Oracle Exadata Reviews

We are service providers and provide this solution to our customers. We deploy the on-prem deployment model.

The most valuable feature is that you have the same familiar environment of an Oracle database but with the additional performance you get from this architecture.

There is no room for improvement because everything that they could solve, they have. It has good storage optimization, hardware actualization, and internal communication network. They made improvements in whatever they could. 

The problem with the Oracle Exadata is that it is a dead-end of technology. The supplier's market is dying, so they have no future. For analytical purposes, companies are now using analytical databases. So they're using databases like MPP, multi-parallel processing databases, things like Greenplum, and Teradata. Exadata has no future. It is going into history. Five years ago, it was top technology. Now, they don't have a future.

It's too expensive per terabyte. It's complex and hard to expand.

It's stable.

Scalability is really tough because it's scalable as much as an appliance is scalable. If you want to scale it, you need to add an appliance itself. You can buy one-eighth of a rack, one-quarter, one-half of rack. If you still want to extend capacity, you need to buy another module that is another eighth or quarter or half and you need to install it into a rack. It's quite complex. This is one of the reasons why appliances are not that popular anymore because modern databases are on hardware and you just put on another server, another node. It's quite expensive, compared to the commodity hardware.

The initial setup is quite complex because it's an appliance. It's a big box with all the processing power and storage that you need to order and get installed. It's pretty complex.

You need to do the installation which is done by Oracle. It's not just software, it's an appliance. When customers want to buy it, I need to order it. They want it a lot faster and it's actually quite expensive. If Oracle or Oracle partners have this appliance in stock it can be quick but if it's ordered through a manufacturer it can be lengthy. 

I would rate it an eight out of ten.

Omnichannel multiprocessing.

It provides efficient runtime processing.

Hybrid columnar compression.

Try to diminish the logging service.

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.

Scalability and high performance, real high performance.

The most basic business solutions run more quickly.

I don't know. We've only just started using it. It's a new solution for us.

It's stable.

We can extend the data without any trouble, just put something new in and go on. That's great. There's no problem of that kind with this solution, for us.

Good quality support.

We just switched from another older version of Exadata to the newest one.

It's complex. We integrated an existing solution to Exadata.

Our short list was HP and IBM. We went with Oracle because we needed a unified solution like Exadata. No one else could provide a solution with this performance, for us.

When looking at vendors to work with we look for good, fast implementation of the solution, reliable support, and lower cost.

It's a good solution for a data warehhouse, analytics, etc. It's just a good, reliable solution.

performance

This is an engineered system by Oracle. It provides very fast communication between the storage and database. A lot of data processing is done at the storage level.

This makes the queries and processing much faster than before; reports can run within minutes rather than hours.

Cost is very high. It needs to be made affordable to grab more customer base. A lot of the technical enhancements are being made by Oracle regularly. Now, it is available on the cloud also.

If you deploy a normal server setup with SAN or direct disks, the cost is very low. Exadata machine is supplied by Oracle and hardware also maintained by Oracle. They charge as per their standards and pricing. Its quite costly in that regard.

I have used this solution for five years, since about the time it was launched.

There were no stability issues.

There were no scalability issues. In fact, scalability is one of its prime features, it is very flexible.

The technical support is, as usual, good from Oracle.

Earlier, we used SAN and the traditional servers. That was also good and time-tested for decades. This is all together a new concept.

It was a normal Oracle database setup.

The price and license costs are high as compared to the normal database setup. It depends on the client's requirements and size of the databases. Clients/ buyers have to take the call.

No other options were available in this category at that time or even now.

You should evaluate your requirements and budget.

Exadata storage is very fast and it gives really good performance. Sometimes people buy a good server with a lot of CPU, pay a lot of money, but they have very poor storage performance and then they don't get enough performance from their system.

Exadata really gives good storage performance and our business applications run very fast.

It's perfect. I don't know what to improve in Exadata.

More than five years.

Very stable. In the last five years there was was just one occasion of downtime because one cell went down and because we had low free disk space. It was a little problem but it was solved.

I don't think it's so scalable because Exadata is a box. You can't do anything with this. It's a box, use it, that's all.

Support is much better for Exadata than for other products. Very fast response and sometimes much faster than for other systems. 

Sometimes if we have a bug on another database, we duplicate the database on Exadata, repeat the bug and they make a patch much faster.

We didn't set it up, Oracle set up Exadata. It's not permitted to set up Exadata by yourself. They bring it to you. It's ready for use.

I totally recommend buying Exadata. It's very good product. I haven't ever seen anything better than Exadata for Oracle Database.

Performance.

Excavation is purely for the storage of the data warehouses. It does what it needs to do. It performs. We have an active-passive DR. We tested it, it works. We can switch datacenters within reasonable time and go completely live in another data center on the technology we have.

We bought the whole stack, so we have extra discs. We have one month to show that an application doesn't work. We found out that installing and running the software on Oracle, was better than on the other platforms we used before.

Off the top of my head I can't think of anything.

A year and a half to two years.

No downtime.

In my eyes, it is going to meet the company's needs moving forward.

We have some very good internal guys who handle most of the issues. Actually, we haven't had many issues at all.

No vendor is reliable. We say there's a difference between proven in PowerPoint and proven in practice. We always find out in practice if it really works.

Personally, what I like to see is somebody who understands the business. What I see is that a lot of vendors are mainly focused on technology and not on the business functions you want to build. I believe that technology can be bought while the intellectual property is in the business services that you deliver to an organization. That's what I look for.

The fact that it's an engineered system. It's a database in a box, storage, the networking, the compute engines. All of it's in one nice neat package. My DBAs like administering it. My application owners like its reliability on the back end.

Our ability to scale heavy workloads and our ability to consolidate lighter workloads and reduce our sprawl through the data sector.

Price. Extremely expensive. Maintenance is about industry average. They've got a pretty good upgrade roadmap. But it's been an expensive ride for us, but also a necessary one.

Very stable. No major issues. No downtime that was a result of bugs or some kind of defect in the platform.

It has scaled well.

As a member of IT management with business units breathing down our neck, when there is an issue we always feel the support can be faster but I don't get a lot of complaints. It's good support. Like everything, it could be faster. We'd want to be faster.

It was straightforward for us because we used an integrator partner to put it all in for us, and then our administrators stepped in and took over.

We're constantly looking at other products. We went with Exadata because we needed some muscle on the back end for an ERP implementation. We've been through Exadata first-generation, and right now we're putting in X6s. We've had X2s, X3s, X4s, and we're actually installing X6s right now as we lifecycle through.

It's a great investment for the large enterprise. I think with Exadata in the cloud, that's coming, that we're starting to look at - and they're obviously trying to push here at the conference - I think it'll open itself up to a lot of other customers that probably wouldn't have gone with such an expensive on-premise solution. We're excited about that, too. 

I would definitely recommend it to any colleagues.

It enables us to consolidate, that's one thing. We have consolidated five databases into one box, so that definitely a cost-savings there. We migrated from ODS to X5-2, so that is one thing.

The second thing of course are the extra features like the storage indexes. In short, the main feature that we take advantage of is the intelligence within the  storage which makes it no longer a "dumb storage" server. That is another main thing.

We did some PoC tests with our own data, and we were really getting 10x using Hybrid Columnar Compression, unique to Exadata, so some cost savings there.

Those are the things. Performance has gotten better, less footprint, and consolidation.

Including the migration, it's around a little more than a year now.

It has been pretty stable. We haven't seen many issues. Yes, we have hit some bugs, but otherwise it's pretty stable. It's a lot of mature boxes now. It's, again, an X5-2; it's mature enough.

We have a half rack now. If we at all feel like we need more compute, we can definitely add on more racks. So scalability, definitely a yes.

It is excellent. In our organization, my team did the first migration, so it was all new to everyone. From the installation team to internal support teams, and my team which is the application DBAs, which really worked on the migration. Checking stuff and letting us know if there were any changes to be made; for all of those, even with the migration, we got excellent support.

That was part of the agreement between the parties, that they would help us with the first migration.

We were using ODS.

Personally, my requirements when looking for in a vendor: Definitely one is they have to be leading in that technology in the industry. The vendor should also make me want to use the latest proven technologies, we cannot take chances with that. Whichever is the case, whatever we are using a product for, that particular product has to be the industry best. That is one thing.

Another thing is definitely that it needs to be a known partner like Oracle. They know the people we know, so that gives comfort that, middle of the night, if you have an issue, you can call this person. In short, proven support.

They just have a lot of products, and they work well together.

I think it's free. That's one more thing.

I think it's better than the VMware from that perspective. I think it has improved quite a bit in the last 12 months. They're still lagging behind, but I like the new features they're introducing. I think that's why I'm one of the applicants for the product.

My organization is supposed to integrate Oracle products with our line of products too, so it doesn't really improve, but I think it's a synergy between the two companies, to be able to bring in the products from two companies and make it a better solution. I think there's a lot of synergy between the two for that.

Yes. Backup recovery, snapshot technology integrated with the hardware array, DR solutions, more of migrating VMs between different ones.

It would be nice to have a single click button to, say, migrate my VMware VM into the Oracle VM, or vice-versa. That is not available right now, and even the procedures there is really complicated, time-consuming.

Those are a lot of things we talk about with the Oracle VM engineers. They said they're short of resources, they can only prioritize certain things. I'm still hoping that they'll come out soon.

It is. Especially the new version, 3.4.

I have not been playing with the scalability, but I know they can scale pretty high. Especially I know they use it within their own MiniCluster product, and a lot of their appliances. I have no doubt it can scale.

Yes, I have actually. Kind of hit and miss.

It depends, I guess, on the support engineer really. I think I got more misses than hits.

No. It's just my focus of work. I'm supposed to work on Oracle products and their VM solutions, Oracle VM.

I do use the VirtualBox, but that's not enterprise grade, I don't think. Customers in an enterprise environment would not deploy VirtualBox for productions, but they would go with the normal VM for that.

Yes, straightforward.

The documentation is clear. The time to implement is really short. You put the CD in there, and you just kind of follow the prompts and you're done pretty much. I like that aspect of it.

If I were a customer and I had to choose, honestly there's only two other solutions out there, either VMware or Oracle VM. I think Hyper-V is too narrow-focused, so it would be out of my choices.

Again, if I wanted to choose between the two, if I'm not already a VMware customer, I would definitely go Oracle VM, especially when I run Oracle products already. Oracle databases, or middleware stuff.

I think it's just given me a better customer experience, one vendor to go to for support, one vendor to get patches. I believe that they can offer better integrations in the future. At least that's what I'm hoping for.

They have to look at their existing infrastructure, what they have, and what makes sense.

If they already have a big presence of VMware, it won't make sense to start with Oracle VM products. If they are just starting out, and want to test the waters and see what features, I would definitely recommend Oracle VM first. It does offer a lot of features that VMware does, with the right parts.