Oracle Exadata Reviews

The most valuable feature of the solution is that it is durable. It is a highly relevant option with extreme performance. The extreme performance is one of the key features when you're using Exadata. There are known points that you need to take care of, simply "beware of update".!

I'm currently writing a data warehouse on Exadata. Before this solution, we were aiming for this to be completed by 8 a.m., when our ETLs would finish. With the help of Exadata's special features, this was reduced to 3 a.m.

This solution allows us to bring more data within the same time period. It provides us with more subject areas that provide more reports to our users. Our ETL times reduced to 65%, then to 50%.

I would like to see more database features and maybe more archiving features, because we need to do data archiving. I would like to see additional database memory.

My first implementation was in 2009 and still using.

No.

There's nothing bad to say about Exadata. It's stable, durable, and always up and running. My DBAs do online patches and online backup.

This product is scalable. We first started with the quarter rack, and then we expanded to the full rack.

Previous to this solution, we were using a normal Oracle RAC service. We were just waiting for this product to come out.

The installation is easy because it comes out-of-the-box and you just start using it.

We had already chosen Exadata, so we didn't compare this solution with many other products.

Get the database on Oracle first. If you are in an Oracle stack, it would be much better to use the Oracle products. If you are driving a Ferrari, you wouldn’t put a Mercedes engine in it. If you are writing a query, you cannot rely on other brands.

I'm an architect, so when I look for a product, I look for performance.

The High Availability and rolling upgrade features are the most important for us. They help us achieve zero downtime and increased performance.

The biggest advantage to our implementation of Exadata is that because it's an Oracle-engineered system, our database administrations don't have to worry about performance tuning. It's already optimally tuned and, when compared to other systems, it's really provided us with better performance.

We've had no issues with deployment.

It is brand new for us, and we are slowly getting other databases into it. So far, it's good, but we are not using 100% of them, so we still have to learn a lot.

It has the best scalability of all our Oracle products.

We've created a lot of cases, so we're in touch with Oracle support frequently. The service is consistent across all our Oracle products because they're located in one place.

We previously used IBM InfoSphere Warehouse.

The initial setup was straightforward.

Oracle provided us with an on-site consultant to perform the installation.

We also looked at Microsoft SQL. We chose Exadata as we have other Oracle products, including Database.

If you are buying Exadata, be sure to go with the latest version.

The primary use case is for maintaining contextual databases. In other words, it is for our online applications and services.  

The most valuable part of the product is performance enhancement.  

We still have to migrate to the latest version of Exadata, which we plan to do later this year or in the next year. Because of that, I am not sure we have anything that we would need to have added. I would need to consult our DBAs after we have migrated. They might find some issue that they would like addressed. But off the top of my head and because we are not on the newest version, it is not right to say the product needs something when it might already be there or has been updated.  

Exadata is practically a perfect solution for us as it stands. Because we are pretty satisfied with it, we have not rushed into the upgrade. I am not sure that we are fully utilizing the options that are currently on the table. For our contextual databases, it is the best option and we do not have any really an issue with it that needs improvement.  

We also need the product for other purposes. For analytics, we use Identity Two and we also need Microsoft Escrow Server for certain tasks. We accept some minor issues that I could identify if I discuss that with our DBAs. I do not think anything bothers us that much that we would need improvements. Of course, the price is the price, so it could always be less expensive. Maybe there are other considerations from the marketing side, but I do not deal with that.  

There are some issues with accounting where we really can not calculate return-on-investment. Exadata pays some fees for you so there is simplified billing, but that separates us from some evaluation of usage. Maybe Oracle could offer a solution for resolving that. Maybe a calculator or separate report that could help customers to find this data somehow. More clarity on this usage might affect how you estimate the workload of the storage and could really make clear what you get in return on using the product for the month.  

We migrated from Identity two on to Exadata sometime between five and six years ago.  

It is stable like other Oracle products.  

It is scalable. 

We developed some software for migration. The previous database was on the mainframe server and it was quite a nice product. We have a lot of experience, both with Oracle Exadata, with other databases, and other systems that we also use. We work with many solutions and we use what we think is best for a particular task. Contextual databases work especially well with Exadata.   

It is not really clear how to calculate the ROI for Exadata. Because you need to do the calculations for yourself, you need to know the license modeling pretty well. Even then, it is not very clear how much it costs for Exadata performance, CPU, and other additions. You really can not calculate these points when Exadata pays for you. Oracle could help customers to find out the actual numbers and help with calculations for ROI.  

If you compare an Oracle database on your system to buying into Exadata, which is an engineering system consisting of hardware, then, of course, it is more expensive. On the other hand, it gives you some possibilities to experience better performance than you would have if you would run Oracle on your servers. When you scale it up, it means that you actually get this additional hardware for free. You need to pay more for the license instead. This is one of the cost differences that is not very clear how to calculate. It is hard to tell how long it takes for one product or the other to become a cost advantage.  

There are some extra costs for hardware and for everything else if you upgrade to have better performance. At that point, the system uses not just the standard license, but also the storage shares. This can be quite significant when doing larger implementations. So the clarity of the cost models is something that could probably use some improvement from the Oracle side.  

It is quite difficult really to compare and evaluate all the solutions available. The market is pretty mature. We have to just make a shortlist of possible solutions from whatever products and solutions we are looking at and go from there. It is not realistic to do an in-depth analysis of everything.  

A lot of solutions that are more oriented toward network monitoring are now rebranded. The markets itself was previously called anomaly detection systems. Sometimes it is not quite clear which of the solutions really have additional capabilities that can make a difference without really studying them in-depth. We obviously looked at some extra products to contemplate and compare, and we continue to. But, for now, what we see and what we decided is where we will be staying. I am not sure that any product really offers a significant upgrade that is worth migrating for.  

Darktrace is a step ahead in some ways but, in this area, it is really difficult to assess clearly because there is a lot of the marketing fog. It is sometimes quite difficult to get to the facts about the advantages. It also may not be worth migrating when the product you are using will develop the same or similar capabilities.  

On a scale from one to ten where one is the worst and ten is the best, I would rate Oracle Exadata highly. If you compare it to other engineering databases, I would rate it a nine.  

Practically perfect from my point-of-view.  

All business Oracle databases were spread across many DB servers and different platforms. We consolidated all of our databases onto a single Exadata box to ensure that they were running on the same platform and have greater coordination and integration between the databases. Also, we gained performance without much change in the database code, as well as saved a greater amount of space by applying the compression feature. 

We experienced a significant performance improvement without changing the code, simply utilizing Oracle Exadata standard smart features including Smart Scan, Smart Flash Cache, and Storage Indexes.

We saved a great amount of storage by applying different levels of HCC and removing ninety percent of the indexes. This is a powerful and extremely stable system with IB network speed.

Most of the Exadata features are enabled by default, without the need for configuration. For example, the smart features include Smart Scan, Smart Flash Cache, Storage Indexes, and IB 40GB. 

Compression is a great feature, where one can really save a lot of storage.

Oracle has introduced Machine Learning (ML), Artificial Intelligence (AI), and autonomous features for automatic database tuning. The new addition of X8M has come with a direct memory read future to deliver amazing performance for all sorts of OLTP and analytics workloads. This should benefit the Exa community.

General perception from many customers is the cost and maintenance of exadata database machine. Although Oracle recently introduced low cost storage and automated many features, still the cost and maintenance is a concern. Oracle should provide free of cost the Exadata software on the box to have more customers.

We have been using this solution for more than eight years.

Every component in the Oracle Exadata database is redundant. Hence, it provides HA for every layer.

This solution offers the flexibility to add more servers, storage servers, or a combination of both.

Oracle support service needs more improvement.

We haven't used Engineered Systems for Oracle database platforms, though, we were on various platforms that were difficult to manage and maintain.

The bare metal setup is done by Oracle professionals and managed by them. Though, customers can manage this on their own, depending on the skill set of their team.

Our implementation was done on-site, through the vendor.

We realize ROI through higher throughput, high availability, and business continuity.

Exadata is an expensive tool, but, considering the ROI, it's worth going for the solution.

We compared other market players of Engineered systems. However, Oracle Exadata features are unmatched by other players in the market.

Oracle is coming out with many advanced hardware additions and software solutions to make this product the world's best database machine.

The solution is used for Extreme Bare metal and virtual compute performance for the business to scale up as per the heterogeneous database loads.

Exadata has greatly benefited our business cycle as operational efficiency has improved by 200%.

Also, our business analytics platform performance has improved by 300%

Exadata uses a scale-out design with unique optimizations that include persistent memory, SQL query offload, and built-in resource management to optimize performance for OLTP, analytics, machine learning, and mixed workloads running in consolidated environments.

• Exadata Smart Flash Cache - caches database objects with flash memory operations.
• Integrated appliance with all components supported by one vendor, Oracle.

• It needs built-in big data features.
• I'd like to see smart auto-healing features with machine-learning libraries.
• Less power consumption would be nice.
• It needs integrated cloud software to enable cloud connectivity.

Exadata X9M uses a combination of scale-out storage, RDMA over Converged Ethernet networking, database offload, persistent memory accelerator, and PCIe Flash to deliver extremely high performance from memory and flash.

We have been using the solution for ten years.

There were no stability issues.

We've had no issues scaling it for our needs.

Customer Service:

Oracle customer service is the best in the industry.

Technical Support:

Technical support for Exadata is the best in the industry.

Positive

Traditional Oracle RAC to Oracle Exadata RAC due to having scalable and robust database consolidated platform for upcoming release 12.2, which can consolidate multi-character sets within a single container and heterogeneous data guard support.

It was a bit complex to fit in with our business requirements initially, but post-implementation it was great. It will work as the most stable and scalable database ever run on Linux with various complex workloads.

We implemented it in-house and advisors for major global Exadata deployments helped.

We have seen a 300% ROI.

Oracle needs to reduce the licensing cost to get more market penetration and offer an Open Financing Option.

We evaluated SAP HANA and other relevant platform for analytics.

I would truly recommend this to all SMEs and Big Enterprises for consolidating databases with a unified next-generation platform.

As we are a service provider for the government our job is to stabilize the database layer. We need to make sure all our data is secure. That's why we like to work with a robust environment like Exadata to make sure that our response time and our reliability are good.

Oracle Exadata's performance is one of its best features. We very satisfied with it. The previous equipment used to make a payment for all the government employees used to take at least two days for some of the transactions. Now, it will take hours to make the same amount of payments. Another thing is the flexibility to organize all of our databases. We can use it with new features that come with this version of Oracle 19c, which is the container database. With container databases, we can work with many databases, organized and segregated, and still access the functions and management, the things that most of the technical people like to have in place.

Regarding the technical side of the machine itself, I don't see much that needs improvement. In terms of the kind of service and support that most of the clients need, it is huge investments. I would like to emphasize that the clients that use these technologies from Oracle must be well supported by the Oracle company. This is one thing that I would like to address. They could have better support.

Additionally, the price for the Exadata is quite high. This is one thing that Oracle must think about. You can find the same features and the same performance that Oracle provides in other kinds of technology. So it depends on the client. If you want to use an Oracle engineered system, then you know that you have to pay.

Otherwise, you'll need to buy more for performance, replications, and the availability of these kinds of things. But you don't want to pay a lot. You have another option that Oracle support calls Oracle ODA. With ODA, you don't have to use machines, but you have the same kind of features and key performances. However, you may have reduced options for scalability with these kinds of Oracle solutions compared to the engineering system like Exadata. After buying these, you have the support that you need to maintain all these environments. This is what I want to address.

I will mention security. I know that there is a feature for security, but it is not included in the first purchase of this solution. That means if you need to increase the security, you need to buy the security feature which doesn't come by default on these solutions. As you may know, there are a lot of security problems all over the world with this kind of environment. Based on the fact that we are serving the government, we need to have security issues solved from the beginning and take care of security immediately. It would be better if Oracle could have some solutions that would bring us the confidence with their security at the outset. That's one thing I would like to address.

I'm not saying that there is no security on this machine. There is good security on the version of Oracle which is running on these machines, it's very nice. But I'm saying this because I know that Oracle can do more than that and bring the substation to the clients.

I have been using Oracle Exadata since 2010.

Even with the old machines, we didn't have any constraints with the stability. There were some problems regarding the hardware that you must change because they are getting holes and they fail more frequently. When the life cycle goes, it's the end. But on the other side, this machine is very stable.

Since we have had these machines in production, we haven't had any downtime. Over the last two years, we had a lot of downtime with the old machines because they were very old and did not have enough performance to solve the demands of the database. But we don't have any constraints about the stability with these new machines.

The strategy of the company was not to pay a lot, because we don't have much money. So we began with the scalability approach. We bought enough resources to sustain the demands of all our clients.

If the demands increase, we can also increase the resources and close off the cabinets. We can scale this machine anytime that we need. We can go until the version that they allowed for scalability. Then, if you need to maintain this technology, you can scale out and have two machines working together side by side.

This is a database machine. We have a system that hosts more than 20,000 citizens. So most of the time we have more than 3,000 transactions per day. As a service company for the government, every database resource is on this machine. We have at least three or four databases running on this machine and we have many applications that are running through this machine as well, so it serves all the countries.

The first line of maintenance is done by my team, including day to day operation. Support from Oracle is for things which are beyond our knowledge of database administration. Most of the time, the maintenance is done by us. But there is a point you must understand regarding the hardware maintenance. We are not allowed to do hardware maintenance, this belongs exclusively to the Oracle Team. The Oracle Team must be the one that does the hardware maintenance on these machines. Of course, we have a partner here in Mozambique who represents Oracle. This company is the one that is the second line of support. If they find something, they can escalate it to Oracle or they can solve it themselves.

When we started the company, we thought about the responsibilities that the company would have attending to all the requests from the government and that we would need to go to robot technology. We thought in 2002 to go directly to work with the Oracle database. So Oracle database was the first database technology we decided to use as our strategic plan for the stability of the company.

At that time, we start working with the small machines and after two or three years, we realized that there are a lot of scalability problems with those kinds of machines and stability issues with this kind of hardware. So that's why we we had lots of downtime and we spent lots of time correcting these kinds of problems instead of thinking about growing the business. So we moved these small machines to a bigger one in 2010. That's all extra data with the X-2 version, but these kinds of machines are getting old and they are out of order now. We cannot buy the spare parts or anything else we need. So we decided to keep using all of the technology, but moved from that environment to a new machine with a better performance.

This has seen better performance. That's why we are still working with only one technology, Oracle.

For Oracle Exadata, there are two main profiles that you have to take care of. One is the installation itself, like assembling the machines, which need some kind of expertise. The other is the installation of the software and creating the database, which need other kinds of equipment. From our perspective, our main goal within all of this is not about these two profiles. It's about the database engineering. Because we are coming from using an old machine, which is running an old version of Oracle, you will need to properly create not only the environment to host the database, you will also need to migrate from an old version of Oracle, like 11g, to 19c. This is another challenge that we have during implementation of these projects.

I can say that from acquisition it took at least, but not more than, five months to implement.

At acquisition we need to design the tenders and the rules of the company. The tender goes out, then it is published, then we evaluate all the tenders, then someone must win the tender. All this takes a lot of times. Then you go to the implementation phase. We did a workshop to design the solution. It took at least three weeks. Then it starts implementing the infrastructure. Migrating the database is another point because one database can take at least two days. That's the situation. But start to finish takes five months.

We did the assembling and installing of all these with the support of Oracle ACS, which is a very nice team that gives personal support for us. It was very good working with them. The other thing is the migrating itself. Migrating depends on each company because not all the companies have the same database architecture or the same data. That's why at the migration stage, 60% of the intervention of migrating from the old version of Oracle to the new version was done by my team. But the Oracle STS support was with us the whole time.

I would of course recommend Oracle Exadata to other people who are looking into implementing such solutions. They need to know what happens with this solution, what can be done with it, because as the government we cannot give out that information because it's not allowed. But, I would recommend it if a company wants to use these solutions, wants to have stability with their equipment, with their applications, and with their systems. If a company wants to be competitive in the market and have a good name, reputation and everything else, I think using Oracle, with the Oracle Exadata machine, is the best way to achieve that.

On a scale of one to ten, I can give Oracle Exadata a 9.

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.

Smart scan and smart indices are the most valuable features.

It improved the query performance.

I would like to see improvement in retail store response times.

We have been using this solution for three years.

There were deployment issues, but the dev team fixed them.

There were no issues with stability.

There were no issues with scalability.

I would give customer service a rating of 7/10.

I would give technical support a rating of 7/10.

We did not use a previous solution.

The installation was straightforward with Oracle support.

We implemented with Oracle.