Oracle Exalogic [EOL] Reviews

The virtualized app servers for enterprise systems supporting all HR functions is valuable.

We get better performance and utilization of resources since it was implemented. It's helped to reduce the batch cycle from over 40 hours to about eight.

It's very expensive. Oracle Platinum Services (patching) is terrible, and we haven't had a patching exercise occur without significant problems and often impact to production operations.

We began the implementation the fall of 2012 and completed in September of 2013. It has been in place since then with expansion and upgrades along the way.

Significant issues with deployment of OTD (Oracle Traffic Director).

Stability for the most part has been good with some production impact which resulted from patching and version control. The product needs a better support model.

Level 1 and Level 2 I would give 6/10. Level 3 I would give 9/10. The problem was the time it took to reach the appropriate level of support to solve the problem.

Prior to the Exa platform we ran on M5000.

This was a complex implementation. Implementation of Grid, RAC, and especially OTD was a nightmare. However, once solved, it has performed well and remained stable. This was not an issue with the solution itself but more related to the technical understanding of the network design coupled with the technical knowledge required for setup of OTD. We ultimately received level three support from the Oracle product team that solved the problem. The level 3 product team was excellent.

I led the vendor team team that managed the implementation. We also engaged ACS and OCS (Oracle Consulting Service) to assist with the implementation.

Selection of Exa was after a Proof of Concept comparison with VCE, IBM, and HP. Exa had superior performance results with a significant higher cost.

I would suggest that you do not underestimate the work involved and if working with OCS closely manage the deliverables and hours.

• Oracle application/middleware performance optimization
• Virtualization with bare metal performance

Exalogic has provided us and our customers with high performance Oracle Weblogic, eBusiness Suite applications and concurrent manager platform. Even with running in a virtualized configuration, the performance seen has been better than running on non-Exalogic physical environments. The ability to connect Exalogic to Exadata via Infiniband has also optimized performance between application and database improving application performance. This is particularly true for chatty weblogic applications or eBS large concurrent manager jobs like those related to advanced supply chain planning.

The administration of the VMs is cumbersome and lacks features that are taken for granted in other virtualization platforms – many administrative and availability features, even available in traditional OVM, are not available on Exalogic. This includes not having the ability to increase VM resources while the VM is online, or even being able to change CPU and memory sizes for a VM without recreating and cloning it. There is also no live migration feature available.

I've been using it for two and a half years.

There have been no issues with the deployment.

We've had no issues with the performance.

It's been able to scale for our needs.

The support on the Exalogic is much better than other, non-engineered Oracle environments. Exalogic comes included with Oracle Platinum Services – a higher level of Oracle technical support – providing Oracle access to the system and allowing for faster responsiveness and resolution to issues.

The initial setup has to be performed by Oracle or a certified partner. Stating that, the initial install and setup is straightforward and is completed in a few days.

As an Oracle certified partner, we implemented in-house. My advice is to utilize Oracle certified Partners, to do the implementation or utilize Oracle ACS. We have also had experiences with network conflicts in past Exalogic implementations. And much of the network configuration can not be changed without a re-install. My advice is to ensure the network addresses and information given in the Exalogic Configurator worksheet, filled out before install, is accurate and does not conflict with other addresses in the corporate network.

We compared commodity server based environments – but they were unable to match the performance of Exalogic.

Exalogic is an environment built for performance for Oracle middleware and application workloads. If you are looking for the best performance for such environments, at the expense of some ease of administration, then this environment is for you.

OVM and the InfiniBand readiness ([IBO] TCP port settings) of the VM’s in this OVM version for Exalogic are the most valuable features.

We were able to decommission more then 20 blade servers, all of which are now running on Exalogic.

There is still room for improvement, especially in regards to Oracle support.

Also, the SDP InfiniBand protocol needs to be usable in VM’s and patches for OVM installed for delivery.

We had no issues deploying it.

OTD (Oracle Traffic Director) is failover architecture and is not as robust as advertised. Additionally, SSO and several other features sometimes went down.

We have had no issues scaling it.

6/10

6/10

We previously used version X3-4 and upgraded to the current version.

It is an environment which runs partly via bare metal and partly via hypervisor technology, and this type of installation cannot be simple. It is also an engineered system, which means that there are a lot of tweaks that enhance it a lot, but they aren't easy. There's a rather high entry point for just setting it up.

We used both vendor and in-house teams for the implementation. First, we implemented OMCS and then, after several months, the rest of the DTAP environment. This was also the case with the functional servers (individual VM’s).

It was a little bit of a black box for me. It costs millions for the hardware and software licenses. However, the overall system runs five times faster than it did on IBM hardware.

It is a great solution for an application server.

The virtualization, especially vUser creation, is the most valuable feature for us.

Flexibility on server creation and deployment are much easier on this machine.

Reporting and bug fixes should be applied for this product on-time.

We are the end customer and are managing Exalogic for our customer, and it's been in place for one-and-a-half years.

We had no issues with the deployment.

We have had issues with the stability as the product failed on its promise for replication of all the components. There was a zpool failure which was exceptionally problematic.

We have had no issues scaling it.

7/10

7/10

This is being used in a customer's environment, and I am unsure if they used something previously.

The initial configuration was performed by Oracle before handing over the machine to us.

The first implementation was done by Oracle, and later on we did all the new implementations.

The ROI is good, but I would suggest only a high-end customer should go for this as Platinum support is a must.

This is being used in a customer's environment, and I am unsure if they evaluated anything else.

Certainly buy Platinum support as you will need Oracle's help every now and then.