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Oracle Exadata vs VxRail 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:
 

ROI

Sentiment score
6.0
Oracle Exadata offers significant ROI in 12-18 months, with cost savings, performance gains, but challenges in ROI calculation.
Sentiment score
4.4
VxRail improves efficiency and reduces costs, offering scalability and cloud integration, justifying its investment through long-term savings.
The investment is good, which is why people choose this hardware.
Senior Infrastructure Specialist at a financial services firm with 11-50 employees
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
6.6
Oracle Exadata support is generally positive, but response consistency varies, with mixed reactions to Platinum services.
Sentiment score
7.7
Dell EMC support is highly rated for effectiveness, though some users note issues with response times and international consistency.
If I were to rate their support from one to ten, I would say between nine to ten.
SR AVP–Presales Cloud & Platform Management Services at Path Infotech ltd
This involved creating blueprints for integrating Oracle products into client systems, followed by technical presentations to Oracle teams and stakeholders.
CISO at a tech services company with 11-50 employees
Exadata comes with a platinum gateway and comprehensive support, which often gets immediate attention with severity one cases.
Senior Infrastructure Specialist at a financial services firm with 11-50 employees
A key area for improvement for VMware would be response time.
Technical architect at a manufacturing company with 10,001+ employees
Dell has good technical support in Saudi Arabia.
Presales + Solution Architect at a tech services company with 11-50 employees
The support is all provided by Dell, and it is quite good.
Principal Consultant at Sycor GmbH
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
7.5
Oracle Exadata provides highly rated scalability, enabling easy expansion and efficient resource addition for varying organizational demands.
Sentiment score
7.6
VxRail offers impressive scalability and flexibility, ideal for large and medium environments but challenging for smaller setups.
Within a site, scalability is excellent.
Senior Infrastructure Specialist at a financial services firm with 11-50 employees
Scalability is easy with VxRail.
Technical architect at a manufacturing company with 10,001+ employees
There are limitations, such as the inability to upgrade from a single to dual CPU in certain configurations.
Data Center Solution Manager at a computer software company with 51-200 employees
Scalability is good with VxRail.
Presales + Solution Architect at a tech services company with 11-50 employees
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
7.8
Oracle Exadata is stable and reliable, with improved updates, despite occasional bugs and initial firmware issues.
Sentiment score
8.4
VxRail is praised for its stability, reliability, seamless maintenance, and minimal issues, even during updates and hardware failures.
Once installed, Exadata is very stable.
Senior Infrastructure Specialist at a financial services firm with 11-50 employees
It is a very stable and mature product, with centralized management and upgrades being perfect for us.
Technical architect at a manufacturing company with 10,001+ employees
The product is very stable, and I rate its stability as nine out of ten.
Data Center Solution Manager at a computer software company with 51-200 employees
 

Room For Improvement

Oracle Exadata users face high costs and complexity, seeking better performance, support, and integration with cloud technologies.
VxRail needs improved VMware integration, pricing, automation, upgrades, security, scalability, and streamlined processes for enhanced customer satisfaction.
I believe that there is still room for improvement in Oracle Exadata, as they are putting AI features on those databases, which is making the database more user-friendly.
SR AVP–Presales Cloud & Platform Management Services at Path Infotech ltd
I cannot create an extended rack cluster with one node on one site and another node on a different site.
Senior Infrastructure Specialist at a financial services firm with 11-50 employees
There are minor areas where improvement is needed, such as making the user interface more user-friendly and enhancing configuration and customization options.
Senior Oracle DBA at a financial services firm with 11-50 employees
It requires a very clean environment to proceed without issues.
Data Center Solution Manager at a computer software company with 51-200 employees
VxRail could be enhanced through additional integration with NVMe technology.
Presales + Solution Architect at a tech services company with 11-50 employees
Stabilizing the update procedure further would make it better.
Principal Consultant at Sycor GmbH
 

Setup Cost

Oracle Exadata offers high performance but is costly, suitable for large enterprises with potential cost-saving strategies available.
VxRail is a costly yet cost-effective VMware solution with integrated licensing, offering competitive pricing and reduced operational expenses.
I would rate the price an eight on a scale from one to ten, indicating it is fairly expensive.
Senior Oracle DBA at a financial services firm with 11-50 employees
I find its pricing reasonable and cost-effective for large organizations, but for smaller organizations, it may not be that useful.
SR AVP–Presales Cloud & Platform Management Services at Path Infotech ltd
Previously, the cost was higher, however, recent changes in VMware pricing have reduced it.
Data Center Solution Manager at a computer software company with 51-200 employees
Purchasing VxRail is quite expensive compared to a simple Dell server.
Principal Consultant at Sycor GmbH
The cost varies for us as a large company because we receive special offers from Dell.
Technical architect at a manufacturing company with 10,001+ employees
 

Valuable Features

Oracle Exadata offers fast response, high performance, scalability, and efficient data warehousing through advanced features and seamless hardware-software integration.
VxRail offers centralized management, scalability, and rapid deployment with VMware integration and third-party compatibility for optimal performance.
It also offers high backend speed between self-storage units and servers, which is beneficial for processing.
Senior Infrastructure Specialist at a financial services firm with 11-50 employees
If a customer cannot tune their applications, this will help them to run the database and run the application without any tuning itself.
SR AVP–Presales Cloud & Platform Management Services at Path Infotech ltd
The most valuable features of Oracle Exadata are its high availability and cluster environment.
Senior Oracle DBA at a financial services firm with 11-50 employees
Customers prefer the single pane of glass management and integration with VMware, which makes it easier for them to proceed with decisions involving VMware products.
Data Center Solution Manager at a computer software company with 51-200 employees
The most valuable feature of VxRail is the VxRail Manager, which centralizes resources like storage built with vSAN.
Technical architect at a manufacturing company with 10,001+ employees
The lifecycle management capabilities also represent significant value.
Presales + Solution Architect at a tech services company with 11-50 employees
 

Categories and Ranking

Oracle Exadata
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
130
Ranking in other categories
Data Warehouse (2nd)
VxRail
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
134
Ranking in other categories
HCI (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

Oracle Exadata and VxRail aren’t in the same category and serve different purposes. Oracle Exadata is designed for Data Warehouse and holds a mindshare of 9.9%, down 17.0% compared to last year.
VxRail, on the other hand, focuses on HCI, holds 13.8% mindshare, down 20.0% since last year.
Data Warehouse Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Oracle Exadata9.9%
Snowflake10.4%
Teradata9.5%
Other70.2%
Data Warehouse
HCI Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
VxRail13.8%
VMware vSAN11.4%
Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI)8.8%
Other66.0%
HCI
 

Featured Reviews

Prabir Kumar Kundu - PeerSpot reviewer
SR AVP–Presales Cloud & Platform Management Services at Path Infotech ltd
Has consistently delivered high performance and aligned security while evolving with AI-driven improvements
When discussing Oracle Exadata, the main thing is the specialized database appliance, the flash cache, and the engineered machine on the database for the database itself. Overall, all the features are useful and meaningful for any database like Oracle to run the Oracle database. Regarding Smart Scan technology, it is for better performance. If a customer cannot tune their applications, this will help them to run the database and run the application without any tuning itself. Oracle Exadata's advanced compression techniques have affected my customer's data storage efficiency positively, with the feature being great, but as of now, our customer is not using that. I find its security measures align with my customer's organization, as security is aligned as per the customer's requirement. It has helped optimize performance and cost.
Saleh Khalid - PeerSpot reviewer
computer scientist at Imam University
Experience improved integration and cost-efficiency while facing support challenges
The best features of VxRail are its compatibility with VMware, its hyper-converged solution capabilities, and its single line of support. These are the most beneficial aspects of VxRail. I switched from the previous HP solution to Dell solution because it was a good decision. With HP servers, we dealt with a vendor for the compute servers, another vendor for the storage servers, and another vendor for the networking, which required us to manage multiple vendors. Now, we have a single team who can handle VxRail and a single line of support. We don't need anything other than that, and these are the differences we noticed after we switched.
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Answers from the Community

PX
Sales Manager at LTA-RH Informatica
Jan 18, 2022
Jan 18, 2022
Although the VxRail is considered as the #1 HCI solution for its reliability & performance, yet unfortunate when it comes to an Oracle solution ... it won't be considered as the best infrastructure choice ... and it's not due to the performance or the architecture, but in fact, the whole blame goes to Oracle license base (core base), as you may see ... VxRail is based on VMWare license, whe...
2 out of 3 answers
it_user1523085 - PeerSpot reviewer
Enterprise and Cloud Architecture Strategy Leader at Oracle Corporation Australia Pty Ltd
Mar 3, 2021
First off I am biased I work for Oracle.  What I am sharing is my own perception and not the views of Oracle.  I don't sell Exadata, but have worked with more than a hundred Exadata customers over the years.  My answer - Not really.  The not so secret sauce in Exadata is the DB binaries are running in storage server and in the DB server, when SQL executes it only returns the part of the DB needed for processing by the DB server, saving a lot on IO and gaining processing speed.  I haven't seen a POC where Exadata wasn't 3-4x faster, even one where it was 15x faster for batch/DWH workload at a large bank.  Also Exadata has optimized memory and flash utilization within the binaries of the DB, making it tough to duplicate without access to source code by other HW developers.  In terms of licensing best to talk to sales at Oracle.  Generally if you have a ULA then you can get parity for licensing costs on each, however you will be running at least 2x as many cores for the same workloads so cost will be higher on VxRail.  Oracle standard architecture with 19c and forward is to use Multi-Tenant architecture - and it is only option starting with 21c.  Meaning you can manage many DBs as one, and avoid VM server sprawl you find with VMWare and VxRail.  If you have workloads that fit Exadata's smallest footprint then it really is the lowest TCO and highest performance - I have seen dozens of comparisons, even one with a major telco where the competing HW vendor through in free storage and was giving a 70% discount on servers - versus 25% discount on Exadata and Exadata still was lower cost TCO and matched the cost per core (cost per core is not a great compare since Exadata needs far fewer cores for the same workload - need to look at total solution cost).  
MM
Senior Infrastructure Solutions Specialist at Fiber Misr
Mar 4, 2021
Although the VxRail is considered as the #1 HCI solution for its reliability & performance, yet unfortunate when it comes to an Oracle solution ... it won't be considered as the best infrastructure choice ... and it's not due to the performance or the architecture, but in fact, the whole blame goes to Oracle license base (core base), as you may see ... VxRail is based on VMWare license, where Oracle condition when you are going to deploy it over VMWare, you will need to license the whole host cores (not only the assigned Virtual cores to the VM), so if you have a VxRail cluster that consists of 4 nodes for example, and each node have dual sockets 16 cores, then although you are assigning only 8 Cores for the Oracle VM, yet you will need to pay for the whole host cores (32 core) which a huge amount of money, and you will pay the double if you are going to deploy in high availability mood. So you see, the issue is from the Oracle side not from VxRail, Alternatively ... you can deploy all of your application over the VxRail cluster, including the Oracle application, yet for the Oracle database, use a physical server with high CPU frequency and low no of cores ... for example (Intel Xeon Gold 5222 3.8G, 4Core / Intel Xeon Silver 4215R 3.2G, 8Core), and you may use a single socket server which will allow you for upgrading later on.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
29%
Computer Software Company
7%
Government
6%
Manufacturing Company
6%
Manufacturing Company
12%
Computer Software Company
12%
Government
10%
Financial Services Firm
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business47
Midsize Enterprise14
Large Enterprise86
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business42
Midsize Enterprise43
Large Enterprise56
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Oracle Exadata?
It is the best solution for OLTP and data warehousing.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Oracle Exadata?
I find its pricing reasonable and cost-effective for large organizations, but for smaller organizations, it may not be that useful.
What needs improvement with Oracle Exadata?
I believe that there is still room for improvement in Oracle Exadata, as they are putting AI features on those databases, which is making the database more user-friendly. Even you can talk to the d...
How does HPE Nimble Storage compare to VxRail?
HPE Nimble Storage dHCI Vs. VxRail One of the best things about the HPE Nimble Storage dHCI is the three, two, one, zero rule. That means I need three copies of my data on two different types of me...
What Is The Biggest Difference Between vSAN And VxRail?
While both run on the vSAN technology from VMware, vSAN needs to be deployed on vSAN ready nodes while VxRail is an engineered system. The choice to choose which technology depends on two major fac...
What are the major differences between VxRail and Dell EMC PowerFlex?
VxRail vs. Dell EMC PowerFlex VxRail provides stable solutions for technical problems while at the same time not being too expensive for a company to invest in. Even if the user is working with a l...
 

Also Known As

No data available
VCE VxRail
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

PayPal, EBS, Organic Food Retailer, Garmin, University of Minnesota, Major Semiconductor Company, Deutsche Bank, Starwood, Ziraat Bank, SK Telecom, and P&G.
World Wide Technology Inc, Renault Sport Formula One Team, 8x8 Inc, Brownes, Canadian Pacific, Canopy, Denton, EDF, Unilin, Xerox
Find out what your peers are saying about Snowflake Computing, Oracle, Teradata and others in Data Warehouse. Updated: January 2026.
881,114 professionals have used our research since 2012.