Oracle Exadata Reviews

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.

The fact that we can consolidate all our databases into a single box is a cool feature. The extreme performance of Exadata is something that was worth paying for. Exadata performs at least 5-10 times faster than databases on conventional storage.

Previously, we were always facing performance related issues for the hundreds of internal applications running on our databases. That part has reduced quite dramatically. Seldom, if ever, do we encounter performance bottlenecks.

We did not see the volume of compression claimed by Oracle (10x-50x) on a table that had completely unique data. The table itself was about 140 GBs in size and we hardly got a compression of around 10%. We had elaborate discussions with Oracle about this, but we were not entirely convinced by the explanations provided by Oracle. This is something that needs to be looked into.

We have been using this product since December of 2013.

We did not encounter any issues of stability on Exadata.

There were no problems with scalability at all.

I would rate technical support as very good. We always received excellent technical support whenever we required it.

We were using an HPE solution, but as we were outgrowing our storage requirements, we explored other alternatives. Exadata seemed a very logical choice for consolidating all our databases in one place.

The setup was straightforward as Oracle was involved in the setup from the very outset. We did not face any issues during the setup.

My advice would be to have a licensing expert with you to study and analyze the licensing policy before you commit to the investment. There are a whole lot of technicalities in the fine print that may not always be apparent to the non-initiated.

We evaluated EMC Storage and Greenplum.

My advice would be to go with Exadata. It is definitely worth the investment.

Speed and stability.

Payroll used to take two and a half days. It now takes one or two hours.

The Oracle support team needs to understand the product better than the customers do.

We have been using this solution for one and a half years.

We had no deployment issues.

We had minor stability issues.

We had no scalability issues.

Customer service was OK.

Technical support was OK.

We switched due to our corporate growth and our performance needs.

The setup was straightforward.

We did the implementation in-house.

We evaluated EMC and SSD storage arrays.

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.

Some of the features which are specific to Exadata, like histories, offloading and accurate processing. One of the customers we work with had mostly thousands of batch jobs, which used to take, 30 to 40 hours, with the Exadata, and re-architecturing some of those solutions on the Exadata, moving them. It turned out to be running in one hour, or less than one hour. It's a huge, huge performance gain. And in the end, the company realized the return on the investment they have made into Exadata.

Some of the key benefits with our customers moving to the Exadata, they can get it consolidated, all the databases into one platform, one environment. And other advantages, you get a lot of the new features out of the box of the Exadata itself. We don't have to shelve around a lot of different parts of the machines, the networking component, the storage components, you know, all together, one into one machine, into the Exadata. It's a huge, huge advantage for the customers, right? They don't have to look into the history, they don't have to look into the database machines, you know, networking part of it all income passes in one machine. And Oracle has engineered it specifically for the purpose of data. Optimized the database solutions. So once you move it, you get the benefits of your query optimization, your history optimization, your machine data with computer optimization. Everything is blended into one machine.

The key features with the Exadata is offloading the query processing, some of them, at the storage level. That's where Oracle has to make it smarter. I think it's already smarter, the Exadata storage. I can't think of a specific feature that can put in, but that's where I think there's room for more improvement.

Adaptability is a little bit challenging for the customer because of the licensing and the pricing. That's where I think they can make a big difference.

It's a product which Oracle has built with scalability in mind. You can have Exadata hooked up with another Exadata. You have a really high bandwidth network, they call it Infiniband. So you can extend it horizontally as much as you want. So there's a huge, huge opportunity to upscale it and Exadata itself comes in two different flavors, like quarter rack, half rack, full rack. So you can choose and pick, based on your need of the scalability and the future need of how your workload and other things are going to be in future.

You've got to have some basic understanding of networking, storage, some kind of background in the database. That's where it makes it very easy for you to step in and do the initial set up of configurations. Of course, there are certain sorts of specific tools and utility from Oracle which you have to be aware, you have to talk to Oracle very proactively. Make sure you know all the requirements, you need to do the initial setups. You are aligned with the people in Oracle and you plan it. You know, planning is the key, and if you have those basic understanding of storage, database, the networking, those things. It really makes it easy for you to step it into the initial setup planning.

I think it comes to pricing. I know a lot of people don't have the better understanding of the licensing and other things. That's where it effectively comes, in the initial logistics of dealing and getting it.

I think it's a great solution for all the existing Oracle clients and if they really want to move ahead with the next generation of the Oracle Database, that's the solution to go for. Consolidate everything, move ahead with this. You get a better performance, you get better management, you get less people to manage the things, the room of errors are really less because you have specialized people, less people, and it's very valuable.

Rating: so I'll say that in terms of the rating it will fall in 8 to 9. In terms of the ease of maintenance, you have all the tools and everything Oracle provides. So you don't have to poke around and see what's where, if somebody should come, so where you have to go. If we're really good, you know the Exadata, you know what you're looking for, you talk to Oracle, get those tools, do it. In terms of the performance, you don't have to waste your night, day and night. It's a lot things come built in with the Exadata itself in terms of the price.

We use Oracle Exadata for databases and for migrations from on-premise to the cloud.

The most valuable feature of Oracle Exadata is the storage available.

Oracle Exadata could improve by having faster data retrieval. We receive data at four or five seconds and want to reduce that number to one second.

I have been using Oracle Exadata for approximately six years.

The stability of the solution is good.

I rate the stability of Oracle Exadata an eight out of ten.

We have 150 people using this solution.

The solution is not scalable because it is on-premise.

The support is helpful.

The intital implmentaion of Oracle Exadata is difficult.The data is complicated. We have multiple queries and multiple processes pulling this data. There is complete logic inside.

We have a team of software and data engineers and architects that do the implementation of the solution.

The price of the solution could improve, it is expensive.

We are moving away from using Oracle Exadata. 

I would recommend this solution to others, but it depends on the use case.

I rate Oracle Exadata an eight out of ten.

Exadata has been very great for us in terms of database consolidation. We have been using Exadata because we have been upgrading our technology every single year. In the past, we were using a Sun server and managing that as an active-passive cluster.

There have been initiatives to convert the databases to Oracle RAC; so when Exadata came out, they didn't really have to do much of anything. The grid infrastructure and everything came built in with all the best practices.

One of the advantages we found was that we didn't really need to be the first ones to be hit by a bug. If any of our customers comes across a bug, we already had a patch ready for it.

We have the platinum service for the database. That comes in handy in terms of high availability.

With all of this, the storage and the compute nodes were built together so they have more knowledge of Oracle-related queries: whether it is a redo or an IO; or it's coming from an undo space or from a DML. All these kinds of things come in really handy for us in terms of making our database perform really well.

These are some of the advantages I think we got out of Exadata.

The high availability of the database improved a lot. Our customers who are using it seem to be very happy with the response times. We also have a hot standby in case you need to migrate or do an upgrade. Overall, the company itself was very happy after migrating to Exadata.

The mix and match of hardware is always a problem. If you start with a product here and you want to migrate it two years later, you don't get the same version of the hardware. It's always different when you mix and match hardware. For example, if one compute node is X3-2, another two compute nodes are X5-2, and the storage node is different, I think it's going to get complicated. I don't know how to resolve it.

It would be nice if there was a way that you could swap everything over to upgrade all the hardware to one piece where it matches everything, and have an automatic hardware upgrade available. This way, you could keep everything on the same hardware solution. I don't know if that is possible.

Their support needs improvement. Also, the model in which they operate with a complex architecture in terms of upgrading the hardware pieces and expansion of RACs. Even the storage is licensed, which is a bigger question mark.

Any mission can go wrong. Exadata is no exception to this. Of course, we had software bugs; it's Oracle. You can expect a lot of back and forth with the new versions of it. We had lots of stability issues in the beginning. One of the major issues was the Write Back Flash Cache. By default, the storage nodes come with write-through. That's not very good for your OLE DB because it's not going to hit your flash. It's going to directly hit your hard disk. That's not going to give you good performance. The implementation team did not do a good job knowing that it's an OLE DB. They did not enable the Write Back Flash Cache.

The first few databases that we migrated went really well; but when we migrated more databases, it started failing. We had a big problem. We had to enable the Write Back Flash Cache to restabilize it.

Of course, the storage nodes have multiple bugs in them. Constantly upgrading it is a pain because while we do have high availability, not all the patches are done in a rolling fashion. Some of them force you to do non-rolling patches, specifically the OJVM patches.

Those are some of the pain points that I can see with Exadata.

So far, we don't have a big problem with scaling because we are happy with two node clusters. When we really need to expand, then we will need to cross that bridge when we come to it.

It's always a pain working with the Oracle support team. I say this because not all tickets get resolved immediately. It can take many days. Sometimes it takes a week. This can also include the weekend. During the weekend, the support team is thin. I need to follow up many times and call their managers. We have to scream at them to get back to us.

It's always a little bit difficult dealing with Oracle support compared to other vendors. They are a bigger organization. It does become a little complicated with such a big organization. With other vendors, you can call and resolve things properly and easily. I think there are a lot of process-oriented delays when it comes to Oracle. That’s built in as part of dealing with a bigger organization.

Because the ticket is not handled by a single engineer, sometimes the other engineer needs to digest it first. For example, a person in the US could start to help us, and then hand it over to someone in the UK. When that persons gets on board, he takes some time to digest the previous engineer’s explanation, recommendations, and diagnosis of the problem. If it continues to be handed over, and if it goes on for days, each engineer needs to go through the entire history of the ticket. That is a pain.

In such cases, it is always better to stick with a particular engineer and to a certain time zone. This means that the solution will be delayed. It depends on how soon you want to get it resolved. You might want your account manager to put pressure on the support team.

I am hoping for smoother operations and coordination in the future.

The initial setup depends on the technical team. The ACS team at Oracle can help, but it depends on which engineer you get on board. If the engineer is new on the team, doesn’t completely understand it, and is simply following instructions according to a script, there is every possibility that it could go wrong, if we don’t have a core team at our end verifying each step.

It is very important that you be prepared, and that you know every single change that goes into it end-to-end, including the monitoring and enabling the ASR service if you are going to use the platinum service.

A combination of pure flash storage and T4-4 servers are also extremely good in terms of latency times. It matches your TPS (transactions per second). Oracle had a little bit of an edge in terms of the best practices. Also, it's easier to debug and give us a solution because they can replicate the same issue in their environment. These are some of the slight advantages that Oracle Exadata has in terms of providing a solution more efficiently and quickly.

We always believed that Oracle is a leader in improving technology. We always believe in their solutions. Oracle Exadata is a great product without a doubt. Our gut now says why not go like we wanted and migrate to Oracle RAC. We didn’t want to spend time to put everything together, the network, the storage, and so on. Why reinvent the wheel when every best practice is already there? The "gotcha" is that if you increase the number of cores, you must be prepared to pay for the license.

Those are things that we weren't initially aware of, but then it all came handy to us when we need to go with engineered systems. That's why our upgrade part on our infrastructure upgrade and Oracle engineered system are on the same plane, so we just used it.

Exadata is not for everybody. Initially, it was designed for data warehousing. It's not for OLTP data. They improved it to OLTP, and then you could consolidate and mix and match. For all the patches, be aware whether you really want to go with it and expand it. Use all due diligence in checking whether this engineered system is the right solution for you . You need to work with it and test it yourself to make sure that it is for you. There might be a better product for you other than Exadata.

If you do want to go with Exadata, you should consult with someone outside of Oracle to help you and verify whether this is a good solution for you. Do not decide based on marketing material or gimmicks.

Before using this machine, we took no less than two days to run a report. Now, we can do it within five hours. So, there is a lot of improvement.

One of the things that we are facing during these few months is how you manage the people environment, and it's something that we have to explore to understand what is happening inside these machines. 

We are facing some problems with authentication. I believe that we are not familiar with the Oracle virtual machines. That's why we need to improve ourselves to better understand what is going on inside this environment. 

The integration with third-party applications regarding access management security could be better. I would like that to be included and be available the first time. Most of them, we need to buy later, and we would like to have these components when we're actually testing if this component.

This is one thing that we are facing here in our environment. The integration becomes very difficult, and most of these features are not available the first time when you finalize the integrations.

I have been using Oracle Exadata for about six months. 

Oracle Exadata is a stable solution.

On a scale from one to ten, I would give Oracle technical support a seven. The involvement of Oracle's people is something that they have to improve because they are operating in very poor countries. We need to clarify with them because the technical people's availability must be well organized for the job to go smoothly. 

Another thing is the language. We speak Portuguese, and the technical people don't speak another language. It starts to get very difficult to work like this. We are not English, and they are not English, and it becomes very difficult to communicate. 

They are the ones with the solution, so they are brilliant at working with Oracle. We can solve all the issues. They have time to share their experience with us. That's one thing that I stated to those guys working on this implementation.

The initial setup was straightforward. But this particular situation is different because we are not talking about putting it on and going into production. We have to move the initial systems to these environments. 

We need to convert some systems to be compatible with those environments. The main challenge is the IT infrastructure. It is not like we buy it, open it, create and edit it. We need to move, and that is the challenge. Right now, we are in the middle of finalizing this movement with migration from legacy to the new environment.

From a technical point of view, it didn't take long because it's straightforward. We started and went step by step until the end or until the machine was available for migration. It was very simple.

We worked with a technical team from Oracle, and our partners supported us and helped us do that. But most of the time, it was between my team and Oracle.

On a scale from one to ten, I would give Oracle Exadata ten.