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Primarily OLTP but report is done against a combination of Materialized Views and transactional tables.

We have a number of statistics collected before cutover on our legacy environment compared to Exadata. Without doing anything other than copying the data across, we saw significant performance gains for most key processes. We receive feedback from users stating how fast the performance is compared to other systems. Performance issues are few and far between. Our database environment is extremely stable compared to the legacy DB configuration. We upgraded from a X2-2 quarter rack to a X5-2 eighth rack and experienced significant performance gains. We recently performed another technology refresh to a X7-2 so obviously, we've been very pleased with the initial investment. For this deployment, we decided to virtualize the Exadata configuration, providing some additional flexibility to our operational environment.

We primarily run OLTP with some reporting. With that being said, the feature that provides us the most performance gains is the Smart Flash Cache for the OLTP databases. The "offloading" capabilities provide the biggest performance gains for Reporting such as smart scans and storage indexes. There is a new security feature which allows disabling ssh to the storage servers which will make my security folks very happy. Also, there is a STIG script for hardening storage servers and Database Nodes which can be implemented as a report only or actually implement security settings. Would advise running report first to assess the results and then manually modify, as needed.

My biggest gripe has been patches which has dramatically improved since our initial Exadata was delivered (January 2011). The only issues we periodically experience are with non-default RPMs on the database nodes. These may fail during the pre-req check which means opening a SR with support. This has become the exception, not the norm so overall not much to complain about. The X2-2 used to experience frequent disk failures but now, that is a thing of the past. 

eleven years

There is redundancy built throughout the Exadata so even when we've experienced a disk failure, it's a very low stress situation. Early on we had some performance issues with DBFS and a node eviction problem. DBFS was resolved through a combination of settings changes and a quarterly patch. The node eviction was resolved through a one-off patch that eventually got rolled into a quarterly patch. I would chalk up these issues to being early adopters. We do have an occasional bug but I can't think of any that would be unique to Exadata with the database software. At least this provides some degree of comfort that Exadata is not the source of the issue.

The key for scalability is selecting the appropriate disk configuration and the proper size rack configuration. The two options are High Capacity and High Performance. If ever in doubt, always go with High Capacity. The performance difference is negligible at best, however having the extra space allows for more consolidation. That's the entire point of Exadata, to consolidate databases. We've added a few databases to the Exadata since we originally started to use the environment and there has been no performance impact. In our case, a Quarter rack was appropriate but for larger environments, this may not be enough.

Customer Service:

In terms of overall Oracle customer service, we've had good experiences on this front. Oracle has provided us access to their experts and continually check to see how things are going. Whenever an issue comes up, they treat the problem seriously. Since we support a government customer, Oracle is extra motivated to ensuring we have a successful experience. Since 2011, there have been significant improvements with support. Occasionally we do hit issues which it seemingly takes support a longer period of time to provide a patch or workaround but these namely involve additional features, not core technology so it's a matter of exhibiting patience.

Technical Support:

On the hardware side, customer service is quite good. Any disk failures get replaced in a day and with triple redundancy for disk, it's not been a concern. Software customer service has improved over the years. Early on was a little rough as I will say the software wasn't fully mature. As the product has matured, so has the software support's capability to resolve issues more quickly. We can't take advantage of ASR, however this seems like a major improvement for customer service in terms of responsiveness.

We didn't switch, we were doing a technology refresh and went with Exadata instead of building out our own Oracle RAC configuration. We previously had a combination of Dell servers, Red Had Linux OS, Oracle Cluster File System on EMC Storage with Juniper switches. This configuration had lots of performance issues, node evictions, and constant headaches. Since moving to Exadata, all those pain points went away.

There is a definite learning curve initially. We had to learn about migration options, shared mount point options, how to integrate with Cloud Control, patching, health check, how to optimize, and how to harden the Exadata environment. Since we went live, many more folks use Exadata so there's more how to's and best practice documents available so the learning curve isn't nearly as steep. We learned a lot in the process and now have a tremendous amount of expertise in setting up, configuring, optimizing and maintaining the Exadata.

We implement Exadata in-house and have gone through several migration methodologies.

We had ACS perform the initial Startup Pack, however there are companies that can do this much cheaper to lower the original setup cost, such as ours. Day-to-day cost is greatly reduced compared to our legacy environment as we no longer have to serve as "fire fighters." In terms of pricing, Exadata is probably not going to be the lowest cost option. There is a price to pay for performance and stability. With that being said, I have not heard of any customers who have regretted the purchase and/or looking to get off the technology. On the contrary, I can't imagine going to another solution at this point and trying to justify this with the user community in terms of why the system performance degraded. Can't imagine that would go over too well.

We had a custom solution and evaluated Exadata versus the custom solution. Exadata was actually a cheaper solution due to the number of cores. Oracle software licenses are based on processor so if comparing a Quarter Rack versus a 4+ four node custom solution, Exadata may win out from this perspective. We were looking at a 5 node RAC which would have doubled the cost of our software licenses when compared to the equivalent with a Quarter rack of Exadata. Besides, the performance metrics indicated Exadata would easily outperform the custom solution which made our decision a no brainer.

Exadata is a powerful solution. As I mentioned there is a learning curve. Working with a company that has experience with Exadata can help avoid potential pain points and maximize the ROI.

We delivered and implemented it for multiple customers.

There was some workload involved in these implementations. One project was in the financial sector. Another sector was for premium watches where they had workload with respect to their engineering labs. We majorly used this for their virtual environment and databases. They had a lot of issues with their current Unity, which was another Dell product, with performance issues. As they were looking to upgrade on the Dell platform itself, we proposed Dell PowerStore. Initially, we had everything on SSD drives, which are solid-state drives or flash drives. We moved everything—the databases and the VM virtual infrastructure—to Dell PowerStore. As it was a Dell product, it was easy to migrate. They saw the improvement with that.

Majorly, it is an NVMe architecture—an all-flash system that improved our performance with low latency. It was supporting mixed workload, which is virtualization and database. The virtual machines were Linux, Windows, and everything.

The major thing is when we had the previous solution, which was a hybrid storage having SSD and NL-SAS and SAS drives, it moved to flash, where we have a lot of latency benefits. They had some tiering as well, where it was supposed to do virtual provisioning of some percent. Then if it increased, only then it increases; otherwise, it is quite better. Previously, when we had the previous solution, we had to implement it and then we had to upgrade the switches side and the port SFPs for getting good latency and handling the workload. As I mentioned, it is a financial sector, so there were a lot of production issues as well. When the customer moved to Dell PowerStore, there were no such performance issues.

These were clustered systems. Everything was distributed. This is where, as I mentioned, there was the issue with performance previously. When we had this one, it started giving us good performance.

Dell PowerStore is expensive. The best thing is the way it delivers performance. It distributes everything through the flash drive. The automation they have is excellent. We can integrate directly with VMware and make the VMware team storage administrators. The previous mid-range storage had scalability issues, but with this, scalability was not an issue. It was easy to adopt and increase the nodes so that it could increase capacity.

Some features I mentioned earlier include deduplication, compression, and thin provisioning. When someone is asking for one TB, we are assigning one TB, but that is virtual provisioning and it hardly assigns initially—perhaps 100 GB. It increases based on utilization. This is one of the significant advantages.

We had different workloads—database, virtualization, and all. We were able to provision everything from this storage. They were able to achieve all their required performance. The consolidation part means all workloads were consolidated to Dell PowerStore only.

It is easy to use. The best thing is the way it delivers performance and the automation they have. We can integrate directly with VMware. That was the major thing—the performance and then the automation.

No complexity was present with the initial setup of Dell PowerStore. It was very straightforward, but the only thing we worked on by providing IPs and details regarding where to install and switch ports where it needed to be cabled.

The deployment was done by the customer and the Dell team and one of the third parties they had. We majorly did not get involved in that.

Previously, whatever mid-range storages they had, compression and deduplication were very limited. With this, storage efficiency is there. Performance and low latency are there, majorly. This is compared to the other products. ROI is there, but not on the CAPEX side.

I have been working with Dell PowerStore for the last five years.

Previously they had performance issues, but it has been almost two years since we implemented this solution. There are no such performance issues. The major issue is with respect to the cost and somewhat to support.

We had the previous mid-range storage where scalability was an issue. With this, scalability was not an issue. It was easy to adopt and increase the nodes so that it could increase capacity very easily.

Dell PowerStore customer service is good, but sometimes they usually take a lot of time to understand the issue. We need to explain to them how it has integrated. Sometimes it is their firmware issues where they come to us very late, after the disaster has already happened. Before releasing any firmware, I think they should do lab tests with respect to all the operating systems. We do observe that during firmware upgrades, after upgradation, there were some issues with disconnectivity between server and storage, intermittent issues. However, they released a new patch and it worked.

Positive

I have worked on Veeam, AWS completely, Rubrik, Avamar, and Data Domain. I have worked on many technologies.

I have worked on NetApp, Hitachi, and Pure Storage.

NetApp is majorly used for the file system and is not preferable for very heavy workload such as databases. Compared to Dell PowerStore, if someone is looking for file shares, NAS, or SMBs, majorly NetApp is preferable. When you have enterprise workload with respect to application databases and you have completely a block storage requirement, then people should go with Dell PowerStore compared to others.

Deployment of Dell PowerStore was done by a third-party team. We were there for the rack and stack, supporting them remotely. We provided all the requirements of IPs, which they shared in Excel. They have a portal where we have to update all the required IPs for their nodes and the DNS. We did that and it worked.

The deployment was not difficult because you just need to plug and play and all the distribution and the workload will be done in the background. It will not disrupt your workload.

Deployment of Dell PowerStore was done by a third-party team. We were there for the rack and stack, supporting them remotely. We provided all the requirements of IPs, which they shared in Excel. They have a portal where we have to update all the required IPs for their nodes and the DNS. We did that and it worked.

The major thing is the performance issues we had previously. Now, it is a primary storage for the client. It was the best way where they even reduced to 95 percent where they had almost weekly P1 or P2 tickets. It reduced to hardly once a month or quarterly once.

Dell PowerStore is expensive.

I have been working with Dell PowerStore for the last five years. One customer used the 5000T model and for the other customer, it was the 3000T model.

These were clustered systems. Everything was distributed. This is where there was the issue with performance previously, but when we had this one, it started giving us good performance.

Deployment was easy. It was not difficult because you just need to plug and play and all the distribution and the workload will be done in the background. It will not disrupt your workload.

Tech support for Dell is seven or eight, not more than that. Dell PowerStore is nine. We can put 7.5 for Dell and for Dell PowerStore, we can take it as 8.5 to 9.

My overall rating for this review is 9 out of 10.