Head of Databases at a retailer with 501-1,000 employees
Great DW value for the money, but needs better workload management
What is most valuable?
• As it can load a lot of data very quickly, it is very helpful for our organization in managing our VLDB.
• It has the lowest cost per TB compared to other DW solutions.
• Provides us clustering for our commodity hardware and a good data compression ratio compared to other DW tools I've looked into.
• It is very scalable. We didn’t face any problems in terms of installation.
• Allows concurrent users access. Our staff can process and send query requests simultaneously -- it responds to all requests very efficiently.
• It is very easy to use! It also is good in providing OLAP support to our database system. We can also use traditional SQL queries and tables.
What needs improvement?
• We can’t use vertica as a transactional database because it is unable to handle lot of transactions.
• While copying tables straight across from MYSQL, we observe poor performance. Queries take more time for execution.
• Our team is challenged during peak loads because of a lack of work load management options.
• It doesn’t offer us any configuration options for reducing the size of our database system and limiting our resource usage.
What other advice do I have?
We are using Vertica because it is a fast and reliable data warehousing tool and provides us a very good data compression ratio. It is cheap in terms of overall cost per TB and also requires less human resource for maintenance and tuning. Vertica I have been told has improved cloud deployment capabilities on any infrastructure.
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
Hewlett Packard Enterprise Solution Architect at a tech services company with 11-50 employees
It leverages machine learning and predictive analytic features to help preprocess data
Pros and Cons
- "It maximize cloud economics for mission-critical big data analytical initiatives."
- "It maximizes cloud economics with Eon Mode by scaling cluster size to meet variable workload demands."
- "It needs integration with multiple clouds."
What is our primary use case?
The primary use case is as an analytics database on EC2 instances.
How has it helped my organization?
- We gain insights into data in real-time with blazing, fast SQL analytics across exabytes of data.
- It maximizes cloud economics with Eon Mode by scaling cluster size to meet variable workload demands.
- It leverages machine learning and predictive analytic features to help preprocess data.
What is most valuable?
It maximize cloud economics for mission-critical big data analytical initiatives.
What needs improvement?
It needs integration with multiple clouds.
For how long have I used the solution?
One to three years.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
I have implemented it on Amazon EC2 instances with medium IT workloads.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
It has an elastic scalability solution.
How was the initial setup?
It is easy to integrate with EC2 instances.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
It is fast to purchase through the AWS Marketplace.
The pricing and licensing depend on the size of your environment and the zone where you want to implement.
What other advice do I have?
It is a complete solution and a also good solution for EC2 instances.
I have not tried to integrate it with other products.
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
Buyer's Guide
Vertica
November 2024
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CIO with 1,001-5,000 employees
Features valuable to me include: massive data ingestion performance and SQL standard query engine.
Valuable Features:
- Massive data ingestion performance
- Performance
- SQL standard query engine
Improvements to My Organization:
DWH core platform is based on it
Room for Improvement:
- Machine learning implementations
- Support for Cloud based environments like Google Compute Engine
Use of Solution:
3 years
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
Big Data DBA & DevOps at a tech vendor with 51-200 employees
It's fast and built for complex analytics queries with a large amount of data.
What is most valuable?
The speed of Vertica out of the box with the ability it has to perform complex analytics queries. In other databases, information will return in hours or even days while in Vertica it will be finished in minutes or even seconds. This is the best feature it has.
How has it helped my organization?
Vertica is in our core technology stack. We are serving reports and dashboard to clients from it. It's very important to us that it fulfills its function correctly and provides us with an advantage over our competitors.
What needs improvement?
The internal documentation. As a DBA, I really want to understand how its internals works. It needs to handle high concurrency short queries better as Vertica is not handling these well, and we have had to develop our own tool to help us with our dashboard.
For how long have I used the solution?
I've been using it for five years.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
The only thing is that it is very sensitive to network glitches and every time it happens, a node will leave the cluster and we need to re-connect it. Apart from this, the stability is very good.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
It is very easy to scale Vertica as you need.
How are customer service and technical support?
It used to be 10/10 but now it's 8/10. Maybe it's because they were bought by HP which is a big company and the transition is hard.
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
The last company I worked for shifted from Oracle to Vertica. For our BI queries it's a huge win. Vertica is much better than any other raw store as it is built exactly for complex analytic queries with a huge amount of data.
How was the initial setup?
The earlier version wasn't that good to deploy, but now it's pretty easy to install. If you follow the documentation, you will be OK.
What about the implementation team?
We implemented it in-house. Since it's different than a raw store database, you need to understand the architecture in order to get the most out of Vertica. This means that you will need to design you data model to suit the Vertica architecture otherwise you will get the same performance as the solution you're replacing, or worse. If your implementation is not complex you can just put it in and you will get out of the box improvements, but for complex ones you need to know how Vertica works and build the right design.
What other advice do I have?
It's a great tool but to get the most out of it you will have to design your models to fit it.
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
Assistant Manager at M1 NET
Auto-projections make it easy to tune performance
Pros and Cons
- "The performance is very good and the aggregate records are fast."
- "When it is about to reach the maximum storage capacity, it becomes slow."
What is our primary use case?
The primary use of Vertica is as a data warehouse to perform aggregate and summary reports.
How has it helped my organization?
This solution has allowed us to reduce the creation of summarized tables, as the user can perform queries on the fly. It has provided for the faster retrieval of records.
What is most valuable?
The performance is very good and the aggregate records are fast.
Vertica Auto-Projections reduce the knowledge required by the DBA for tuning performance.
What needs improvement?
When it is about to reach the maximum storage capacity, it becomes slow.
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
Technical Leader / Business Intelligence Consultant with 11-50 employees
Columnar database supports our advanced analytics and ETL process
Pros and Cons
- "Vertica is a columnar database, this support our developments in analytics, advanced analytics, and ETL process with large sets of data."
- "I believe the installation process could be streamlined."
How has it helped my organization?
Before we used Vertica we used another columnar database which turned out to be very unstable and its performance was inconsistent. Vertica turned that around, to the point that it is now our go-to database. We became Vertica partners.
What is most valuable?
Vertica is a columnar database, this support our developments in analytics, advanced analytics, and our ETL process with large sets of data.
What needs improvement?
I believe the installation process could be streamlined.
For how long have I used the solution?
One to three years.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
No stability issues.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
No scalability issues.
How are customer service and technical support?
They are very professional and responsive.
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
See "Improvements to organization," above.
How was the initial setup?
There are some considerations to be evaluated before you start the installation, but the installer does the respective checks so things will function properly. And there are a lot of options.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
The first TB is free and you can use all the Vertica features. After 1TB you have to pay for licensing. The product is worth it, but be aware of this condition, and plan. The compression ratio is explained in the documentation.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
Infobright and MonetDB.
What other advice do I have?
The technical requirements for the product are really important. The design tool for vertica is the core of the database for performance. Never forget to use it to create projections to optimize the storage compression and response times. Better compression means the 1TB mark takes longer to be reached.
Disclosure: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer: Partner.
Architect at OpenSCG
Any novice user can tune vertical queries with minimal training
Pros and Cons
- "Bulk loads, batch loads, and micro-batch loads have made it possible for our organization to process near real-time ingestions and faster analytics."
- "Any novice user can tune vertical queries with minimal training (or no training at all)."
- "It should provide a GUI interface for data management and tuning."
- "Monitoring tools need to be lightweight. They should not take up heavy resources of the main server."
What is our primary use case?
We use the product for compressed data store, fast reporting, and self healing analytical data workloads. It also helps with big data ingestions, processing, and reporting.
How has it helped my organization?
Bulk loads, batch loads, and micro-batch loads have made it possible for our organization to process near real-time ingestions and faster analytics.
What is most valuable?
- The tool for performance tuning and recommendations
- Any novice user can tune vertical queries with minimal training (or no training at all).
What needs improvement?
- It should provide a GUI interface for data management and tuning.
- Monitoring tools need to be lightweight. They should not take up heavy resources of the main server.
For how long have I used the solution?
One to three years.
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
Infrastructre Manager - Senior Maintenance Manager with 10,001+ employees
Lack of Stored Procedures, packages, triggers make things difficult for developers
Pros and Cons
- "Partition and join back to node are easy and simple for DBAs."
- "DBAs don’t need to add a partition every month/quarter like with other DBs."
- "There are a lot of limitations within this product and it makes things extremely hard for developers. It lacks Stored Procedure, packages, and triggers like other RDBMs."
- "Very bad support, I would rate it two out of 10."
What is most valuable?
Partition and join back to node are easy and simple for DBAs.
DBAs don’t need to add a partition every month/quarter like with other DBs.
What needs improvement?
There are a lot of limitations within this product and it makes things extremely hard for developers. It lacks Stored Procedure, packages, and triggers like other RDBMs.
For how long have I used the solution?
One to three years.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
Yes, we have encountered issues with Projections and performance.
How are customer service and technical support?
Very bad support, I would rate it two out of 10.
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
We use DB2, Oracle , MySQL, MSSQL. We switched to Vertica to explore it for future projects.
How was the initial setup?
Easy setup. Much easier than setting up Oracle RAC.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
Licensing is based on size of the database.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
They did a good PoC and we were impressed with Vertica. However, when we implemented, it was nightmare with bad support.
What other advice do I have?
My advice regarding this product is a definite "no", due to bad support.
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
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Updated: November 2024
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