Oracle Database as a Service Reviews

It provides the ability to run from a simple schema base to a real application database, including the option to run it on the Oracle public cloud. In cases where the customer has an issue with data locality or privacy, the option to seamlessly switch to a Oracle public cloud machine in the customer's own DC makes this the most flexible cloud solution.

The automatic inclusion of all database options in Enterprise Edition (EE), Extreme Performance and Exadata cloud service make this product very attractive.

Previously, when proposing cloud solutions for Oracle database to enterprise clients the lack of a viable high availability solution was often cost prohibitive. Oracle offers this as a standard option. With Active Dataguard freely available for Extreme Performance, there is no enterprise cloud service catering to the Oracle database that can match this offering

Currently, there is no simple method to modify the orchestrations on which the compute hosts are based. Hence, unlike the IaaS Oracle services, in cases where there is a need to make certain changes to the service, such as adding an IP network or a GRE tunnel, it requires specialized skills from the backend. However, we expect with the rapid pace of innovation that the feature to modify advanced aspects might be added on the fly in later versions.

We have been experimenting with the solution for just over a year now and we have clients that are going live on the system as I write this.

We saw some minor hiccups to do with networking and connectivity. We also were utilizing the Exadata database cloud service for one client and faced some issues with the cloud tooling. One minor problem was if we created a database of a particular name in capitals, deleted the database, and then tried to recreate the same database but with small letters, the cloud tooling would not allow this. We raised the issue to Oracle, who provided a fix and will incorporate this in the next version of the Exadata cloud tooling.

On the whole, the system was very stable. We only faced one unexplained hiccup, when a server was rebooted and we were not able to track down the root cause.

We did not face any issues with scalability. We are using Oracle OTD for high-availability scale out, which was initially active-passive but later an active-active solution was provided.

We have had very responsive customer support. On several occasions, the Oracle Cloud A-Team directly came on the call with us to help resolve issues.

The technical team from the vendor side was quite knowledgeable and we were able to resolve some network routing issues quite quickly.

We have used other cloud providers. However, they did not have a true high-availability cloud solution. The second issue we found is that I/O bandwidth was comparatively variable on the other cloud providers and we could not scale easily beyond a few terabytes without facing I/O bottlenecks.

Because we had taken training on the platform, it was very familiar for us. However, it would not be so easy for someone implementing this from scratch. We would recommend going with an experienced managed service provider.The platform provides surprising flexibility for something that is billed as platform as a service.

We are ourselves a cloud service provider team that implemented for several customers.

This varies across our customers but they all are seeing benefits over their erstwhile in-house solutions.

The cloud option provides a lot of benefits for Oracle shops, as it reduces the upfront costs and converts the licensing costs to a running cost.

We have utilized other cloud and hosted platforms such as Azure, Macquarie Telecom, Verizon, Xerox, etc. However, this option was superior for Oracle Database hosting.

This provides an enterprise-class cloud solution that can scale to terabyte-sized databases in the cloud without having to compromise.

Easiness, that's number one for me because I use the cloud for testing purposes. When I present about database things because I do a lot of presentations and I like to test on the cloud. This cloud is everywhere so when I'm presenting here in US, I have the same cloud available that I have in Finland where I prepared my presentation. It's very easy and very convenient. I use Oracle Databases.

What is the best place for an Oracle database if it's not the Oracle Cloud? If I take any of the other clouds that wouldn't be the same. Of course the best is the Oracle's original cloud.

I think most of the customers are hoping for having 24/7 kind of support for if anything happens during the night, they will fix it without you knowing it. Of course there will be an extra cost for the customer but it shouldn't be too much. That's what I think most of the customers will be happy with. You don't have to have your own operators to look after your operation system and the databases and so on and Oracle would look after all that. They have those services but I think they're a bit expensive at the moment.

I think scalability is the top thing here because you are just able to scale up and down whenever you feel like it. You can't do it on premises.

Nobody is ever happy with support with any vendor so if I would say I would give them the score five, everybody would be laughing. There is no support that is 100% good. Usually it's been after it's been down or something like that. If I find a back or an error or something like that, I might need to contact somebody to fix it but I've had very good support by friends who work for Oracle. Not the official channels has been very efficient so all my problems have been solved.

Usually it's a long process so it starts when you realize that the hardware you have is going to be obsolete and you start your process there. You know one year from now I have to do something, I have to buy new hardware, I have to do something. That's usually where the process starts and then you start thinking should I buy a new hardware or should I go to the cloud.

It's the same as you're changing from one machine to another machine, it's just the same. You're just changing from one machine to a cloud. We did that for one of our customers and it was very, very easy and simple.

Reliability I will say that's the most important thing and what I learnt today from the keynote was that people are afraid about security and especially about the vendor security. I think that's something that you should really look at when you are choosing your vendor. How are they taking care of your security? Because you have all your valuable data in that cloud, you don't want anybody to go and mess with it.

Rating: I'm a Finn, I never give ten for anything. I would say seven or eight which is very good for me. There's a lot to improve yet but I think it's getting pretty good already. Let's say eight, I'm in a good mood today.

I would start with a test database. I would go with them to cloud first to get the experience because most of the people are afraid of the cloud. They don't know what to expect and how they juggle things and so on because they're used to see the computer, touch them and know exactly what is where and what kind of block you have in your computer and so on. So it's very scary to let somebody else take care of that things. The first step would probably be give your test databases to the cloud and see how it works and realize that actually now you have time for the real job instead of doing constant upgrades and so on. I would start with the test database to get experience and the touching feeling of how it is.

So from the database perspective, we usually are talking about three important things. So the obvious ones are the multitenancy in the pluggable databases. The second category, I would call it performance, making sure that we are getting the right value from the databases in terms of data access. And the third one is obviously the security. So, we are more interested in implementing solutions that, we are actually excited to see Oracle come in with release two with all the issues we have, from 11g and on. So, 12.1 is there, but we want to see what's coming up in 12c at release two, and we are really excited about multitenancy. The whole security aspect, and then the performance as such.

So from the cloud perspective, I think there are too many vendors out there. One of the things we are excited from the Oracle perspective is their ability to take us off of our backups, the database backup. Using that, they can take us to the cloud and we want to try that out, mostly on their test end, as of now. And once we see how the ROI is, and what kind of a performance we are getting and then also check on how the security is, then we might probably consider going a little bit deeper into low-level production applications, all the way into the business applications.

So right now we are evaluating their trial period with Oracle on migrating in their databases, and we are also excited to use some of their backup and recovery solutions, which basically, you take your database and you run your backups, right now it is running on your local disk, but then we are configuring that to go into the cloud. So one of the cool features we are using from Oracle is the RMAN. It takes a second set of channels, and just take it as a destination and that goes into the cloud. So we can restore it at the same time from either of the options, on-prem or from the cloud. So we are excited to see how that works, because that is something that Oracle has recently come up with.

So we want to see, obviously, besides Oracle databases, what other databases can be provisioned and integrated in the cloud. So if I have to have an application running off of a non-Oracle database, and I have an application and the database running in cloud, which is an Oracle, I want to see if I can integrate them through what kind of a web service, how can I transfer the data? How do I move my processes without having to come back into my on prem and then go back into the secondary cloud? So those are some of the integration points I'm looking at.

And the second important thing I'm looking at is, the overall governance. How Oracle can provide their cloud control and give use the ability to manage the on prem and the off prem cloud services, combined in a single view.

So obviously we did an ROI analysis and a TCU. So, we have seen that the cost is definitely a factor. And security is more important, so that's why we did not press the button on the production yet. So we are piloting with the non-prod to see what kind of security we're going to get, what kind of threats are we going to be exposed to. And once we are satisfied, once we get our sign-off from the management, we might probably pull the trigger. But we are in the evaluation period.

Onboarding: so the Database Cloud, the way we have seen is, so you have a cloud control and you go in and, based on your subscription, you actually get the environment. So once you get the environment, you generate the security keys to establish the network connectivity between the on prem to the public and once we have the provision done, then you can actually encrypt the data on the source side, and move them into the cloud through their cloud control utility. So that's how we migrate them. Now, we haven't done a lot of the big databases yet. So we are piloting on the small ones. So, so far, the pilot ones look good which are close to about 300 to 400 GB databases. But we want to see how that goes with couple of terabytes of databases.

Scalability is number one. Data transfer is number two. And security actually tops, on top of that. And the ability to move the workloads between on-prem and off-prem. So that's one of the big things you are looking at, and if we don't like things, and if you want to push back, and we want to come back to our on-prem, what options do we have? So, can we migrate easily from a public cloud to a private cloud and private cloud to an on-prem cloud, and vice-versa. So, having that ability is a big thing, because we don't want to invest in something where we go to the cloud but we don't know how to come back. So we don't want it to be a one-way street, we want to choose a product that can give us an opportunity to not only go into the cloud, but also in a worst-case scenario, come back out.

So initially we started with Amazon. We tested a little bit, but the security was a big thing for us and the way they handle security is a little different I don't necessarily say it is wrong or bad, it's just that I was not very comfortable having the keys being shared versus in Oracle, the security keys are owned by the customer which is us, as opposed to with the vendor, and that was a prime difference for us. And second thing was, Amazon cloud is more on the infrastructure provisioning and metered. They don't give a database as a service. They do have some options, but being an Oracle customer, we know what Oracle can provide, which is totally a value-add kind of a service, with a lot of different shaders, compared to the others like Amazon or Rackspace or a hundred different partners. But I think it's because we are very close with Oracle, we can see how they can give us those value add services.

So the Database Cloud on Oracle right now, I think it's there, but there is some room to grow. So I wouldn't give them 10 yet. I would hold on to that. Probably eight would be a better option. But I want to see the growth in terms of, not only on the vertical side, I want to see the horizontal growth, in terms of how they can leverage, as I said earlier, integrating with other systems. So, if they can grow both horizontally and vertically, then probably I can give them a 10. But at this time, they are not there yet.

So I would say, anybody who wants to get into the cloud, evaluate your options. Check out your dev and test environments first. Check out your backup as a service, because it's very easy. You just have to set your targets and push your database backups. So try with those two first, and see the difference, and compare that with your other vendors. And see what kind of a response latency you're getting from the cloud. And make the call. I mean, that's what I did, and it was clear.

Oracle Database as a Service for a web application used by our developer team.

The most valuable Oracle Database as a Service is security.

The initial setup could improve.

I have been using Oracle Database as a Service for approximately one year.

I rate the stability of Oracle Database as a Service a ten out of ten.

I rate the scalability of Oracle Database as a Service a six out of ten.

The initial setup of Oracle Database as a Service is complex.

We have received a return on investment.

The price of Oracle Database as a Service is reasonable.

I would recommend this solution to others.

I rate Oracle Database as a Service a ten out of ten.

We have found all of the features of this solution to be valuable to our organization.

The solution uses a large amount of CPU space, which could be improved. 

We would also like to see a reduction in the licensing costs for using this solution, as it is quite costly.

We have been working with this solution for two years.

We have found the solution to be stable during our time using it.

We believe the product to be scalable.

The initial setup was okay, it took around two hours to complete.

We implemented the solution using our in-house team.