Oracle Exadata Reviews

• Exadata Storage Server software
• Smart Scan

• Sped up SQL response time
• Easy to get support from the vendor

The ASR needs to be improved.

I've used it for three years, from 2012 to 2015.

No issues encountered.

No issues encountered.

Oracle support provided the necessary information to scale the system.

Customer Service:

It's good, 8/10.

Technical Support:

8/10.

In the past we used traditional RAC database architecture. We switched because this type of solution has many drawbacks, and Exadata is the best system for Oracle databases.

It was straightforward using the OneCommand tool that is designed for Exadata deployment.

We used an ACS engineer (advanced customer service) and the field delivery engineer did the implementation.

It is little bit expensive compared to other solutions, but very useful. You just pay for one license which covers all the components within Exadata.

It is a new level of server designed for Oracle database software, so you cannot find any other options with Exadata storage software.

If you have OLT and are working 24/7 on an Oracle database, Exadata is the best solution for you. Before implementing this product you need to define your requirements clearly as this will help you to avoid future issues.

We are service providers and provide this solution to our customers. We deploy the on-prem deployment model.

The most valuable feature is that you have the same familiar environment of an Oracle database but with the additional performance you get from this architecture.

There is no room for improvement because everything that they could solve, they have. It has good storage optimization, hardware actualization, and internal communication network. They made improvements in whatever they could. 

The problem with the Oracle Exadata is that it is a dead-end of technology. The supplier's market is dying, so they have no future. For analytical purposes, companies are now using analytical databases. So they're using databases like MPP, multi-parallel processing databases, things like Greenplum, and Teradata. Exadata has no future. It is going into history. Five years ago, it was top technology. Now, they don't have a future.

It's too expensive per terabyte. It's complex and hard to expand.

I have been using this solution for seven to eight years.

It's stable.

Scalability is really tough because it's scalable as much as an appliance is scalable. If you want to scale it, you need to add an appliance itself. You can buy one-eighth of a rack, one-quarter, one-half of rack. If you still want to extend capacity, you need to buy another module that is another eighth or quarter or half and you need to install it into a rack. It's quite complex. This is one of the reasons why appliances are not that popular anymore because modern databases are on hardware and you just put on another server, another node. It's quite expensive, compared to the commodity hardware.

The initial setup is quite complex because it's an appliance. It's a big box with all the processing power and storage that you need to order and get installed. It's pretty complex.

You need to do the installation which is done by Oracle. It's not just software, it's an appliance. When customers want to buy it, I need to order it. They want it a lot faster and it's actually quite expensive. If Oracle or Oracle partners have this appliance in stock it can be quick but if it's ordered through a manufacturer it can be lengthy. 

I would rate it an eight out of ten.

The technology in the on-premises version of Exadata is pretty much the same as the cloud edition. However, the cloud version is much more flexible when it comes to sizing and pricing.

On-premises Exadata is just as stable as the cloud version. It's a very stable platform.

Setting up Exadata is complex. You need an Oracle vendor or someone who is Oracle-certified to set it up.

I would rate Exadata eight out of 10. If you are considering this solution, I recommend first seeing what other options are available for Oracle and MPP databases. If you are familiar with Oracle and are accustomed to working with it, you should stay with Oracle. For a better price-performance ratio, I would suggest other options and MPP databases.

On-premises

Exadata is Oracle's solution for a fully Engineered Integrated Hardware and Software platform for Oracle Databases. Extensive Storage level features such as Smart Scan, Flash Cache and Hybrid Columnar Compression. The Infiniband Switch is very fast for all communication channels. Excellent performance gains especially for large data warehouse types of applications.

OLTP applications with smaller data footprints don't tend to gain too much from Exadata hardware. The majority of benefits are reaped by applications which are i/o bound and caching helps a great deal with that. Oracle manages the entire hardware and software including database and OS patches but companies need to pay heavily for that service. It is expensive hardware compared to integrated commodity hardware and software.

The Infiniband switch has some distance limitations and a true DR (Disaster Recovery) site cannot be setup with Exadata, The operating system allowed is ONLY OEL (Oracle Enterprise Linux) which is a big limitation. One has to go through Oracle's support system - tickets and service requests to make any changes to the Exadata machine.