Oracle Exadata Reviews

Its most valuable feature is the smart scan functionality. It allows for the queries to work faster. It offloads the stuff to the cell server, so it provides better performance.

I like the consolidation of all the components in one feature. I like the fact that it's very specialized and you can go ahead and utilize it, out of the box. It is intuitively different than a normal database solution; you have to actually design for it. For example, you get rid of indexes instead of creating them. It's a little different; you really need to get up to speed on what the functionality is in order to optimize it. There are a few different things that you can use, such as compression; you can use all kinds of different features that it has.

A lot of the extra features they're adding are wonderful, but they're always putting a price on it, for example, the in-memory thing. For certain things, such as Exadata, we're going to stay with on-premises because of regulations. It feels like for anything new, it's almost like they want another license fee; that's the down side.

Maybe they could make the licensing not so bad. If you're already buying something that costs a quarter of a million dollars up to a half a million dollars, maybe they could throw in some extra bang for the buck, some freebies.

It is hardware; things break. It does have some redundancy in it, you will see a performance hit at certain periods of time, but I do like the fact that it does have a lot of failover.

The scalability is a little bit difficult, actually. A lot of people advertise it as being easy, but what happens is: when you have a previous version and you want to scale that version, they're already into a new version. It's almost better just to buy the new X6 instead of trying to expand your X3. If you want to do scalability, you have to do it immediately within a year; you can't wait.

Actually, level one support is OK. It's no different than what most DBAs themselves can handle. Right now, we have a challenge with some wrong results on Exadata, and it's taking a number of weeks; we have clients that are very upset. I would say technical support is a mix. It depends on how difficult the question is, and if it was encountered before. If it was encountered before, really fast. If not, you have to go to development and it can take a while.

We did not previously use a different solution. It's a data warehousing product. I know you can use it for online transaction processing, but it's perfectly wonderful for data warehousing. It has a tremendous increase in performance; it's like night and day. We still have some people that are on old systems that we're moving and it's like night and day. You can put really lousy code on it and make that code run good. I'm not saying the code was lousy; I'm just saying that Exadata handles the code differently. If you know how to optimize it, you have to optimize it, though. If you try to put the old code on, don't make your indexes invisible and don't understand how it works, you can actually cause a degradation in performance. You need someone on staff or Oracle help with the understanding of what the differences are, so that you can really make it work for you.

I have a huge background in UNIX hardware, networking and database. For me, it was extremely straightforward. For someone who has just one job function, for example, just a DBA, it would be very challenging. I work with some people for whom it is extremely challenging because they don't have the other aspects; they only understand database and that's a problem if you want to work in Exadata.

In the past, we were looking at EMC solutions; the flash, the different disks and so on. It still wasn't able or capable to function the way that the Exadata does. That's why Exadata won out, but Exadata could probably improve itself by using some of that state-of-the-art flash in the product more. They could even improve on the design by using more up-to-date disks and technologies, that are out there now.

When I’m selecting a vendor such as Oracle the most important criteria for me are reputation, stability, performance; that kind of criteria.

If a friend asked me about Exadata, I would encourage them to go with it.

I use Oracle Exadata in the context of banking. The system's ability to quickly access and process large amounts of data is crucial, especially when handling extensive datasets. This rapid data retrieval ensures minimal delays for end-users accessing the system.

It offers a significant advantage for accommodating a large number of users. To put it in perspective, a standard Oracle database may only support around four hundred to five hundred simultaneous users. However, when utilizing Exadata, this capacity can be dramatically increased to accommodate two thousand or even three thousand simultaneous end users, demonstrating its scalability and performance capabilities.

There's room for improvement in terms of deployment, as it could be made faster and more user-friendly. I also have reservations about the cost, it is significantly high.

I have been using it for several years.

It provides good stability capabilities.

It can effectively handle a large number of users, making it a robust and scalable solution.

Their customer support is really good. I would rate it eight out of ten.

Positive

The initial setup is not complex and it can be installed in just a few hours.

The duration of deployment depends on a variety of factors, including the database size, the number of tables to be installed, and the configuration of storage spaces. The process can be time-consuming, and it's highly dependent on the specific requirements of the deployment. One or two engineers are typically sufficient to maintain Exadata.

It is quite expensive. Nevertheless, its numerous strengths and advantages make it a compelling choice.

If you opt for cloud-based solutions, it might not be a necessary choice for your business. However, in non-cloud environments, Exadata becomes valuable for handling a large user base efficiently, leading to faster performance. I woudl rate it eight out of ten.

The separation between the database nodes and storage cells is the key feature of Exadata. The capabilities of the storage cells, the intelligence, are excellent. 

The speed is unbeatable. 

Exadata was mostly for data warehouses. However, in time with a model of powerful processors in database nodes, it's also an OLTP machine. It's very good. The latest versions offer even more performance, as they have a persistent memory and a lot of features.

The usage of the internal InfiniBand Switches is a key feature in Exadata. Everything is fast due to this separation at the database level and storage level. It's intelligently designed and has a very fast connection between all of the components of Exadata. 

We can use virtualization on Exadata. We can choose capacity on demand. There are a lot of new features that have turned up in the past two to four years. The solution is growing and becoming broader in its scope.

The improvement could be made on the hardware level as the habit in the industry is to go better and faster and larger with every iteration.

From the software point of view, management point of view, it's okay right now. However, I don't understand why Exadata has no database nodes with SPARC processors. Oracle has SPARC servers that are on RISC processors and are more powerful processors than Intel processors. They never do Exadata with such processors on the database nodes level. However, they tested and it wasn't very useful. I would like to see Exadata with RISC processors on the database nodes if it's possible.

I've been working with the solution since 2012. It's been about nine years - almost a decade. It's been a while.

You can scale the solution. You can configure it how you like and buy more cells or nodes to add to it. 

The technical support has been okay. We've been satisfied with the level of service.

The initial setup isn't too complex. However, in the present, the initial setup of Exadata isn't made by Oracle partners or the client. There is an advanced ACS department, Oracle Advanced Customer Support, that handles the implementation. In this team, there are very good specialists on Exadata. These specialists from the ACS department are the guys who will install Exadata for the first time for the client. 

It's not something very complex and something which cannot be done by others, however. Our team, for example, was installing Exadata. It's possible to be done by other teams with, of course, the appropriate competencies. The implementation sits somewhere between simple and complex. The machine is complex. We cannot set up a machine like this with more components and different components like a laptop, for example. 

There is a specialized team that handles the implementation for the client.

I don't evaluate the fees involved in using the solution. It's too big. However, it's my understanding that you need to pay for the hardware, the nodes, and the cells. That said, you can configure it however you want. You can easily buy and increase the capacity in only the nodes or only the cells if you prefer. It's worth the money you spend. The value is there.

I've looked at other options. For a data warehouse, it's a better solution. It's better than Teradata, for example, or other complex machines from the competitors. Migrating data warehouses from other infrastructures to Exadata has a good success rate. I wouldn't say that it is the better solution for an OLTP system, however, for an OLAP system, it's a better option.

We've been Oracle partners for around ten years or so. I'm a project manager, and not overly technical. 

We don't have Exadata in our company, however, we have Exadata via a client. The current company where I work is the first company in Romania to sell Exadata in Romania. There are a number of Exadata solutions sold in Romania - which is why my colleague has achieved past competencies and certification in Exadata machines. They are very good, and they are delivering the present services on Exadata. I manage the projects where they deliver services on Exadata only for the customer, not in our company.

I'd advise users to consider the solution. You pay more money on the machine, however, you pay less for the licenses. On top of that, you have enough room to put a lot of data there. You can virtualize some machines and you put items on the application level, however, I don't recommend this. 

If you already have separate machines, and you have licenses for all these machines and you want to put new hardware in place, it's better to put Exadata in place instead of a lot of other machines. That way, you can consolidate the database here and you will pay less on database software licenses.

I'd rate the solution at a ten out of ten. I've been very satisfied with the product overall.

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.

Exadata storage cell offloading software is the most valuable feature.

With Exadata database migration we saw a 50x performance gain.

• DevOps and built-in AI libraries to overcome storage.
• Oracle data-file high water mark and self healing, self scale up, scale down.

I have been using Exadata for eight years.

We have not experienced many issues with stability, except with some cell node bugs.

We didn’t have scalability issues.

They have an extremely great Oracle team.

Traditional RAC to optimize all-in-one appliance hardware, database, software, network, storage.

Setup was straightforward.

Oracle should offer free cell node licensing to encourage current RAC clients to switch.

We explored Teradata, Cisco and EMC appliances.

Negotiate with Oracle for licensing and consolidation of licensing.

The performance of Smart Scan, Storage Indexes, etc., and the High Availability features are all valuable to us.

We have a complete HA environment with two Exadata machines across two datacenters. We've able to use Data Guard to perform switchovers, perform maintenance, and do other tasks with little or no downtime at all.

The Lifecycle Management over the whole stack could be improved over what it already provides. The rolling upgrade feature on the database itself should be improved. It needs some Java updates as well as there is too much downtime related to Java issues.

I've been using the platform for five years, and my customer is now buying Exadata X5-2.

We didn't have an issue with deployment.

While we have am MAA environment, it is absolutely robust. We've had no issues with any instability.

There have been no issues scaling it for our needs.

Oracle Support Services should be improved. The customer has seen more and more discussions within the Oracle Support Groups indicating that support has done more and more finger-pointing, which doesn't help the customer to fix problems.

5/10 - They have a lot to improve upon.

There was no solution previously in place.

The initial setup was complex, but it was well planned by Oracle ACS.

We implemented it between Oracle ACS and an in-house team.

The pricing and licensing is really complex and you need to have a very detailed plan.

The customer looked at a Hitachi solution.

Start with a good POC and then make the decision.

The extreme performance and data compression that comes straight out of the box.

With Exadata, everything is simply better optimized, and our organization has been leveraging the fact that it can now manage larger volumes of data much more easily than it could previously. For example, we almost never hear our internal or external customers complain about performance issues these days. Performance problems were a recurring problem for us in the past.

X5 supports virtualization, but I think the performance on virtualization is not all that great. I have heard it from a customer, though I admit I haven't tested it out myself.

We have been using this for about three months.

No issues encountered.

No issues encountered.

We find X5 to be very scalable.

We have always had excellent customer service.

It's excellent.

We were convinced that with Exadata we would be able to consolidate our databases, have a serious performance boost, and leave a smaller footprint on the Data Center.

There were some complexities because a lot of departments were involved, and there were some communication gaps, but generally speaking, it went smoothly.

It was done in-house, but with help from Oracle.

Your TCO and Operational expenses will definitely go down with Exadata.

No, we were pretty much decided on Exadata from the outset.

This product actually does what it promises to - it gives extreme performance on your data set.

Basically, we simply use the solution to store our own database. We run more than 135 applications in our bank and we use Oracle to hold the data.

The solution is extremely stable. That's one of the main reasons we are using it.

The product is flexible.

It's a fairly easy-to-use solution.

The solution scales quite well and always meets our needs when we need to extend it.

The product is very easy to install.

Technical support is quite good.

The solution could always be more stable and more reliable. The more they work on this, the better the product will be. That said, for the most part, right now, it's pretty good.

I've been using the solution for two years. It hasn't been that long just yet.

The stability has been very good. There are no bugs or glitches and it doesn't crash or freeze. It's reliable and the performance has been great.

The solution offers excellent scalability. It's one of its great selling features. We never have to worry about it not having enough capacity for our needs.

Currently, we have about 8,000 end-users on this product.

Currently, we're quite happy with Oracle's technical support, If we weren't we would definitely let them know. However, at this time, they are helpful and responsive.

The initial implementation is quite simple and straightforward. It's not difficult or too complex for someone to handle. A company should have no trouble with the setup process. 

For us, the deployment process took around three days. That was just to have all of the planning and other stuff in line and ready to go. Everything all together - including the migration, et cetera, should be three to five days, or something in that ballpark.

We have about 35 people in IT that can handle any maintenance tasks required.

For the initial setup, we do have an integrator. There are three parties involved with the implementation process. There's Oracle, then the distributor, and finally, the party that was contracted for implementation.

We are under contract and pay a license to Oracle. I cannot speak to the exact amount.

We've mostly been using Oracle for our systems, however, we do use MySQL for our verification. 

We're customers and end-users of Oracle.

We are using the latest version of the solution. I cannot speak to the exact version number, however. 

I'd rate the solution at an eight out of ten. We've mostly been quite happy with its overall capabilities. I'd recommend the product to other users and companies.