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?
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.
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.