IBM Netezza Performance Server Reviews

Neteeza is a data warehouse for customer analytics. 

We're looking to get away from it, so I can't really say that it improved things. It did augment some of our product delivery resources.

The most valuable feature would be the fact that it has been running for awhile in an appliance format. The appliance format may be the best part.

There won't be another release. They're converting to DB2 and that is one of the reasons we are looking at other options.

In terms of features that I would like to see, one is the ability to actually scale out an architecture. Right now, if you buy one, it's fixed. There is no scale-up availability at all.

It's pretty good when it works. It's pretty stable overall. But if you have a problem, support is a nightmare.

Scalability is not possible.

Technical support has been awful. I found them unwilling to help, and with direct VPN connection to systems, unwilling to actually connect and look at information, which is part of our contract. They did not actually do their job.

We're looking to switch away from Netezza because the platform database system that it runs on is no longer going to be in existence. It's moving to DB2. If it moves to that direction, the amount of changes in logic and queries that it would require is pretty substantial. At that point I would basically be rewriting everything.

When selecting a vendor, obviously I don't want somebody who is brand new. I want somebody who has a track record of actually being around for awhile. It needs to be a company with a product that does the functions that a database should do, and not something that's only a partial solution. There are a lot of solutions out there that do three-quarters of what a warehouse should be doing, but three-quarters of a warehouse are not sufficient.

I wasn't involved in the setup. But it's an appliance, so there is no real setup, other than there is a day for an IBM technician to come out and stand it up.

Vertica was one of them. I looked at it recently. It has limiting factors on things like updates and deletes of data, where it has performance issues. That's a big problem for us. 

I rate Netezza at four out of 10. There is not too much involved to set one up from a customer perspective, but after the initial setup it is pretty awful on the customer support side of it.

My advice would be, check out all options. Don't just go with big-name vendors, because that is not always going to be the right answer.

For now, we use that as our enterprise-wide data warehouse. Performance-wise, it's been great. The speed has been excellent. We haven't really had any hardware issues with it that I'm aware of. We've had it for heavy-use in the past six months to a year. It's been good.

The big benefit that we've had is, in the past with the legacy data warehouse solution, we've been limited to having just a nightly batch, running on SQL Server. It's a slower batch process, so throughout the day we would be limited to stuff that happened as of some time in the evening. 

So the benefit is really because of the additional speed that we have and, truth be told, the more updated ETL processes and the revamped scheduler in general. We've been able to move the refresh timing up to six times a day, so at any given point in the day, the data would be only four hours old, which helps us give much better - not quite real-time data - but closer to real-time data for the day, which helps the decision-makers get the most up-to-date information possible.

The speed.

I would say it's very stable. Whenever we have any sort of outage, the hardware team always communicates it, and it's been months since we've had any sort of outage, outside of the standard maintenance window. There have never really been any issues there. Stability has been good.

For scalability, we're still in process - half the business is still not on this data warehouse, the company is also moving over to a different production system - so the scalability, we'll really see throughout this year, as the rest of the business gets migrated over to that new production system, and that data will be falling into the Netezza data warehouse platform. So for scalability, it's a little too soon to really give an answer yet.

I have not used tech support. I'm not on the hardware team.

Our IT leadership made the decision to go with Netezza before I joined the company, that decision had already been made. Prior to that we were using Microsoft SQL Server.

The only thing that I was really privy to was, Netezza was chosen because of its analytical capabilities and for the ability to process through a very high volume of records and give an aggregate solution from an analysis standpoint, in a very quick fashion.

I was not involved on the hardware side, but I was on the data modeling aspect.

I would say it was straightforward. We used the IBM InfoSphere for the ETL scripts. Those seem to give plenty of visibility for allthe different steps in the ETL process, especially debugging or going in and making modifications as different tickets come through.

Working with some of the other developers, whenever they are given a ticket, it's pretty simple to see what step in the process and additional code needs to be added, or modified, or removed; to see exactly where it is and how it's going to affect things downstream, and to be able to see at what exact point that something has failed. That part, it's been more straightforward and just the visibility of the whole process.

The most important criteria when selecting a vendor for a data warehouse solution are, obviously, the speed and the ability to handle large amounts of data. That's especially true from an analysis standpoint, and having it not only do the math and select statements but also do more aggregation and analysis-type queries.

The speed has been excellent for us, in pulling information, as well as the batch timing, and the suite of tools that comes with it for the ETL withIBM InfoSphere. Also, the data governance prospect, as a company we haven't really delved too far into that, but from what I've seen, that is a really powerful tool as well, to help with data lineage and keeping track of that. So the speed is good and the suite of tools seems to be very beneficial.

From my standpoint, I would give it a nine out of 10. It has done everything that we needed it to do, it's great. The only reason I wouldn't give it a 10 is because, early on, there were a couple of maintenance things that we had to do.

We use Netezza and Teradata in our project environment where I work as an admin and data modeler.

Distribution concurrency control.

Concurrency limit needs to be increased somewhat.

Great stability in Netazza's Mako.

As of now, no issues with scalability. But like Teradata, we can’t add a node/SPU to the existing appliance.

I work with IBM PDA support. They are wonderful and fix issues in good time.

We used Teradata for Data Mart for certain applications but issues arose once the data setup grew. Using PDA, the issues were resolved.

Setup is not that complex. Within 24 hours we had everything completed and had copied the dataset from Oracle. Our migration approach was to use a shell script (pipe).

Best if you have a robust infrastructure, where network bandwidth is good. We used 10GB Ethernet cable for data transfer.

Enterprise reporting data warehouse using Business Objects, Microstrategy and data mining using SQL. Being a data repository for a single customer view. Also contained staging tables, some of which were designed like an ODS and contained all data from the source system and was updated on a nightly basis. The applicance contained over 12 TB of data uncompressed (less than 4 TB compressed).

Reports which used to take between 30 to 60 minutes or would time out on an Oracle database, which was previously used for the enterprise DWH, now run consistently in seconds or in less than five minutes.

High performance RDBMS appliance optimized for data warehousing and enterprise reporting. Very simple to manage huge volumes of data without having to worry about indexing and partitioning. Automated compression of tables without any custom scripting or manual intervention. Achieved almost 3x compression effortlessly which meant that 12 TB of data compressed into around 4 TB.

Could do better to support more concurrent update queries. We had to stagger our ETL loads to prevent queuing of jobs and random failures.

Also, it would have been good if the admin application showed more detail on the validity and usage of zone maps (this may have been implemented in later versions of the admin app).

The database runs stable unless there are hundreds of queries running in parallel.

Every query is a full table scan. If the table contains mostly integers, then performance is good. If the number of users is in the thousands, then it may be better to use cubes or other solutions to service reporting needs.

Before being acquired by IBM, Netezza corporation had exceptional support and used to respond very quickly (less than 30 minutes) in case of production issues. Round the clock support and monitoring were offered and support tickets were handed over very professionally between engineers working across time zones. After being acquired by IBM, support has not been as responsive, but there weren't as many issues as the box was stable.

Previously, Oracle was used as the data warehousing platform, and performance was low and not meeting the needs of the enterprise reporting and analytic user community. My customer switched to Netezza mainly for performance, and it was a big improvement.

As the box was very heavy, datacenter flooring required additional reinforcement. The box runs Linux and the initial setup is quite straightforward. ODBC drivers on the servers (ETL or reporting) which connect to the box may need to be upgraded.

Implemented this through a vendor team. As there is no need to spend time on partitioning and indexing, a lot of vendor time was saved. Table scripts for partitioned oracle tables run into hundreds or thousands of lines of code and we used to be charged accordingly. But a Netezza table script is much much simpler and we saved money there. Review of table scripts for performance and best practice was also easier as there is only a limited set of best practices to be implemented for high performance. So even vendor teams having low or medium level of expertise can deliver properly as long as they understand how MPP works - governance effort is definitely lesser with Netezza compared to Oracle or SQL Server.

ROI is high because analyst productivity improved drastically. As mentioned before, queries which used to run for several minutes now run in seconds or less than a few minutes or the duration of a typical pop song. So analysts can ask more questions of the data per hour compared to Oracle.

Also, the compression feature saved us a lot of money on per terabyte costs for the data.

From a cost per terabyte perspective, Netezza is definitely more expensive compared to Hive on Hadoop, but due to its simplicity and ANSI SQL Compliance and high performance which can be achieved with less tuning, it may be worth it.

My customer upgraded from Netezza 4.x to Twinfin 6.x.

Netezza is a great option for data warehousing, but give due attention to concurrency and find out how much would be the peak load the database may have to handle. Also, check whether performance is acceptable for APIs and web services. Performance may not scale for thousands of single row lookups, as the database is more suited for complex aggregated data warehousing queries.

It is extremely easy to use. The platform is very efficient and robust as well.

Generally, the machine utilized for the PoC is rarely returned once the overwhelming results are seen! Customers decide to keep the project, almost from scratch! The initial KPIs are delivered with low investment. There is quick implementation and considerable outcomes which make the platform a valuable asset to the organization.

Marketing, I dare say, should be improved. The ads should never mention “big data” since the platform was not initially designed for it.

I worked years and years ago with Teradata, and this is the platform to which it should be compared. It is important to emphasize that Netezza and Teradata have different markets. Netezza performs very well “in its peculiar and valuable small world.”

I have used this solution for years.

We did not have any stability issues.

It is not designed to process a huge volume of data.

Technical support is good.

I worked for different companies and my experience is really wide. Teradata is the paramount solution! Oracle’s Exadata invests a lot in both technology and marketing, sometimes losing the focus on “real” analytics. They used to address the platform as both OLAP and OLTP (“one size fits all”), which is not correct.

The rule of thumb in the data warehousing/business intelligence space starts with a simple PoC. That being said, there must be a few questions to be answered by the platform. The data model must be simple and flexible enough to address some “extra questions” within a set timetable, in case the customer wants to extend the PoC prior to making the purchase.

Comparisons with other solutions, including pricing and licensing, is as important as a PoC.

I compared Netezza to Teradata and Exadata.

IBM PureSystems or NPS has a patented NDAC or Netezza data accelerator card inside each of the SPUs (Snippet Processing Arrays). The SPUs act as individual processors that share part of a query. This helps in high-speed parallel processing of big data volumes. Querying a large data volume takes just a few seconds to minutes, if it is done right.

Analyzing years of data requires high processing power and storage. IBM PDA has exactly that. Years of processed data (tables) can be queried and retrieved based on management requirements. This can be done in minutes for analysis. This is extremely important in identifying trends for decision making in higher management, to serve customers better in today’s business environment.

It is a highly complicated architecture and only IBM engineers/support, or someone who worked on the hardware side of the system, can understand the system architecture completely.

This means that:

• Replacements can only be done by an IBM engineer
• Components are not generic and are not on the market
• Many of the systems are IBM patented
• Service support costs are high

Storage, although high, is limited depending on the rack configuration. For example, an N3001-80, which is an eight-rack Mako Server and also the top end model with the highest storage, can store a maximum of 384TB. Should your data exceed this limit, the storage cannot be extended.

It cannot be used for unprocessed data. The data has to be in a table format.

We have been using the solution for five years.

We rarely had stability issues. You may expect an average of one outage every two months for a few minutes, if it is maintained properly. This is mostly due to “pollreplytimeout” errors of the SPU.

All the rack components are dual for redundancy. Almost all components have failsafe/backup, including the host that is configured in cluster for high availability. With this, the system is up and running all the time, or you can get it up at the earliest possible time in case of component failures/system down situations.

We had scalability issues. Storage, although high, is limited depending on the rack configuration. For example, an N3001-80, which is an eight-rack Mako Server and also the top end model with the highest storage capacity, can store a maximum of 384TB. Should your data exceed this limit, the storage cannot be extended. You will have to purchase a new appliance.

I would rate the technical support at 7/10.

We did not use a previous solution.

IBM sets up the NPS and does the initial configurations. As an admin, you will have a completely configured system ready to work on.

This is a multi-million dollar product. The software and hardware are both IBM patented.

Netezza SQL ('nzsql') runs only on PDA systems, and cannot be installed on other enterprise-class servers. Power consumption is high and these systems must have mandatory IBM support, due to the patented and exclusive IBM hardware. However, the benefits outweigh the costs if you have large data volumes that require fast analysis on a day-to-day basis.

We didn't really examine any alternatives. I started working directly on IBM PDA (Netezza) and I haven't had any chance to work on the competitors' products. I was not a decision maker in the selection of this product. This was a higher management decision.

A close competitor of IBM PDA is Apache Hadoop. As of now, no other product is as fast or as stable.

You can definitely consider this appliance if you have:

• A large volume of processed data (tables) that are created on a daily basis
• Data that requires daily analysis, critical for decision making, and a budget to complement it.

This is one of the most stable and fastest data warehouse appliances available in the market today.

Distribution (no index or partition), built-in analytics is a major advantange.

It has improved our management information systems and reporting capabilities.

It should also consider cloud based solutions.

We have been using the solution for more than ten years from the 8000 series,

We did not encounter any issues with stability.

I can't extend the storage, only up to 6x compress of data. You need to plan this when selecting the right product to buy.

Netezza support is good.

We used Oracle previously. The performance required less maintenance when comparing index and data maintenance issues.

The setup took only a few hours with all built-in apps. It is very quick and easy to use.

One license and one support, also cheaper compared to other products.

We evaluated MS SQL server.

It is easy to use. Make sure you select the right ETL and reporting tool. Also select the right tool for the organization to hold it in the long run.

It has a compression engine and FPGA on but you should still analyze your volume of data and decide on the right model and size.

We use Aginity to access Netezza database. We really like the way we can dominate the physical distribution of the data hence know how to improve the performance of the query. Netezza on its own is very fast which makes our life easier to run huge queries for analytics.

This has really helped us to improve the performance of our Data Marts and warehouses. We can run our reports very quickly. It has also improved the turn around time of business requests. 

In Aginity there should be a way to format the SQL queries. I think we can't format the query the way we can do it in Oracle editor (beautifier). Say, for example, if we are trying to get the DDL of an existing view, we lost the formatting. It's a minor issue, but important from usability point of view. Other than this, I think we are good so far with Netezza as a whole.

We have been using this product from last 5 years. 

We did not experience any issues.

We haven't had any issues.

We've not experienced any issues.

If volume is the issue, use Netezza. Nothing is better than this product.