Oracle Exadata Reviews

My top 4 most important features of Exadata are:

1. Smart Scan, the ability to offload intensive SQL workloads to the storage servers. Queries are offloaded to the storage layer and only the result sets of relevant data are returned to the database server thus significantly improving performance.

2. Exadata Hybrid Columnar Compression, where we can compress data from 10x to 50x. Deploying databases on the Exadata can significantly reduce the amount of storage that is needed.

3. Exadata Smart Flash Cache automatically moves data between DRAM, flash and spinning SAS or SATA disks to provide best performance.

4. Virtualization is a new feature introduced to the X5-2 family. Now Oracle’s Database Machine can be catered to large enterprise mission critical databases and can house smaller databases that need isolation and now even application servers together with the database. We can connect data intensive applications to the database over low-latency, high throughput infiniband.

We are able to provide a complete solution to our customers from data center installation/configuration, firmware upgrades, ILOM upgrades, OS patching/upgrades, cluster patching/upgrades and database patching/upgrades. We can upgrade the entire stack in a single evening with minimal outage. Depending on the customer’s tolerance for downtime, we can either perform the patching or upgrade in a rolling fashion.

Patching and upgrade services have proven to be a value-add differentiator for SMB and mid-market customers where resources and budgets are often limited. A single consulting resource can patch/upgrade the entire Exadata stack because patching and maintenance has become reliable and simplified.

For the initial instantiation process, the Oracle Exadata Deployment Assistant (OEDA) could have better error checking and pre-check validation as you navigate through the tool. When executing the OneCommand utility, generated logs are decent but the logs are not detailed enough to pinpoint to where the error occurred in the stack. Oracle can do a better job with error isolation. After the OneCommand, other one-off commands have to happen (i.e. we have to login to the infiniband and cisco switch). Ideally, OEM could be leveraged to configure the remaining components of the Exadata after the OneCommand. The idea would be to reduce the number of people required to support the stack. If we leverage OEM, we can leverage a single resource that minimally understands the stack to support the workflow.

I've been using Exadata since V2 in 2009.

For new DBA's trying to understand the Exadata infrastructure, they struggle initially trying to understand all the components between ILOM, ASR, and OEM (what they manage, what they support, and what problem area that they detect) and which does what since they are overlapping. Consolidation management across the Exadata is another common issue on the Exadata. OEM is good at managing individual targets but not so great yet on identifying culprits across environments with heavily consolidated databases. When you look at the compute wholistically, it is difficult to identify what database is consuming most CPU and most I/O resources. Doing any kind of showback is difficult to do across instances.

I only see stability issues with Exadata when I see too much consolidation, and/or the Exadata is not sized properly. Often the customer tries to throw everything and anything on the Exadata, by over-parallelizing OLTP/batch processes without any resource management across any databases.

With the Exadata, if I see an issue with scalability, it is typically goes back to being a sizing issue. The real question I have to ask is: did you get the right Exadata configuration for your database(s). If your Exadata configuration is sized properly, you should not have scalability issues.

If you let every database see every CPU on the Exadata compute node, you can potentially run into scalability issues. Customers who do not take advantage of database resource manager or IO Resource Manager (IORM) often run into performance issues in a consolidated environment. Likewise, if a customer tries to over-parallelize their application code, it can cause scalability issues. We tend to see more issues with improper management of parallel execution on the Exadata because it is perceived as something you can throw anything at.

The Exadata stack is well known and has become a standard platform with Oracle customers; thus, triage to resolution has become much more streamlined. When you create a service ticket with Oracle Support, time to resolution is significantly reduced. On another note, Oracle Field Support engineers are remarkable. They have been quick to respond, flexible, knowledgeable, and willing to work with our schedule.

Oracle Support Engineers are outstanding but you have to know how to navigate the system. Oracle Support provides all the technical support for the Exadata including the database software, OS, and hardware. Not knowing how to navigate through Oracle’s support structure and escalation policies can leave you feeling stranded by the vendor. Logging a support ticket with any component of the Exadata is no different than logging a support ticket for a database issue. You need to know how to raise a severity for a service ticket and how to escalate a support issue with the duty manager when production issues occur. Having a seasoned DMA (database machine administrator) is crucial to a successful Exadata deployment.

Having said that, often with Exadata customers, they can create a service ticket with the wrong Oracle Support group. This can cause confusion and elongated response times at early stages of the Exadata deployment as the service ticket gets routed to different teams within Oracle Support.

Lot of our customers come from best of breed technologies (UCS/Dell/HP, EMC/Hitachi) to choosing Exadata. Typically, our customers choose Exadata for pure performance in IOPs, throughput, and low latency for their database workloads; however, we have seen a trend of customers choose the Exadata platform because they are short staffed, have high rates of attrition, and thus, have inability to support the hardware and software technologies.

The initial setup is straightforward with the Exadata X5-2. We have to re-image the factory Exadata and leverage OneCommand for configuring the compute and storage nodes.

A lot of the initial setup is configured by the Oracle ACS (Advanced Customer Support) organization; however, Viscosity is a certified Exadata implementation specialist and often perform the initial installation and configuration at the customer data center. By the time the customer receives a fully configured Exadata, they are ready to deploy databases as a RAC or non-RAC database.

For our customers, we are able to significantly reduce both CapEx and OpEx for customers for 3-5 years TCO. We are able to:

• Accelerate implementation to meet the functionality demand from the business users
• Deliver quick implementations to meet the market demands
• Lower implementation costs

Setup costs for the Exadata varies from customer to customer and depends on database size, number of databases, and number of applications. For our most recent customer in Dallas Texas, the cost rolled up to approximately 800k for 2 X Quarter racks, which include storage cell software, and 25k for setup services. To determine day-to-day cost, we estimated the cost to average about 7k per month for both QTR racks.

A lot of our customers typically look at two other options. We have seen customers perform side-by-side evaluations by building their own high performance system with EMC/Pure Storage/Violin All Flash Array and UCS/HP/Dell blades or perform comparisons with a converged system such as VCE‘s Vblock. Customers typically ask for a proof-of-concept demo and run performance benchmarks with their own database and application to see the immediate impact and value-add for their organization. Our last 3 customers have compared Exadata with the Vblock.

For new customers who are about to embark on the Exadata journey, they should consult with a vendor specializing in Exadata implementations for the first set of database migrations and technical direction. Customers should also do the proper sizing exercises either with Oracle or with the Exadata Specialty niche vendor to buy the suitable Exadata configuration what will suit their business needs for the next several years.

When purchasing Exadata, they should also look into purchasing either the ZFS Storage Appliance (ZFSSA) or the Zero Data Loss Recovery Appliance (ZDLRA) to offload their backups to leveraging Infiniband technology for maximum throughput.

OEM CC 12c provides a comprehensive monitoring and management of the Exadata platform. Not only can OEM monitor and maintain at the hardware level for compute, storage and network but also at the OS, cluster and database level. OEM Cloud Control can monitor all components of the Exadata.

One of the less well appreciated features of engineered systems in general, and Exadata in particular, is the speed with which a customer can get up and running. Having all components, both hardware and software, fully configured, tested, and optimised on delivery is a major customer win.

To fully appreciate this you have to consider the alternative, which is traditionally a best of breed approach, and how long this takes customers, and the effort involved in wiring everything and ensuring full interoperability between both the hardware and software components. Having experienced the issues with this approach many times in the past, the fully converged approach of engineered systems certainly saves a lot of effort.

In addition to the enhanced speed of operational readiness, the other major, but less well appreciated benefit, is one of standardisation. Many large organisations have a wide and varied oracle database, both in terms of hardware and software. A big advantage I have seen is standardisation onto the one hardware platform and a minimal number of software versions. This has improved operational effectiveness.

Several barriers to entry have been overcome with the latest X5 generation, in particular moving to more flexible sizing (elastic configurations) allows customers to choose the exact fit of compute and storage resources they require.

I've used this product for nearly 4 years now. I've used all versions of Exadata from V2, all the way up to X5. This covers 5 generations of enhancements.

Issues encountered tend to business process problems or people problems. The issues tend not to be technical.

In the earlier days of the V2 generation, and with customers pushing the then limited memory and cpu sizings available, stability was not at the levels encountered today.

With properly sized memory parameters and with the later generations of the Exadata software, stability is excellent.

Have worked on expanding racks with multi-generation racks, the promise of start small and grow over time is delivered fairly effortlessly.

Technical support can be patchy, particularly a couple of years back, the number of support personnel with exadata skills was perhaps not at the level it could have been. That being said, I have continually been impressed with the field engineers. I have encountered some who's dedication and commitment to fixing issues went way above what I would have expected.

Storage growth, and the possibility of utilising HCC to drive this down was a large driver for switching.

The initial setup and deployment of an Exadata rack is straightforward it has been well engineered to be a very quick initial setup.

The best advice is to scope upfront. Do a proper sizing exercise, get some outside assistance if you need it to get the sizing correct. If you are looking at a large deployment, consider piloting first, as you don't want to have a large amount of kit landing and then spend a long time on the migration.

The most valuable feature is the integration of the various components that make the performance soar. More specifically the presence of storage indexes along with the Exadata Storage Server software, which delivers process offloading, allows us to deliver better performance without indexes--saving space and CPU. This innovative feature is not something we would be able to replicate with other solutions. In addition, we consider the features smart scan, smart flashcache, smart flash log and hybrid columnar compression very useful.

Prior to Exadata, we were relying on daily ETLs from multiple source systems to load data into base tables, then we prepared a summary and materialized views from the base to data marts which were eventually exposed to the end users. This process used to take 18 hours. So, the data was always at least 18 hours late, and occasionally later, if the ETLs failed. This caused two issues: first, most managers simply were not able to make quick decisions because the data was stale and second, for most important functions, the users got the data from our OLTP system which taxed that system's capacity.

After Exadata, we observed three immediate benefits:

• The ETLs finish in 3 hours (down from 18), making the data fresh and enabling the managers to make quick decisions. Campaigns used to take days but take a few hours now
• Users no longer go to the OLTP system, reducing the impact there and saving us from upgrades
• There is no need to build summaries; so some of the data is available almost immediately, allowing most decisions to be taken on near-realtime data which was impossible pre-Exadata

There are three possible enhancements:

• Build a stronger, more responsive support team.
• Add a RAID-5 like storage layout for customers to save space with the full understanding that performance will be less (which could be fine for non-prod systems).
• Add storage level replication without the use of Data Guard, which is quite useful in case of organizations that rely on that technology for their Disaster Recovery effort.

I've used it for 4 years

Yes; mostly due to the database version being different. We were upgrading from 10g to Exadata which ran 11g; so there were some issues we had to overcome; but those were expected. Quite honestly, our deployment was smooth in Exadata itself due to our deep understanding of the technology. Without it, I am not sure if it would have been that smooth.

Yes; the initial versions had a lot of firmware issues that caused the cells to reboot, which caused the ASM software to rebalance the diskgroups. It mostly occurred in the X2 system. The X4 system has been quite stable. However, it's important to point out that Oracle generally releases firmware updates quite fast to remove any stability issues. We encountered them because we didn't apply these due to our internal reasons.

No; scalability has been pretty awesome.

It leaves a lot to be desired. It has improved; but still a lot to go. I rate it 6 on a 10 point scale.

I gave an overall rating of 9 to Exadata X4 due to the quality of support personnel during installation and after sales events. That is going up but still leaves something to be desired.

We used Oracle database on HPUX. We switched because it was impossible to deliver performance without additional indexes. Indexes took up space and slowed down data insertion performance. Exadata solved these by enhancing performance without the need for indexes.

Oracle sends professional installers for installation and deployment. So it was fairly simple. However, as I mentioned earlier, we do have a deep technical expertise base so it worked in our favor. Without that expertise, I can't be sure if would not have been complex.

We implemented everything with our in house team.

Yes, we did evaluate Teradata, Netezza and Greenplum.

First and foremost, develop or hire a deep technical talent base inhouse, even if it's just one person. The technical role is called Database Machine Administrator (DMA). Planning is winning half the battle. There are tiny little things that makes a big difference. For instance, how to decide whether to keep the indexes you have--it's not something you can outsource. Second, get the installation checklist (detailed) from Oracle and establish SLAs for each item meticulously along with the hand off details. Third, if you don't have it, consider Oracle Enterprise Manager Grid Control to manage the Exadata system. Fourth, decide to use Oracle Platinum Support (free for Exadata) from day one. Finally, get ready to be wowed.

The innovative use of all the technologies integrated so creatively and functionally that it provides an immense performance boost impossible to attain with do it yourself systems. For instance the secret sauce is Exadata Storage Server (ESS) software, which is unique to Exadata, can't be replicated even with other massively parallel systems.

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.