Oracle Exadata Reviews

The primary use case is for maintaining contextual databases. In other words, it is for our online applications and services.  

The most valuable part of the product is performance enhancement.  

We still have to migrate to the latest version of Exadata, which we plan to do later this year or in the next year. Because of that, I am not sure we have anything that we would need to have added. I would need to consult our DBAs after we have migrated. They might find some issue that they would like addressed. But off the top of my head and because we are not on the newest version, it is not right to say the product needs something when it might already be there or has been updated.  

Exadata is practically a perfect solution for us as it stands. Because we are pretty satisfied with it, we have not rushed into the upgrade. I am not sure that we are fully utilizing the options that are currently on the table. For our contextual databases, it is the best option and we do not have any really an issue with it that needs improvement.  

We also need the product for other purposes. For analytics, we use Identity Two and we also need Microsoft Escrow Server for certain tasks. We accept some minor issues that I could identify if I discuss that with our DBAs. I do not think anything bothers us that much that we would need improvements. Of course, the price is the price, so it could always be less expensive. Maybe there are other considerations from the marketing side, but I do not deal with that.  

There are some issues with accounting where we really can not calculate return-on-investment. Exadata pays some fees for you so there is simplified billing, but that separates us from some evaluation of usage. Maybe Oracle could offer a solution for resolving that. Maybe a calculator or separate report that could help customers to find this data somehow. More clarity on this usage might affect how you estimate the workload of the storage and could really make clear what you get in return on using the product for the month.  

We migrated from Identity two on to Exadata sometime between five and six years ago.  

It is stable like other Oracle products.  

It is scalable. 

We developed some software for migration. The previous database was on the mainframe server and it was quite a nice product. We have a lot of experience, both with Oracle Exadata, with other databases, and other systems that we also use. We work with many solutions and we use what we think is best for a particular task. Contextual databases work especially well with Exadata.   

It is not really clear how to calculate the ROI for Exadata. Because you need to do the calculations for yourself, you need to know the license modeling pretty well. Even then, it is not very clear how much it costs for Exadata performance, CPU, and other additions. You really can not calculate these points when Exadata pays for you. Oracle could help customers to find out the actual numbers and help with calculations for ROI.  

If you compare an Oracle database on your system to buying into Exadata, which is an engineering system consisting of hardware, then, of course, it is more expensive. On the other hand, it gives you some possibilities to experience better performance than you would have if you would run Oracle on your servers. When you scale it up, it means that you actually get this additional hardware for free. You need to pay more for the license instead. This is one of the cost differences that is not very clear how to calculate. It is hard to tell how long it takes for one product or the other to become a cost advantage.  

There are some extra costs for hardware and for everything else if you upgrade to have better performance. At that point, the system uses not just the standard license, but also the storage shares. This can be quite significant when doing larger implementations. So the clarity of the cost models is something that could probably use some improvement from the Oracle side.  

It is quite difficult really to compare and evaluate all the solutions available. The market is pretty mature. We have to just make a shortlist of possible solutions from whatever products and solutions we are looking at and go from there. It is not realistic to do an in-depth analysis of everything.  

A lot of solutions that are more oriented toward network monitoring are now rebranded. The markets itself was previously called anomaly detection systems. Sometimes it is not quite clear which of the solutions really have additional capabilities that can make a difference without really studying them in-depth. We obviously looked at some extra products to contemplate and compare, and we continue to. But, for now, what we see and what we decided is where we will be staying. I am not sure that any product really offers a significant upgrade that is worth migrating for.  

Darktrace is a step ahead in some ways but, in this area, it is really difficult to assess clearly because there is a lot of the marketing fog. It is sometimes quite difficult to get to the facts about the advantages. It also may not be worth migrating when the product you are using will develop the same or similar capabilities.  

On a scale from one to ten where one is the worst and ten is the best, I would rate Oracle Exadata highly. If you compare it to other engineering databases, I would rate it a nine.  

Practically perfect from my point-of-view.  

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.

This solution meets all of my expectations.

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

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.

I have been working with Oracle Exadata for three years.

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

This solution is scalable.

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

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.

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

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.

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. 

eleven 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 work on data warehouses and data marts.

The tool performs well with a large database. It is easy to integrate the tool with other ELT solutions. The performance and data transformation are excellent. We recommend it to our clients. The tool has good storage technologies.

The product must make more investments in object storage technologies. Six to seven years ago, the product had an SQL-based analytics feature that did not work well. The vendor must consider investing in it. The analytics features must be improved.

I have been using the solution for more than ten years.

Oracle Exadata is a robust product.

We must pay more money if we need more storage. I rate the product’s scalability a ten out of ten. The tool is suitable for enterprises and SMBs.

I rate the tool’s pricing a three out of ten. The solution is expensive.

Teradata is a competitor. If we use Teradata, we must use their data warehouse model.

I will recommend the tool to others. Overall, I rate the product a nine out of ten.

I use Oracle Exadata in the context of banking. The system's ability to quickly access and process large amounts of data is crucial, especially when handling extensive datasets. This rapid data retrieval ensures minimal delays for end-users accessing the system.

It offers a significant advantage for accommodating a large number of users. To put it in perspective, a standard Oracle database may only support around four hundred to five hundred simultaneous users. However, when utilizing Exadata, this capacity can be dramatically increased to accommodate two thousand or even three thousand simultaneous end users, demonstrating its scalability and performance capabilities.

There's room for improvement in terms of deployment, as it could be made faster and more user-friendly. I also have reservations about the cost, it is significantly high.

I have been using it for several years.

It provides good stability capabilities.

It can effectively handle a large number of users, making it a robust and scalable solution.

Their customer support is really good. I would rate it eight out of ten.

Positive

The initial setup is not complex and it can be installed in just a few hours.

The duration of deployment depends on a variety of factors, including the database size, the number of tables to be installed, and the configuration of storage spaces. The process can be time-consuming, and it's highly dependent on the specific requirements of the deployment. One or two engineers are typically sufficient to maintain Exadata.

It is quite expensive. Nevertheless, its numerous strengths and advantages make it a compelling choice.

If you opt for cloud-based solutions, it might not be a necessary choice for your business. However, in non-cloud environments, Exadata becomes valuable for handling a large user base efficiently, leading to faster performance. I woudl rate it eight out of ten.

The solution is used for Extreme Bare metal and virtual compute performance for the business to scale up as per the heterogeneous database loads.

Exadata has greatly benefited our business cycle as operational efficiency has improved by 200%.

Also, our business analytics platform performance has improved by 300%

Exadata uses a scale-out design with unique optimizations that include persistent memory, SQL query offload, and built-in resource management to optimize performance for OLTP, analytics, machine learning, and mixed workloads running in consolidated environments.

• Exadata Smart Flash Cache - caches database objects with flash memory operations.
• Integrated appliance with all components supported by one vendor, Oracle.

• It needs built-in big data features.
• I'd like to see smart auto-healing features with machine-learning libraries.
• Less power consumption would be nice.
• It needs integrated cloud software to enable cloud connectivity.

Exadata X9M uses a combination of scale-out storage, RDMA over Converged Ethernet networking, database offload, persistent memory accelerator, and PCIe Flash to deliver extremely high performance from memory and flash.

We have been using the solution for ten years.

There were no stability issues.

We've had no issues scaling it for our needs.

Customer Service:

Oracle customer service is the best in the industry.

Technical Support:

Technical support for Exadata is the best in the industry.

Positive

Traditional Oracle RAC to Oracle Exadata RAC due to having scalable and robust database consolidated platform for upcoming release 12.2, which can consolidate multi-character sets within a single container and heterogeneous data guard support.

It was a bit complex to fit in with our business requirements initially, but post-implementation it was great. It will work as the most stable and scalable database ever run on Linux with various complex workloads.

We implemented it in-house and advisors for major global Exadata deployments helped.

We have seen a 300% ROI.

Oracle needs to reduce the licensing cost to get more market penetration and offer an Open Financing Option.

We evaluated SAP HANA and other relevant platform for analytics.

I would truly recommend this to all SMEs and Big Enterprises for consolidating databases with a unified next-generation platform.

Database Consolidation and Performance are best on this platform. It is tailor-made to run the Oracle database and hence the defaults on this device force you to choose Oracle's best practices. No more moaning by your storage admin that he wants to carve out the Luns, that he doesn't understand ASM stripe and Mirror Everything S.A.M.E, and that he knows better what's good for the Oracle database. With the latest Optane memory and in-memory options, the flash cache becomes even more powerful.

The ability to patch with no downtime and the ability to ensure all the prerequisites are satisfied without manual intervention saves time and effort and makes the systems we deploy for our clients more secure. Licensing costs too are less for Oracle Linux and for clients moving to the Oracle cloud, it is included in the price of the subscription. With the new Exadata cloud @customer offering, there are even more ways to get the benefits of Exadata without large capital expenditure.

Ksplice, Prevalidated Oracle RPMS, the testing done with Oracle database and WebLogic, and the UEK kernel have made Oracle Linux systems best for running large Oracle databases and other packaged applications. Exadata's IORM and DBRM make it a great consolidation platform. Its smart scan feature and flash cache are unparalleled in providing performance.

The new Exadata x9m has an even higher speed of 100GBps connectivity.

We have a little trepidation with the system as it does have a learning curve. Also changing to a binary logging format for us feels like retrograde motion, but sadly almost all Linux variants have moved in this direction.

I have been using this solution for over thirteen years across multiple versions.

We have encountered several predictive disk failures, but we never lost data because the machine detected the issue before the actual failure and alerted us and Oracle to dispatch a spare through ASR. In the cloud, it is even more transparent.

There are no issues at all except when the code we were working with was not scalable (procedural PL/SQL and cursors). In fact, the RAC worked very well and we saw near-linear scale-up, and the license costs were dramatically less than a conventional solution. We were also able to consolidate hundreds of databases on a single Exadata rack.

Customer Service:

We have had great customer service. We had almost no issues with the machine as such except for some predictive hard disk failures and the machine never had a problem due to the redundancy, so there was zero downtime for any of the hard disk faults.

Technical Support:

Majority of the cases we have had good support. We had a few small hiccups with ASR Auto Update as it twice lost configuration. However, we have since disabled that function and do the ASR updating manually after taking a backup. As this feature is not essential to the actual running of the machine, it never caused us any major issues.

Positive

We have been running and recommending Exadata since version 1 for our customers. For Oracle databases, there is no better solution.

It was a vendor team who did the bare-bones setup and then we did the actual deployment and migrations in-house. Our team is very seasoned. The vendor team was quite good and we had no issues with installation and initial configuration.

As we have the capability and specialization to do the software implementation in-house we worked collaboratively with the vendor team for the same. The vendor team was very knowledgeable.

We have realized a lot of tangible and intangible benefits from the machine. It would be difficult to put a dollar figure to it because the machine allows for things that simply cannot be done without it. So in that way, we can safely say that the machine paid for itself within the first 12 months.

There are many new options available now, including Exadata Cloud @ customer or ExaCS. I would advise others to engage a third-party expert to ensure that they get the best deal. I did note that Oracle does tend to internally oversize things especially if they want to fill up a budget, and hence third-party oversight is essential.

For us, we work with all vendors and every vendor has its good and bad qualities. We use all solutions and hence we know when to recommend the Exadata machine.

I would always consider this solution when I want an integrated scalable best-of-breed solution for enterprise-class Oracle database deployment. I have seen so much inter-vendor finger-pointing during SevOne outages to ever want to wander back into that uncharted wilderness.

We use Oracle Exadata for databases and for migrations from on-premise to the cloud.

The most valuable feature of Oracle Exadata is the storage available.

Oracle Exadata could improve by having faster data retrieval. We receive data at four or five seconds and want to reduce that number to one second.

I have been using Oracle Exadata for approximately six years.

The stability of the solution is good.

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

We have 150 people using this solution.

The solution is not scalable because it is on-premise.

The support is helpful.

The intital implmentaion of Oracle Exadata is difficult.The data is complicated. We have multiple queries and multiple processes pulling this data. There is complete logic inside.

We have a team of software and data engineers and architects that do the implementation of the solution.

The price of the solution could improve, it is expensive.

We are moving away from using Oracle Exadata. 

I would recommend this solution to others, but it depends on the use case.

I rate Oracle Exadata an eight out of ten.