Oracle Exadata Reviews

The most valuable feature is definitely the storage offload; the fact that, as you're executing your SQL, it's segregated out to a storage device, and the database itself doesn't have to take that overhead. We've noticed a huge improvement in execution.

It has definitely improved my organization, because it's an engineered solution. It's not pieces and parts from different vendors. Having the one-vendor solution that's fully supported by Oracle, it doesn't require us to have the number of staff that it used to in a more distributed environment. We've definitely got some efficiencies from a staffing model because of it.

I'd like to see them improve more of the reporting capabilities of Enterprise Manager for the Exadata plug-in.

It's definitely been stable for us; over a four-year period, we had zero outages. It's been rock solid.

We’ve had experience scaling it. We started out originally with an X2, the second release of Exadata. A year ago, we expanded that with the new X5. We were able to take our existing procurement and expand it with newer hardware too.

We definitely have noticed that technical support has gone down, unfortunately. The quality of support; it takes a lot longer to get tickets resolved than it did four years ago, when we first bought the Exadata. We're an engineered systems customer. That's supposed to have more platinum-level support model to it. We have not experienced that recently.

It was end of life for our previous hardware. We had to buy something. The Exadata just seemed to be a better solution.

Initial setup was very simple, actually. Getting all of the right network information was really the critical path for it, but once that was done, the actual install and configuration was very simple.

The replacement hardware was ironically Sun. Because Oracle procured Sun, they just became our natural progression.

When I’m choosing a vendor to work with, I look at the reliability of the actual hardware solution itself and then also the support. Even though tech support has not been very good for us, our Oracle reps have stayed with us and want us to be successful. They help us try and navigate the Oracle waters.

Know what versions of hardware are out there, for any type of an engineered solution. Understand where there might not be redundancy in the solution, to know if that's going to meet your needs or not.

I have not given it a perfect rating because I probably wouldn't give anyone a perfect rating. It's met all of our expectations.

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.

The performance.

It makes it possible to deliver high performance Oracle OBIEE applications to our customers.

They need to reduce the cost. It needs to be a true appliance so you don’t have to manage individual components inside it. It needs to provide a better maintenance process, which means no downtime, and true rolling upgrade.

We used Oracle Exadata from 2010 to 2015.

I have deployed OEM 11g and 12c in High availability mode and was not too complicated to implement. I have not tried HA with 13c. However, installation for all the releases have been fine.

We've experienced no issues with performance.

We had some challenges on scalability. That time the only choice we had was to upgrade to a full rack from a ½ rack. However the newer version of Oracle Exadata has flexibility to upgrade. It can add database servers or storage servers not require to add ¼ or ½ racks.

6/10 - not because of people, but technology and architecture. A few times we had issue to completely fail a drive before we can replace it.

We had been using Oracle RAC on EMC disk array with Dell servers until the performance cannot really meet Oracle OBIEE application and some data warehouse applications’ performance requirement. We did look at Netezza and Datallegro, but they didn’t run the SQL that compatible with Oracle. By then Oracle Exadata seemed the only logical option for us. We also had a business reason to purchase Oracle Exadata at that time.

The initial setup was pretty smooth and straightforward.

We had Oracle team to setup the device.

The device performed very well, but the biggest challenge for us was the maintenance. Any firmware, code or OS upgrade took long time, which requires a downtime window. The rolling upgrade would even take longer so we never tried it. I heard that the new version of Exadata should be improved in this area, but we have moved off Oracle Exadata platform. The DR is another challenge since ideally you would want have to a Exadata at DR site, which in most cases is cost-inhibitive. I would say that make sure you can do rolling upgrade for minimizing the downtime, and find a cost effective DR solution especially if you use HCC (Hybrid Columnar Compression).

When you talk about Exadata, the phrase that comes to mind is "database consolidation." We are consolidating 28 different databases from the revenue authority in Exadata. Fortunately, close to 70 percent of those databases are on Oracle, but they were all on Oracle 11g. We migrated them to 12c, and now we are pumping them into 19c to transfer them to the new Exadata X9M.

Exadata is a fantastic machine. Two features stand out. The first is the resource input/output management tool that allows you to manage the resources to the neck on the Exadata box. 

The second feature I like is ROC. I come from a data center background, so I've been doing storage and fabric interconnection to all that stuff. With ROC, where the fabric interconnection or the Brocade goes out of use, the data goes directly from storage to computation. It's great. 

I liked Spark, but it was discontinued when Exadata L6 came back. I loved it, and I wish they would bring back Spark integration.  

I started working on Exadata in 2018. I was the first person in East Africa to be certified in Exadata in 2013, and I'm proud of that. In the past five months, I've been deploying Exadata for a government revenue authority as a consultant.

Exadata's database consolidation can save a lot of money. For example, one current customer was spending close to $800,000 on database licensing, but they are looking at $250,000 after consolidation.

If I walk into the office of any customer and I want to sell my Exadata, I tell the finance officer, "Boss, I plan to bring down your license costs by half." That's what I'll tell them. "If you want to see the magic, that's what I plan to do for you."

I rate Oracle Exadata 10 out of 10.

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.

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.  

My primary job on Exadata is working with the Oracle engineer whenever a customer makes a patching request. We engage with the Oracle engineer regarding Exadata patching in a quarterly manner, around every three months. I collaborate and communicate with our customers daily regarding these activities on Exadata.

On our customer side, we deploy Exadata X7 and Exadata X5. We work on our customer's side with Exadata patching on Exa 5 and Exa 7, and with an Oracle Enterprise Manager regarding monitoring purposes.

Their monitoring tool is available in the Exadata environment where you can easily monitor all things in the Exa tech support and if there is any issue present in Exa, you can easily fix it.

We are willing to migrate our customers to Exadata X8 since this is a new version of Oracle Exadata.

Their Smart Scan is a very capable feature with a great data retrieval rate.

It would be good if Exadata made some new features available regarding data retrieval and speed capacity functions.

I have been using Oracle Exadata for one and a half years.

Exadata is also a very stable environment. Their Smart Scan feature is great for every banking environment and financial institutions willing to implement it. 

It is a very scalable environment.

Our customers are very satisfied regarding Exadata because when we raise a call with Oracle regarding any issue their response is very prompt, within 5 minutes. And an engineer is available for working on the issue.

The initial setup was very easy and took two to four hours working on it because this is an engineer system. So the Oracle engineer and the ACS team worked on it and on the on-premises database to migrate to Oracle Exadata.

In our current situation it is not bad, it's a very capable and very comprehensive solution.

On a scale of one to ten I rate Exadata a ten!