Oracle Exadata Reviews

We use the solution for financial data purposes which runs at our warehouse.

We have had the benefit from the reduction of almost one terabyte of data from using the querying function.

The feature that allows querying the storage server is great. The solution can handle heavy workloads, always has updated features, fast response times, and many tasks are automated. Furthermore, if you want to do the consultation, instead of maintaining the multiple test systems, or multiple on-premises services, you can use virtualization and you can use it.

A few improvements can be made such as better resource optimization, virtualization where you can see the virtual machine on top of the Exadata, the ability to limit CPUs, and reduced license costs. 

We need a monitoring tool which can in one place, where we can manage, monitor the entire Exadata components. Currently, we have multiple tools for different components to check and verify but one would be a benefit.

I have been using the solution for more than eight years.

If needed you can scale it up. In terms of CPU and memory, we increased the memory and CPUs to accomplish this. You are limited from the hardware you have, increasing the performance of your hardware allows for increased scalability.

There are times when there are complicated problems and we have reached our limits and cannot solve them. This is when we have contacted the support. When this has happened, their team has been good at resolving our problems. Whenever we had these issues we worked with them and they were able to have an answer within a 12 to 24-hour time frame.

The setup was not too complicated. We followed the standards install and we didn't see any big issues. We did try a few different versions and some of the migration can be a little bit labouring but we didn't face any data challenges.

The licensing can be a bit expensive because you need to have certain tools enabled that require them.

Oracle is known to be the number one in their industry; the help and support, the features they are giving the clients comparing to other databases, the new technology, the provide a good solution. They are number one, in my opinion, I strongly recommend the product.

No product is ever perfect, there is always room for improvement and because of this I rate Oracle Exadata an eight out of ten.

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.

We sell hyper-converged infrastructure tools including Oracle Exadata to enterprise customers such as governments. These are large projects that handle big data and typically run into the range of several million dollars, and in 2016, we had our first big Exadata project which involved implementing two superclusters with Exadata and Exalogic together. 

In some processes, we use converged infrastructure tools, but it's far more common nowadays to go with hyper-converged infrastructure tools. On our side, we prefer hyper-converged infrastructure because there just aren't that many people using the standard convergence model anymore. We're changing our processes to work exclusively with hyper-convergence and other technologies that complement hyper-convergence.

We use Exadata and Exadata Cloud at customer sites, and the main project that we're involved in now is hyper-converged Oracle environments with Exadata. I'm studying how to best apply the hyper-convergence model in Oracle to change Exadata to VxRail. But my forecast going forward is that we will be using fifty percent hyper-converged tools with Dell VxRail, and fifty percent with Oracle Exadata.

With Oracle Exadata, the change from on-premise to cloud is becoming a reality. With this, it becomes better and easier for us to make renovations and maintain our projects. We earn money with renovations on cloud, but when it comes to on-prem, we don't earn much when the customer needs renovations and support.

Regarding features, there are so many that we can offer to customers. When we sell Exadata Cloud, there are many options to choose from, especially when it comes to enterprise database options. In my experience, the main features that are appreciated are various ones like GPS and the assortment of security options.

There is one aspect to Exadata that I dislike, and that's the inconsistency with other databases. When you try to get Exadata to function with another type of database like SQL, or others, there should be reliable and consistent operation. When this is improved on, we should start to see more applications growing the market.

I have been using Oracle Exadata for six years, more or less.

Stability is very good. Especially if you maintain it and always update, you won't have any problems with stability. Once Exadata is established, it's 100%.

My one customer was using the Exadata version from 2013 which was extremely outdated, and when they changed to the updated version of the main system application it was very healthy for the customer's company. 

I think the scalability is good, but it can be even better. With the newer editions of Exadata, they are changing some features to meet the needs of growth and scalability, like access to additional disks in the storage environment, and they've upped the memory, too. But I don't think it was central, or essential, to the Exadata offering at first.

Nowadays, it's easier. In the first years of implementation of Exadata it was a bit more difficult, but now it's easier. If you have a team that knows Exadata well, and knows the limits of Exadata, then the setup and implementation is easy. If, on the other hand, you don't have an experienced team, then it's really difficult.

The last implementation we deployed took about two weeks, more or less.

The majority of our customers are in government or big enterprises, and the projects that we sell come out to several million USD. With this amount of money on the table, it's always better to have an experienced team of consultants, who know Exadata very well, handle the implementation.

If you're interested in going with Exadata, then I highly recommend looking for an experienced consulting firm that has completed at least one large implementation before, because it isn't something you want to put in the hands of unskilled consultants. And don't forget to be careful with your implementation when it comes to GDPR in Europe.

I would rate Oracle Exadata a nine out of ten.

The most valuable features are the high columnar compression and the flash cache. Basically, the whole I/O subsystem is valuable, but those two features are really big for us.

Pricing.

I have been using it for close to five years.

It is very stable. We were on X2; that was not as stable. There were some battery issues with some of the flash cache cards. We're on X5 and X4 now and that's much better; many more IOPS, so that's been great.

It is scalable, very much so. It will absolutely meet the company's needs going forward.

The support for troubleshooting issues is OK; it's fine.

The support for patching – we have Platinum Support – is probably one of the worst I have ever experienced in my career. We've been trying to upgrade to the latest version of 11g R2 and we haven't done it. The last few times we've tried to do it, they were supposed to be able to upgrade without downtime, but the last two or three times, we've had downtime. We have very little trust in Platinum Support to do the upgrades.

Previously, we just used regular Oracle databases on standard hardware. Now, most of our products are on their own silo databases. Now, we're pushing them all to a single Exadata, using Exadata solutions.

We actually contracted the initial setup out, as part of Oracle Platinum Support. We also have another third-party company that did more of the operations on it. When my team finally got to it, everything was set up. It's really a matter of deploying our application on there and then tuning it to be more Exadata specific; not a whole lot. Anything will run on it, but we take advantage of the high columnar compression and the flash cache storage.

As far as cost goes, it's really expensive. The huge price tag on it is the only reason why I have not given it a perfect rating.

If you have the money, spend it; if it makes sense, obviously. If you're really I/O bound, it's a great solution; I/O bound from performance to storage. With the high columnar compression, we're getting close to 10X compression.

When I’m selecting a vendor such as Oracle to work with, I look for one with a good reputation and is reliable. Reputation comes on as willingness to work with you. I consider the features that are offered; is what they're offering now going to scale, obviously? Is what they're offering now going to still be supported in the future? There are compatibility issues and similar items. For example, with Exadata, I'd hate to be the one of only three companies on Exadata in the world and five years from now, nobody remembers what Exadata is.

• Smart Scan
• Smart Flash Cache
• High Availability
• Consolidation
• Robust Storage
• Computing

Because of Exadata Systems, we were able to consolidate all the applications databases into one, e.g, Oracle EBS, Siebel, Hyperion etc.

Exadata Linux systems have Intel CPUs inside. I would suggest that if Oracle could work together with Intel to have some more intelligence at the CPU level, then there would be nothing like it.

I've been using it since June 2013.

We didn't have any deployment issues.

After three to four months we may need to perform a rolling reboot of the DB/storage servers.

I would say it's the best solution in terms of scalability.

8/10.

9/10.

We used both EMC Storage and IBM Servers.

The setup was simple, however, the database migration was a bit challenging, but there was no show stopper anywhere.

We are a vendor TCS (Tata Consultancy Services) and have as a customer the Taj Group of Hotels (IHCL), where we deployed and implemented Exadata Systems.

It's almost 100%.

• IBM
• HP

Go for it if you are looking for consolidation/scalability.

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.

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.