and UNIX admns have to get familiar with the components. Exadata classes are available and the DBAs should know RAC and services well.

The starter databases are a template for new databases. Run ExaChks weekly, and set up OEM to monitor Exadata, but spend time to make sure you do it correctly. If you have a large Exadata foot print look at ZFS for backups and evaluate if you have the staff to support it. If not make sure you partner with the correct consultants.

Oracle does provide Platinum patching services but that has to be managed. Read about the product and really evaluate how to use it properly. Talk to other customers and join Exadata groups. Do a proof of concept, so see if there is a sandbox to try out. And probably the best hint is that MOS has an Exadata best practice guide - follow it as best you can. Granted there are some things you have to do for vendor products. But the more you can get out of these the better off you will be for patching, MOS etc.

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.

We used to work on business intelligence projects, so we really enjoyed the service-like performance.  It's been great.

The business intelligence is very good.

We have found that the analytics environment is excellent.

We've discovered that the solution is quite a complex product, which can make it difficult to sell. Snowflake, for example, is simpler and therefore an easy sell.

The customization can sometimes be difficult to achieve.

We've been working with the solution for a very long time. It's been more than 15 years personally and at least 15 years at this company, so it's been well over a decade at this point.

We don't deal with bugs or glitches and the product doesn't crash or freeze. The only real issues we come across are related to customization. It's quite stable. We haven't had problems.

We have about 100 people using the product currently.

Our clients are quite sizeable companies.

I've never used technical support and therefore can't really comment on their responsiveness or level of knowledge. I have an internal team that assists with troubleshooting as necessary.

As a consultancy, we work with a variety of products. This includes Oracle and Snowflake, for example.

We are an integrator of the solution. Our clients are sizeable companies, and there are several providers involved in different projects with Exadata. We're not the only administrators. 

I personally haven't handled an installation. We're mostly focused on projects related to BI and analytics. Someone else handles the setup and we just use the product or have our clients use it. I don't have a sense of whether the implementation is difficult or complex or how long deployments take.

We are a consultancy. We are partners with Oracle, with Snowflake, and with other vendors, software vendors.

We work in different deployment models with our customers. We try to fit our customers' needs. It depends on the customer and the project in terms of which deployment model we'll recommend or use.

Overall, I would rate the solution a nine out of ten. It's very good. We've had a great experience using it over the years.