PeerSpot user
Sr. Director, Systems & Databases at GTech
Real User
Thanks to Smart Scan, the amount of data transferred from storage to database nodes significantly decreases.
Pros and Cons
  • "Backup/Restore performance: Fast backups, fast restores (especially useful for creating clone environments)."
  • "Certification should also be improved. Today, Oracle doesn't certify applications with engineered systems."

How has it helped my organization?

We have implemented Oracle EBS on Exadata several times. We mostly used Exadata as the data layer. The most significant gain was in the area of performance. Performance increased significantly both for OLTP and batch works.

In addition to the performance increase, we saw a significant decrease in IT operations, because the necessity of SQL tunning is decreased, the total work that is spent on administration operations decreased, and so on.
Another significant gain was the efficiency of the administration. In Exadata environments, one database machine admin (or DBA team) could manage not only the database, but storage (cells) and the OS as well.

As the Exadata is hardened by Oracle and it is the most important one among the system in the engineered systems group of Oracle, we haven't seen any big Exadata specific problems that could not be solved, yet. The latest Exadata machine is generation 6 (X-6) so there is a current knowledge base.

What is most valuable?

  • Backup/Restore performance: Fast backups, fast restores (especially useful for creating clone environments)
  • Low Memory utilization on database nodes: The database performs less work, especially for I/O. This is due to the ability to offload processing from the database nodes (compute nodes) to the storage nodes (cells).
  • Decrease in I/O (from the perspective of database nodes): thanks to smart scan, the amount of data transferred from storage to database nodes significantly decreases.
  • High I/O performance: Due to Smart Scan, storage indexes and intelligent storage server nodes and storage server software(cells).
  • Decrease in database size and decrease in I/O: Due to Exadata specific compression techniques, database size decreases. In addition, the amount of I/O that is done for querying the same amount of data is decreased, as well. (This one also increases performance of the queries.)
  • Increase in redo write speed: Smart flash logs provide better LGWR performance, as LGWR writes redo data both flash and disk in parallel. It considers whichever of these writes completes first as done.
  • Smart Flash Logs are a new feature that comes with 11.2.2.2.4 cell software. They are not for reading. They are used like a circular buffer for redo writes. Smart Flash Logs can enhance the performance of an OLTP database.
  • Ability to prioritize I/O using IORM: IORM is used for managing the Storage I/O resources. We can manage our I/O resources based on the Categories, Databases and Consumer Groups. The hierarchy that we build, used to distribute I/O.
  • IORM must be used on Exadata if you have a lot of databases running on an Exadata Machine. IORM is a friend of consolidation projects, in my opinion.
  • Automatic SR creation using ASR: Decreases management costs. Oracle Auto Service Request (ASR) is a secure, scalable, customer-installable software feature of warranty and Oracle Support Services that provides auto-case generation when common hardware component faults occur. ASR manager can be installed on an external Oracle Linux or Oracle Solaris server. Also, you can use one of the Exadata database nodes for installing ASR manager (not preferred).
  • Implementing QOS for CPU using Instance caging: Instance caging can be used to limit the CPU usage in the database level. It is a good thing for building consolidation environment. It can be configured for preventing the non production residing on the same Exadata database machine to allocate the resources excessively, leaving no space in CPU queues for the production environments.
  • Fast support by Oracle: Maybe it is because it is an engineered system or maybe it is because of another reason, the quality and speed of Oracle support is very satisfactory.
  • Single vendor support: Software and hardware support by Oracle.
  • High Availability: It is a Highly available database machine. It provides built-in high availability, at both software (for example: Oracle RAC) and hardware levels.
  • Scalability: Exadata is a scale-out compute and storage platform.
  • Ability to create tablespaces and datafiles very quickly.
  • Offers a database environment built by Oracle: An Oracle database machine, that is built, optimized, certified and supported by the RDBMS vendor (Oracle). (Oracle RDBMS is the concern of this machine. Exadata is built for it.)
  • InfiniBand network for RAC private interconnect: InfiniBand functionality. CPU cycles of the servers are not used for InfiniBand transport.

What needs improvement?

Product specific documentation is satisfactory, but the interoperability documents should be improved. For example, there should be a step-by-step installation document for installing EBS on Exadata. Similarly, the documentation should be revised and Exadata specific notes should be added where necessary. We saw this need while installing EBS 12.2 database tier on Exadata. The document was written for the subject “Installing EBS 12.2 on Linux X86-64 (Exadata fits this category)". However; the OS RPMs that the document instructs to install, were not not present even in the latest Exadata. However, as Oracle says, Exadata has all the RPMs and they are up-to-date, so we were confused. We created several SRs, and even today it is not certain. We installed the RPMs specified in the document into Exadata. This was okay, but they may not even be necessary at all.

Certification should also be improved. Today, Oracle doesn't certify applications with engineered systems. We just check the RDBMS and OS certification to decide whether our application's database is cerfied with Exadata. This is actually enough for most of the cases. However, certifying specific data layers of certain applications (like EBS's database tier) on Exadata and adding some notes and recommendations (especially for performance) and restrictions (where necessary) can be a good move.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have used this since 2011.

Buyer's Guide
Oracle Exadata
March 2024
Learn what your peers think about Oracle Exadata. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: March 2024.
765,386 professionals have used our research since 2012.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

We have not had any stability issues.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

We have not had any scalability issues. Oracle Real Application Clusters on Extended Distance Clusters is not supported with Exadata. So, basically, it is not supported to build RAC extended clusters on multiple Exadata machines. The good news is that RAC extended clusters will probably be supported with Exadata in Oracle Database 12.2 (12CR2). It is not certain yet, but it is expected, so we will see.

How are customer service and support?

Actually, a consulting company (Oracle Partner) giving the technical support of this product, we didn't encounter any problems by getting advanced support by Oracle and we didn't get any unrecoverable problems while implementing what we learnt from the user guides and Oracle support documents.
The technical support of Exadata is quite good (if it is given by the IT professionals who know what they are doing).

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

Our customers were using conventional converged infrastructures and standalone servers. The reason they switched can be explained with the following list of items:

  • Exadata is optimized by Oracle for Oracle databases.
  • All the costs, capabilities and expected results are actually already defined for Exadata. No big surprises.
  • Single vendor support for the whole stack.
  • Unique and innovative capabilities, such as Smart Scan, Exabus and HCC.

How was the initial setup?

Setup is straightforward. You just fill out a deployment form that Oracle sends you. By filling out this deployment form, you actually give all the necessary inputs for the deployment (such as IP addresses, host names, NTP server IP addresses, DNS server names, etc.)

Most of the time, Oracle field engineers, who are well-trained for deploying Exadata, do the setup on-site. After the initial setup, any experienced admin who knows Oracle RAC and Oracle RDBMS, can go further to provision databases (create databases, do performance related configurations and so on) on Exadata or they can even further migrate databases to Exacta.

After the first setup, Oracle still answers your questions and supports you to make sure that deployment meets the customer requirements.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

I recommend a proper sizing. A proper sizing makes you decide how big (1/8,1/4 etc) your Exadata should be. In the sizing phase, you can also decide whether to license all cores, or reduce the number cores using capacity-on-demand features of Exadata, as well. This has a direct impact on licensing.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

In general, our customers are generally interested in Exadata. But, there are cases where the power of Exadata is just too much. Especially when the databases are not so big and when the transaction counts are low.

From an Oracle perspective, our customers also evaluate the Oracle Database Appliance (ODA). The decision is made according to the needs. If ODA is not enough for the customer’s needs, they consider Exadata.

What other advice do I have?

I recommend others to define their needs and the things they expect from Exadata. I strongly recommend doing a PoC to ensure that Exadata meets their expectations.

Of course, reviewing the Exadata related documents and real life stories will give a better idea about the tasks that are done for implementing an Exadata environment and the tasks that are done to get the most benefit from Exadata.

Disclosure: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer: My company is a partner of Oracle.
PeerSpot user
Semih Erakay - PeerSpot reviewer
Director Of e-Transformation Services at VBT Bilgi Teknolojileri A.Ş.
Real User
Straightforward setup and stable
Pros and Cons
  • "Parallelism is the most valuable feature."
  • "The scalability can be improved as it is not a parallel execution."

What is our primary use case?

I am using Oracle Exadata for financial projects.

What is most valuable?

Parallelism is the most valuable feature.

What needs improvement?

The scalability can be improved as it is not a parallel execution.

The license is expensive and has room for improvement.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using Oracle Exadata for 15 years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

I give the stability of Oracle Exadata an eight out of ten.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

I give the scalability of Oracle Exadata an eight out of ten.

How are customer service and support?

We are a platinum member for support.

How was the initial setup?

The initial setup is straightforward. The deployment was done by a consultant and took one hour.

What about the implementation team?

The implementation was completed by a consultant.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

We pay for an annual license and it is expensive.

What other advice do I have?

I give Oracle Exadata a nine out of ten.

We have around 10,000 users.

We have 15 administrators and three consultants that help with maintenance.

I recommend Oracle Exadata.

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

On-premises
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
Buyer's Guide
Oracle Exadata
March 2024
Learn what your peers think about Oracle Exadata. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: March 2024.
765,386 professionals have used our research since 2012.
Senior Technical Director at AEM Corporation
Consultant
Top 5
Exadata can significantly improve performance but there's a learning curve in a few key areas.

What is our primary use case?

Primarily OLTP but report is done against a combination of Materialized Views and transactional tables.

How has it helped my organization?

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.

What is most valuable?

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.

What needs improvement?

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. 

For how long have I used the solution?

ten years

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

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.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

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.

How are customer service and support?

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.

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

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.

How was the initial setup?

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.

What about the implementation team?

We implement Exadata in-house and have gone through several migration methodologies.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

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.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

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.

What other advice do I have?

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.

Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
it_user3309 - PeerSpot reviewer
it_user3309Presenter at a consultancy
Consultant

Post 2012 if the Exadata is not set for GATHER_SYSTEM_STATS('EXADATA') a lot of the benefits will not show up. You will then remain in the '2x to 3x' club of Exadata performance instead of the potential 15x performance. -- quoting Mark Smith at Database Specialists -- in Presentation at IOUG Collaborate15 conference in Las Vegas April 2015.
I have experienced the marked difference in performance from just that one setting change.

Vedat Gunes - PeerSpot reviewer
BI & Analytics Manager at a insurance company with 1,001-5,000 employees
Real User
Top 5Leaderboard
Useful data processing, minimal maintenance, and simple deployment
Pros and Cons
  • "The most valuable feature of Oracle Exadata is its capabilities for storing and processing data. It is very good for our domain."
  • "Oracle Exadata could improve the platform performance tuning should be easier, automated, and user-friendly."

What is our primary use case?

Oracle Exadata is used to keep our data, which is related to the company. It collects it from the source system and stores it in the enterprise data warehouse platform. For storing the data itself and serving the data on a different platform for the company.

What is most valuable?

The most valuable feature of Oracle Exadata is its capabilities for storing and processing data. It is very good for our domain. 

The solution only requires one person for maintenance and support in an average-sized insurance company.

What needs improvement?

Oracle Exadata could improve the platform performance tuning should be easier, automated, and user-friendly.

In a future release, I would like to have new analytical capabilities.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using Oracle Exadata for more than eight years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

The stability of Oracle Exadata is good.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

Oracle Exadata is scalable.

We have data engineers and data scientists using this platform, and in my team, there are 25 of them, and all of them are using this platform.

How are customer service and support?

We request a heath check for issues from the support and we have a deal with them to support us.

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

How was the initial setup?

Oracle Exadata's initial setup is easy. Installing the solution on our system in the data center takes less than one day.

I would rate the initial setup of Oracle Exadata a four out of five.

What about the implementation team?

We did the implementation using our team and a third-party company.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

There is an annual license to use this solution. The solution is expensive.

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

What other advice do I have?

I would recommend this solution to others.

I rate Oracle Exadata an eight out of ten. 

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

On-premises
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
Deputy CEO, CIO at a insurance company with 51-200 employees
Real User
Top 10
Has newer technology and improved memory that gives it better performance
Pros and Cons
  • "What I found most valuable in Oracle Exadata is its newer technology that gives better performance. It has more recent hardware and significant changes in the architecture, so it's better than older solutions."
  • "Oracle Exadata has room for improvement in pricing, especially for smaller companies. The solution is okay for bigger companies, but for smaller companies, it isn't."

What is our primary use case?

My company uses Oracle Exadata for operational databases. It's for implementing pension, security, and life insurance.

How has it helped my organization?

My company is data-heavy. It's a data-oriented company, and Oracle Exadata enables it to perform many calculations and data processing in real time, which would otherwise be difficult.

What is most valuable?

What I found most valuable in Oracle Exadata is its newer technology that gives better performance. It has more recent hardware and significant changes in the architecture, so it's better than older solutions.

I'm satisfied with Oracle Exadata because it now has ten out of ten memory, which makes its overall performance much better than previous versions.

What needs improvement?

Oracle Exadata has room for improvement in pricing, especially for smaller companies. The solution is okay for bigger companies, but for smaller companies, it isn't because it adds higher than usual extra hardware costs. If Oracle wants to reach more small-scale businesses, it should improve on Oracle Exadata pricing.

For how long have I used the solution?

We've been using Oracle Exadata for ten years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

The stability of Oracle Exadata is excellent. I don't hear complaints about its stability, so it's a nine out of ten.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

This new version of Oracle Exadata has improved scalability, which I find incredible. Its scalability is nine out of ten.

How are customer service and support?

My company uses advanced Oracle Exadata technical support. The support is excellent, so I'd rate it as nine out of ten. It's a long-term cooperation where my team knows the experts by name, and the support team is always available for my company. The service is excellent.

How would you rate customer service and support?

Positive

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

Ten years ago, my company migrated from IBM Db2 to Oracle Exadata because, upon calculation, Oracle Exadata is more beneficial from an economic point of view than IBM Db2.

My company was on some mainframe legacy software and IBM Db2, and it had many problems, so it decided to switch to Oracle Exadata. That was more of a platform-related migration than a database-related migration. My company made the right decision to move to Oracle Exadata.

How was the initial setup?

The initial setup for Oracle Exadata was quite complex, so it's a six out of ten for me.

Deploying Oracle Exadata took several hours. I organized it in advance, so I was well prepared for it. I had to migrate from the previous hardware to the new hardware or appliance, and the organization in both databases was different, so the task could have been more straightforward. You need to know what you're doing to deploy Oracle Exadata successfully.

What about the implementation team?

I deployed Oracle Exadata with the help of company experts and Oracle experts. It would be best to have Oracle experts for more delicate maintenance tasks or upgrades.

What was our ROI?

There's ROI from Oracle Exadata. My company saves one hundred percent using Oracle Exadata versus Oracle database licensed on different hardware.

It also depends on what you compare. My company uses Oracle solutions, so the Oracle database has many advantages for my company. For example, the company has a no-code generator software that uses the Oracle database, so the Oracle database is an essential part of the environment.

Comparing Oracle Exadata against non-Exadata, using Oracle Exadata is wiser for my company because it's cheaper to have Oracle Exadata than not because the company has to buy additional licenses and courses, which would be more expensive.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

Oracle Exadata is costly. Its licensing should also be more versatile. Smaller companies would benefit if Oracle Exadata had lower pricing.

Pricing for a solution should be justified, so you must make several calculations to evaluate the price correctly. Oracle Exadata adds costs on the hardware which you wouldn't otherwise have. Still, when you go with the solution, it offloads some of the database processing on the processors, so you don't need a license for database use, and it uploads it to store sales. It means that when you do data processing intensively, or you're processing large data sets, the database will be offloaded to the storage CPU, which means that Oracle Exadata gives you free database processing, so at some point, Oracle Exadata becomes cheaper versus licensing the database and running it on your server or in the cloud.

This is when you need to carefully calculate and see if Oracle Exadata is the right choice for your company. I wouldn't give it a very high rating in terms of affordability, but it still depends. For my company, for example, it's cheaper to use Oracle Exadata than use Oracle database without Oracle Exadata. It depends on the customer. It's up to you to calculate. I'd give the solution a five out of ten for affordability because it's not cheap.

My company pays for Oracle Exadata licenses according to need. For example, my company uses a real-time cluster and has possible configurations that require licensing for the database, though that's quite modest. My company isn't huge, so the environment isn't large.

What other advice do I have?

My company uses the latest version of Oracle Exadata.

Maintaining Oracle Exadata requires one main DBA involved with the maintenance, and one backup, where the backup takes care of limited tasks involving storage, network, etc. My company also works with an on-call service as needed. It's not a continuous service or a service you use regularly. My company only calls when it's necessary. For example, if there's an event or incident in the production environment or a major maintenance task, such as an Oracle Exadata upgrade. My company also has some people involved when there's a change in the environment, or it needs help with the infrastructure.

Internally, my company has around one thousand Oracle Exadata users, but externally, that number is more than one hundred thousand. There's no plan to increase its usage because the company has slow internal growth, but the growth rate is average externally. All people within my company use Oracle Exadata.

My rating for Oracle Exadata is nine out of ten, though it would still depend on the customer. Some customers may not need the solution for their environment, but for me, I'd rate it a nine.

My company is an Oracle Exadata customer.

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

On-premises
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
Juliet Hoimonthi - PeerSpot reviewer
Manager at Robi Axiata Limited
Real User
Top 5
Empowers Oracle databases by supporting the movement of SQL queries based on database outputs
Pros and Cons
  • "We have used this solution for a long period of time so it has become easy for us to query any kind of data from Oracle Exadata which has been valuable."
  • "We have experienced some issues with processing unstructured data on Exadata. This is an important requirement for our AIML based use case. Reactive analytics data can not be prepared easily in Oracle Exadata."

What is our primary use case?

We do use it in conjunction with Hadoop due to limitations. We have around 50 users supported by this solution. All sources of required data from various sources and systems are prepared in Oracle Exadata. We write down the SQL queries and take the required output from the Oracle Exadata database. Tableau is connected to the Oracle Exadata database and we complete all analysis, reports and visualization using Tableau. Overall, this is a good solution.

What is most valuable?

We have used this solution for a long period of time so it has become easy for us to query any kind of data from Oracle Exadata which has been valuable. 

What needs improvement?

We have experienced some issues with processing unstructured data on Exadata. This is an important requirement for our AIML based use case. Reactive analytics data can not be prepared easily in Oracle Exadata.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using this solution for seven years.

What other advice do I have?

I would rate this solution an eight out of ten. 

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

On-premises
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
PeerSpot user
Enterprise Architect at TechnipEnergies
Real User
Good performance, security, and technical support
Pros and Cons
  • "The performance of the data is the most important part."
  • "The management monitoring tools are quite important and an area that needs some improvement."

What is our primary use case?

We are using Oracle Exadata as a warehouse for historical reporting to provide the historical data that can be utilized by Power BI for reporting.

How has it helped my organization?

This solution meets all of my expectations.

What is most valuable?

The performance of the data is the most important part. It's quite good, and the security features are also quite good.

What needs improvement?

The management monitoring tools are quite important and an area that needs some improvement. The monitoring or consoles that are available should be available across the platform, and not only seen when logging onto the server.

The availability of the monitoring should be responsive and available all of the time.

I am planning to switch from Oracle Exadata to one of Microsoft's solutions, such as Synapse Analytics, to improve the performance. 

We have our Power BI and other parts in the cloud. 

The Exadata, being on-premises, creates problems at times because of the gateway.

I recommend that Oracle come up with connectors that can be utilized by Oracle Exadata to convert the data that we have in Oracle to MySQL. We can extend the reach of Exadata to other toolsets.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been working with Oracle Exadata for three years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

It's stable and I have not experienced any issues.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

This solution is scalable.

How are customer service and technical support?

I have been working with Oracle support for the last 15 years. I have no issues with support.

How was the initial setup?

The initial setup was done by my infrastructure team and I don't think that they found any difficulty in it. They are knowledgeable in Oracle, so they didn't have any problems.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

We are okay with the licensing, as it's not much. Oracle is always costly but it's fine.

What other advice do I have?

The ecosystem that we have in our company is majorly Microsoft-based. When I refer to power BI or other integrated tools, they are by Microsoft.

I would certainly recommend using Oracle. They have their cloud applications and I would say that it is not a good idea to go with an on-premises deployment. My suggestion is that people go with OCI instead.

I would rate this solution an eight out of ten.

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

On-premises
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
Humza BHatti - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Associate at a consultancy with 1,001-5,000 employees
Reseller
Top 5
A scalable solution, but there are a lot of performance-related issues
Pros and Cons
  • "It is a scalable solution."
  • "The performance could be improved."

What is our primary use case?

You have to contact Oracle to make any changes and identify any issues. If you own the product, you may have to hire somebody who understands the product.

What needs improvement?

The performance could be improved.

For how long have I used the solution?

This solution is deployed hybrid cloud.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

There are a lot of performance-related issues that I have encountered with Oracle Exadata. You need someone with the expertise to make changes and recommend completing daily exercises for better performance.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

It is a scalable solution, and I rate it an eight out of ten.

How are customer service and support?

I have not contacted technical support before.

How was the initial setup?

The setup requires proper security groups if you want to use it. I rate the setup an eight out of ten. Most of the users we've worked with use Oracle Exadata, but we've worked with major banks which prefer to own the solution for security purposes.

What other advice do I have?

I rate the solution a seven out of ten. Regarding advice, if you're scaling performance-wise or writing something on Oracle Exadata, you should understand how the performance works. You should also understand the cost of what the query is going to be and know the scalability.

Disclosure: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer: Partner
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Updated: March 2024
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Buyer's Guide
Download our free Oracle Exadata Report and get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions.