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FlexPod XCS vs Oracle Exalogic [EOL] comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Categories and Ranking

FlexPod XCS
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
295
Ranking in other categories
Converged Infrastructure (2nd)
Oracle Exalogic [EOL]
Average Rating
7.2
Number of Reviews
21
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Featured Reviews

John Kevin - PeerSpot reviewer
Deputy IT Manager at MBBank
Enforces standardized setup procedures following Certified Validated Design (CVD) guidelines and offers greater flexibility and control over the system compared to traditional systems
The GUI setup follows the right setup, meaning we have to follow the CVDi.e. Certified Validated Design. Everything is clear, because you can build CI yourself, but without rules, it can be messy. With FlexPod, there are rules to follow, making it more standardized. This helps with troubleshooting and compatibility assessments, simplifying troubleshooting significantly. We also use FlexPod pre-validated architectures to validate the design. It is very, very important to us because we had a bad case in 2015 where separate items integrated poorly due to no version or firmware compatibility certification. Troubleshooting became a nightmare. So, standards are crucial for us, and everything entering production should be verified or at least documented for certification.
MK
AGM at Tech Valley Networks Limited
Good performance and stability with a straightforward setup
Typically, if a client needs support, they contact us and we are the ones to offer it to them. However, we have contacted Oracle technical support and we have a back-to-back contract with them. They support our HR on-site team. We also get support from Oracle functional services and backend support. They are usually quite good, but at times it depends on which engineer is working. When we get support from India, there's sometimes a delay. If it's from Europe or the US, often we get faster results. Time zones also affect technical support response times and will dictate who responds to our requests.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"One of the easiest solutions to implement, maintain, and scale."
"It has simplified our support."
"We found FlexPod to be innovative when it comes to compute, storage, and networking. We've taken advantage of their storage optimizations to obtain better use out of the space. We upgraded to All Flash FAS (AFF), which has provided a huge performance increase that we haven't barely scratched the surface of. We have plenty of overhead, so that's always nice when taking on tasks which might have otherwise taxed a smaller system."
"The best thing about this solution is the tight integration with VMware, Cisco, and NetApp from both a hardware and software perspective."
"There are very many features, but from experience, the single point of contact for support has been valuable to our customers."
"The most valuable feature is the ability to integrate different products into one validated design. That allows customers to understand and get the value out of the hardware, as it was designed."
"When our clients choose to call NetApp or Cisco directly, the cooperative support model means they can get passed back and forth between the two organizations freely. It works really well."
"A valuable feature of the FlexPod solution is that it is all one architecture and I can call one number and get support for Cisco and NetApp without having to jump through open TAC (Technical Assistance Center) cases and do multiple things to get issues addressed."
"The main benefit of using the solution is for the performance it provides."
"Enterprise high-speed interoperability: With IPoIB we can deliver to other environments, either IP-Ethernet-based or IP-InfiniBand-based protocol, both with minimum bandwidth capacity of 10Gbps, 20Gbps, or 40Gbps, redundantly."
"The automation and provisioning of the environment, as well as the centralized monitoring, have all improved over the years."
"Server consolidation. In a cloud architecture, moving the HA VM from one to other is faster. This is because of the InfiniBand network fabric between the compute nodes and storage nodes (ZFS Storage)."
"Exalogic offers integration with other engineered systems, which increases the throughput capability and enables processing of bigger and heavier workloads."
"Scalablility: When we need to upgrade from an eighth-rack to a full-rack, the real downtime is less then an hour."
"Provides high-speed network, strong storage features (ZFS), High Availability out of the box, and is Integrated with a large number of products."
 

Cons

"Not a perfect ten because it could use better integration on the network side between UCS and the switching layer. The fact that LACP is not supported on UCS blades isn't so great. It would be nice if it was."
"Cisco support is much slower. Opening cases with Cisco tech is sometimes a bit tedious. The return time for less important calls can be slower. Even Priority 1 calls can sometimes be a bit long and they will have to call me back."
"According to the product managers, there are some new products coming which will address some of our concerns around portability and compliance."
"I want to use the expansion to its fullest extent, scaling by deploying 10 to 15 virtual missions in a given FlexPod."
"Installation with FlexPod is a bit complex, but it can be upgraded easily. I think Flexpod is phasing out, but it is still the right solution."
"Areas for improvement would be the support for the engineering team, who seem to have no clue when you open a case, the communication with and recognition of resellers, and the documentation, with could be more detailed."
"They need to improve the user interface to make it easier to work in this environment. The older version is poor."
"There could be room for improvement in terms of offering more flexibility in CBD options."
"The solution needs to add a network virtualization feature similar to that of VxRail. If they could implement that, it would be great for the product."
"Middleware application services, such as statistics, data mining, could be better."
"The solution is prone to disk failures. This needs to improve. Over the past four years we've had to replace about six of them. They've failed almost every three to six months."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Our licensing costs are about $50,000 per year."
"The main return on investment would be that instead of having to refresh all of our desktop hardware we have been able to go reimage existing machines and use those as thin clients, then also purchase new thin clients rather than buying actual hardware. It also reduces the overhead of having our technicians deploy those systems and maintain them."
"It has saved us hundreds of man-hours by using this converged infrastructure."
"We have reduced our manpower with the solution."
"We fear high availability so we can't buy from different providers."
"The pricing and licensing are quite expensive. However, compared to other solutions, it is okay."
"We have saved time, money, space, and power consumption on new service deployments. We have a data center in Toronto which had ten racks on one of the new servers. This was all reduced to two racks with six chassis, which is amazing."
"Overall, the solution works pretty well. The biggest complaint I have from customers is the cost."
"Pricing and licensing are two very delicate aspects when talking about Oracle, especially engineered systems. The prices are quite high compared with other similar products, so the CapEx analysis and investment return have to be very well studied."
"Get the price of the license you will need for the middleware that will be running on top of the Exalogic. Otherwise, you can use another middleware solution, as long as it can run on top of Oracle Linux."
"To expand the hardware's capability requires a massive investment."
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Comparison Review

it_user244362 - PeerSpot reviewer
Managing Consultant with 51-200 employees
Aug 30, 2015
Nutanix vs. VMware EVO:RAIL vs. FlexPod
Originally posted at www.storagegaga.com/dont-get-too-drunk-on-hyper-converged/ I hate the fact that I am bursting the big bubble brewing about Hyper Convergence (HC). I urge all to look past the hot air and hype frenzy that are going on, because in the end, the HC platforms have to be aligned…
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Marketing Services Firm
31%
Manufacturing Company
14%
Performing Arts
7%
Educational Organization
6%
No data available
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business34
Midsize Enterprise66
Large Enterprise182
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business4
Midsize Enterprise6
Large Enterprise14
 

Comparisons

 

Also Known As

No data available
Oracle Exalogic Elastic Cloud
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

University of Sao Paulo, WD-40, The Commonwell Mutual Insurance Group
Sascar, Banca Transilvania, UL, Agilent, Reliance Commercial Finance, PT Bank Central Asia Tbk, Bank of Qingdao, Yarra Valley Water, FAW Car Co. Ltd.
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