Oracle Exadata Reviews

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. 

ten 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 are a telecommunications company. The information that we have there, it's Oracle Suite including a CRM, help service integration, and more. That's the core of the system. All the information is available to users using Oracle BI, and some other tools. We're very Oracle-based in our product choice.

In the past, all the reports that the organization needed would have to pass through a new requirement. And in order to create it, a person needed IT, and the developers. They would have to then test it and release it. Now, since we have this information available, access depends on the role, and the security filters and the user can access information and can make their own dashboards and reports and take decisions. They no longer need to go through IT and developers.

We're working on making our usage to be part of a service in a manner that the client can use the information and create their own dashboards, and reports. The client can access the information they need based on the role they have. It prevents them from being dependant on an IT department for access.

The data replication is very good.

The solution offers a good data warehouse.

The solution allows us to avoid conflict with the transactional databases. 

The replication of the database needs to avoid collision with the transactional databases. That's a very, very important aspect that needs to be looked at. 

It would be nice if we had access via mobile devices. To be able to have this information and the dashboards on cellphones or tablets or something like that would be great. It would make the solution similar to Tableau, for example, and other kinds of solutions. 

The initial setup process is very difficult and extremely complex.

I've used the solution since about 2017. It's been a few years at this point.

It's a pretty good solution, however, there may be more opportunity for more stability within the product. That said, the hardware and the database are some of the best Oracle has. It's pretty stable.

The on-premises versions of the solution are very difficult to work with, however, the next-generation cloud-based options are likely easier to expand as necessary.

We have about 800 concurrent users on the solution at any given time. It's a mid-sized company.

I'm not sure if we have plans to expand out own usage. It's a difficult time in Mexico, politically and also with COVID. We had plans to change some things last year, and they have since been pushed out. We're looking at different aspects of our entire system and we're reconsidering how it operates and if we should add partners or not.

While we used Oracle consultants for the implementation of the product, and that did not go very well at all, now that it is set up, I can say that we do find their general technical support quite good. We're on good terms with support in general, which comes from America, and I would say we are satisfied with the level of service Oracle provides.

We used a different solution a long, long time ago. It may have been something like InfoWorks. However, as I said, it was quite some time in the past.

The initial setup is not straightforward at all. It's very complex and extremely difficult.

It's not easy to explain the entire process overall as there's a lot of criteria. We start working on the requirements, and the first implementation was not exactly what we spec'd it for. We had to start over, and we were complimenting these requirements. However, the functionality and scope ended up not being agreed upon by two partners. The users also did not take into account that they needed to be a part of the process. There were just so many moving parts that never lined up properly.

We've realized that a good solution must also be easy to use as the users will end up being the ones accessing the information, and, if they are confused, they'll never use the technology. On top of that, the requirements and scope need to be clear upfront.

I'm not sure how much staff has been needed for deployment and maintenance.

We used Oracle consultants and our experience with them was very, very bad.

I don't handle the licensing or billing, therefore, I'm not familiar with the direct costs of using this solution.

We did look at SAP before ultimately choosing Oracle. We may have looked at others, however, it was a long time ago. I'm not even sure if the same companies exist.

Ultimately, we chose Oracle as it was more suited for telecommunications whereas SAP was more into manufacturing.

We don't have a business relationship with the company. We are just users.

I'm not sure which version of the solution we're currently using.

While telecommunications is an area that always does pretty well - as people need internet and other related services, even in these strange times, it's a strange time in Mexico for a variety of reasons and therefore we are rethinking how we are approaching entire systems and maybe holding off on some decisions until the landscape clears a bit.

While I like Oracle as a solution, and its hardware and database are quite good, when we're talking about implementation, scalability, and integration, I would not recommend this solution. The best option today for a telecom company is likely Salesforce Vlocity.

I would rate the solution six out of ten.

The separation between the database nodes and storage cells is the key feature of Exadata. The capabilities of the storage cells, the intelligence, are excellent. 

The speed is unbeatable. 

Exadata was mostly for data warehouses. However, in time with a model of powerful processors in database nodes, it's also an OLTP machine. It's very good. The latest versions offer even more performance, as they have a persistent memory and a lot of features.

The usage of the internal InfiniBand Switches is a key feature in Exadata. Everything is fast due to this separation at the database level and storage level. It's intelligently designed and has a very fast connection between all of the components of Exadata. 

We can use virtualization on Exadata. We can choose capacity on demand. There are a lot of new features that have turned up in the past two to four years. The solution is growing and becoming broader in its scope.

The improvement could be made on the hardware level as the habit in the industry is to go better and faster and larger with every iteration.

From the software point of view, management point of view, it's okay right now. However, I don't understand why Exadata has no database nodes with SPARC processors. Oracle has SPARC servers that are on RISC processors and are more powerful processors than Intel processors. They never do Exadata with such processors on the database nodes level. However, they tested and it wasn't very useful. I would like to see Exadata with RISC processors on the database nodes if it's possible.

I've been working with the solution since 2012. It's been about nine years - almost a decade. It's been a while.

You can scale the solution. You can configure it how you like and buy more cells or nodes to add to it. 

The technical support has been okay. We've been satisfied with the level of service.

The initial setup isn't too complex. However, in the present, the initial setup of Exadata isn't made by Oracle partners or the client. There is an advanced ACS department, Oracle Advanced Customer Support, that handles the implementation. In this team, there are very good specialists on Exadata. These specialists from the ACS department are the guys who will install Exadata for the first time for the client. 

It's not something very complex and something which cannot be done by others, however. Our team, for example, was installing Exadata. It's possible to be done by other teams with, of course, the appropriate competencies. The implementation sits somewhere between simple and complex. The machine is complex. We cannot set up a machine like this with more components and different components like a laptop, for example. 

There is a specialized team that handles the implementation for the client.

I don't evaluate the fees involved in using the solution. It's too big. However, it's my understanding that you need to pay for the hardware, the nodes, and the cells. That said, you can configure it however you want. You can easily buy and increase the capacity in only the nodes or only the cells if you prefer. It's worth the money you spend. The value is there.

I've looked at other options. For a data warehouse, it's a better solution. It's better than Teradata, for example, or other complex machines from the competitors. Migrating data warehouses from other infrastructures to Exadata has a good success rate. I wouldn't say that it is the better solution for an OLTP system, however, for an OLAP system, it's a better option.

We've been Oracle partners for around ten years or so. I'm a project manager, and not overly technical. 

We don't have Exadata in our company, however, we have Exadata via a client. The current company where I work is the first company in Romania to sell Exadata in Romania. There are a number of Exadata solutions sold in Romania - which is why my colleague has achieved past competencies and certification in Exadata machines. They are very good, and they are delivering the present services on Exadata. I manage the projects where they deliver services on Exadata only for the customer, not in our company.

I'd advise users to consider the solution. You pay more money on the machine, however, you pay less for the licenses. On top of that, you have enough room to put a lot of data there. You can virtualize some machines and you put items on the application level, however, I don't recommend this. 

If you already have separate machines, and you have licenses for all these machines and you want to put new hardware in place, it's better to put Exadata in place instead of a lot of other machines. That way, you can consolidate the database here and you will pay less on database software licenses.

I'd rate the solution at a ten out of ten. I've been very satisfied with the product overall.

We sell hyper-converged infrastructure tools including Oracle Exadata to enterprise customers such as governments. These are large projects that handle big data and typically run into the range of several million dollars, and in 2016, we had our first big Exadata project which involved implementing two superclusters with Exadata and Exalogic together. 

In some processes, we use converged infrastructure tools, but it's far more common nowadays to go with hyper-converged infrastructure tools. On our side, we prefer hyper-converged infrastructure because there just aren't that many people using the standard convergence model anymore. We're changing our processes to work exclusively with hyper-convergence and other technologies that complement hyper-convergence.

We use Exadata and Exadata Cloud at customer sites, and the main project that we're involved in now is hyper-converged Oracle environments with Exadata. I'm studying how to best apply the hyper-convergence model in Oracle to change Exadata to VxRail. But my forecast going forward is that we will be using fifty percent hyper-converged tools with Dell VxRail, and fifty percent with Oracle Exadata.

With Oracle Exadata, the change from on-premise to cloud is becoming a reality. With this, it becomes better and easier for us to make renovations and maintain our projects. We earn money with renovations on cloud, but when it comes to on-prem, we don't earn much when the customer needs renovations and support.

Regarding features, there are so many that we can offer to customers. When we sell Exadata Cloud, there are many options to choose from, especially when it comes to enterprise database options. In my experience, the main features that are appreciated are various ones like GPS and the assortment of security options.

There is one aspect to Exadata that I dislike, and that's the inconsistency with other databases. When you try to get Exadata to function with another type of database like SQL, or others, there should be reliable and consistent operation. When this is improved on, we should start to see more applications growing the market.

I have been using Oracle Exadata for six years, more or less.

Stability is very good. Especially if you maintain it and always update, you won't have any problems with stability. Once Exadata is established, it's 100%.

My one customer was using the Exadata version from 2013 which was extremely outdated, and when they changed to the updated version of the main system application it was very healthy for the customer's company. 

I think the scalability is good, but it can be even better. With the newer editions of Exadata, they are changing some features to meet the needs of growth and scalability, like access to additional disks in the storage environment, and they've upped the memory, too. But I don't think it was central, or essential, to the Exadata offering at first.

Nowadays, it's easier. In the first years of implementation of Exadata it was a bit more difficult, but now it's easier. If you have a team that knows Exadata well, and knows the limits of Exadata, then the setup and implementation is easy. If, on the other hand, you don't have an experienced team, then it's really difficult.

The last implementation we deployed took about two weeks, more or less.

The majority of our customers are in government or big enterprises, and the projects that we sell come out to several million USD. With this amount of money on the table, it's always better to have an experienced team of consultants, who know Exadata very well, handle the implementation.

If you're interested in going with Exadata, then I highly recommend looking for an experienced consulting firm that has completed at least one large implementation before, because it isn't something you want to put in the hands of unskilled consultants. And don't forget to be careful with your implementation when it comes to GDPR in Europe.

I would rate Oracle Exadata a nine out of ten.

We use Oracle Exadata for transaction processing and data warehousing.

What I like best about Oracle Exadata is its good performance. It's also a very fast solution.

A room for improvement in Oracle Exadata is that it's not very easy to use in a microservices environment. It's not easy to split databases, and if this was easier to do in Oracle Exadata, it would make the solution better.

What I'd like to see in the next release of Oracle Exadata is for it to become more modular, so you can use it in a context where the data layer is spread between many independent services.

I've been working with Oracle Exadata for ten years.

The stability of Oracle Exadata is okay, and on a scale of one to five, I'm giving it a four.

Oracle Exadata is a very scalable solution, and I'm rating it five out of five in terms of scalability.

We're happy with Oracle Exadata support, though there's always room for improvement. In the years we've contacted them, we've reached a good balance between pricing and service. They deserve a four out of five in terms of support.

We used AIX and Db2, and currently, we're still switching our databases over to Oracle Exadata.

I wasn't involved in setting up Oracle Exadata because there's a dedicated team responsible for the setup.

The deployment process took a bit of time because my company switched gradually from other technologies to Oracle Exadata, and at the moment, some of the databases are still being moved to the solution. It's a big installation because I work for a big company.

A mix of in-house teams and vendor teams was responsible for setting up and implementing Oracle Exadata.

I have no idea about the ROI from Oracle Exadata because my team doesn't calculate it.

Oracle Exadata is not a cheap solution. Pricing is a problem for Oracle, and every client, not just my company, would like the vendor to improve on the price, or lower the price.

My company paid for several years' worth of Oracle Exadata licenses. You need to pay for the technical support and other features separately, on different contracts.

In terms of affordability, my rating for Oracle Exadata is two out of five.

Oracle Exadata is deployed on the cloud, but for databases, deployment is on-premises.

My company has twenty thousand users of applications based on Oracle Exadata. My company develops internal applications given to users, and the applications have persistent layers in Oracle.

My rating for Oracle Exadata is eight out of ten.

My company is an Oracle customer.

My advice to new users is to start small and implement Oracle Exadata incrementally. Don't implement it with a big bang approach. Do it piece by piece. The solution is good for big companies because I belong to a big company, but my company did the implementation one piece at a time.

There's a plan to increase the usage of Oracle Exadata because some of the older databases still need to be moved from Unix. Some of the databases in Db2 will also be moved to Oracle Exadata.

Before using this machine, we took no less than two days to run a report. Now, we can do it within five hours. So, there is a lot of improvement.

One of the things that we are facing during these few months is how you manage the people environment, and it's something that we have to explore to understand what is happening inside these machines. 

We are facing some problems with authentication. I believe that we are not familiar with the Oracle virtual machines. That's why we need to improve ourselves to better understand what is going on inside this environment. 

The integration with third-party applications regarding access management security could be better. I would like that to be included and be available the first time. Most of them, we need to buy later, and we would like to have these components when we're actually testing if this component.

This is one thing that we are facing here in our environment. The integration becomes very difficult, and most of these features are not available the first time when you finalize the integrations.

I have been using Oracle Exadata for about six months. 

Oracle Exadata is a stable solution.

On a scale from one to ten, I would give Oracle technical support a seven. The involvement of Oracle's people is something that they have to improve because they are operating in very poor countries. We need to clarify with them because the technical people's availability must be well organized for the job to go smoothly. 

Another thing is the language. We speak Portuguese, and the technical people don't speak another language. It starts to get very difficult to work like this. We are not English, and they are not English, and it becomes very difficult to communicate. 

They are the ones with the solution, so they are brilliant at working with Oracle. We can solve all the issues. They have time to share their experience with us. That's one thing that I stated to those guys working on this implementation.

The initial setup was straightforward. But this particular situation is different because we are not talking about putting it on and going into production. We have to move the initial systems to these environments. 

We need to convert some systems to be compatible with those environments. The main challenge is the IT infrastructure. It is not like we buy it, open it, create and edit it. We need to move, and that is the challenge. Right now, we are in the middle of finalizing this movement with migration from legacy to the new environment.

From a technical point of view, it didn't take long because it's straightforward. We started and went step by step until the end or until the machine was available for migration. It was very simple.

We worked with a technical team from Oracle, and our partners supported us and helped us do that. But most of the time, it was between my team and Oracle.

On a scale from one to ten, I would give Oracle Exadata ten.

Basically, we simply use the solution to store our own database. We run more than 135 applications in our bank and we use Oracle to hold the data.

The solution is extremely stable. That's one of the main reasons we are using it.

The product is flexible.

It's a fairly easy-to-use solution.

The solution scales quite well and always meets our needs when we need to extend it.

The product is very easy to install.

Technical support is quite good.

The solution could always be more stable and more reliable. The more they work on this, the better the product will be. That said, for the most part, right now, it's pretty good.

I've been using the solution for two years. It hasn't been that long just yet.

The stability has been very good. There are no bugs or glitches and it doesn't crash or freeze. It's reliable and the performance has been great.

The solution offers excellent scalability. It's one of its great selling features. We never have to worry about it not having enough capacity for our needs.

Currently, we have about 8,000 end-users on this product.

Currently, we're quite happy with Oracle's technical support, If we weren't we would definitely let them know. However, at this time, they are helpful and responsive.

The initial implementation is quite simple and straightforward. It's not difficult or too complex for someone to handle. A company should have no trouble with the setup process. 

For us, the deployment process took around three days. That was just to have all of the planning and other stuff in line and ready to go. Everything all together - including the migration, et cetera, should be three to five days, or something in that ballpark.

We have about 35 people in IT that can handle any maintenance tasks required.

For the initial setup, we do have an integrator. There are three parties involved with the implementation process. There's Oracle, then the distributor, and finally, the party that was contracted for implementation.

We are under contract and pay a license to Oracle. I cannot speak to the exact amount.

We've mostly been using Oracle for our systems, however, we do use MySQL for our verification. 

We're customers and end-users of Oracle.

We are using the latest version of the solution. I cannot speak to the exact version number, however. 

I'd rate the solution at an eight out of ten. We've mostly been quite happy with its overall capabilities. I'd recommend the product to other users and companies.

We use Oracle Exadata to provide data for our analytics in our BI systems. It can be, BI, Tableau, or batch queries. It's a Russian system called 1C and we developed ETL procedures for Oracle Exadata. We don't use any ETL instruments. We only made some packages and control mechanisms that provide us to upload data into the aggregate tables and other usages.

The most valuable feature of Oracle Exadata is the smart scan. We have large TB sessions of approximately 100 per second for each of our three instances. The smart scan allows us the obtain data in time in the enterprise manager.

The solution overall is a complete system.

Oracle Exadata could improve the monitoring system in the enterprise manager, it could be more user-friendly. In most Oracle tools there is a lot of functionality, and sometimes you need to do five or six clicks to find metrics, and sometimes it's a waste of time.

I have been using Oracle Exadata for approximately four years.

Oracle Exadata is the most stable system I have used. The performance is very good.

Oracle Exadata is highly scalable. To scale the solution you contact Oracle for the scalability you want, they give you the details, and you set it up.

We have more than 100 people using this solution in my company.

We do not plan to increase our usage because here in Russia we have some restrictions and we will have to move on without it.

We have used the support from Oracle and it is very good.

I rate the support from Oracle Exadata a five out of five.

Positive

I have used other solutions, such as PostgreSQL, Amazon, and Microsoft. The features that Oracle Exadata has these other solutions do not, such as smart scan or monitoring. If we were to have the same performance as Oracle Exadata, we would have to have more hardware.

The initial setup of Oracle Exadata is very complex. It has steps that need someone with qualifications to be completed.

The price of Oracle Exadata is competitive. There are some features that are outside of the initial purchase license, such as some monitoring packages.

I rate the price of Oracle Exadata a four out of five.

We have DBA administrators that do the maintenance of this solution.

My advice to others is to take courses in Oracle database, Oracle Exadata administration, and other development guides. They need to know how to use the solution before they start.

I rate Oracle Exadata a nine out of ten.