Oracle SuperCluster alternatives and competitors

In my organization there has always been a need for high-performance computing, and we decided to go with Oracle SuperCluster for this reason coupled with the fact that we already use Oracle products such as Solaris (11.4), which is itself a component of SuperCluster.

As far as performance is concerned, SuperCluster is a system of machines engineered for high performance and reliability, while supporting a number of modern enterprise storage and database technologies such as Exadata and ZFS. The memory, along with Oracle's M7 servers, is also very good in terms of performance. 

We use SuperCluster on-premises, with about 3,000 people who access it on a daily basis. Essentially, whoever is accessing the applications we use, is also accessing the SuperCluster. That includes our database administrators, system administrators, and many other administrators of various kinds.

Because SuperCluster is a specially engineered system, we have confidence in that all the components are compatible with one another. Everything runs together as a well-coupled group of machines, and the performance is great (especially the memory).

Speaking from a business perspective, our main problem is that our particular edition of SuperCluster is now at end-of-life status, making it obsolete and impossible to get support for. This presents a challenge for us, as finding a path to our next solution is not easy.

When it comes to features, I know that Oracle has already done a lot on the software side of things, but everyone has their own wish list for their specific environment and in newer editions of SuperCluster I would like to see new EXAchk data in the cloud environment. In fact, I would prefer if SuperCluster could come with more functionality as seen in Oracle Cloud where it is easier to share data and other things across the board. SuperCluster is already a smart machine, so I understand that it might be difficult to implement all those features, but at a minimum I would appreciate Oracle including more cloud infrastructure functionality. 

Oracle's existing cloud machines are already able to provide all these cloud features that I would like, including the use of containers and hardware-sharing, and it would be great to have these on board for their customers and end-users of SuperCluster.

I've been using Oracle SuperCluster since 2017.

In my experience, it has been stable.

It is a scalable system when it comes to performance, but unfortunately Oracle is no longer supporting the edition that we are running as it is now end-of-life, and figuring out the way forward isn't easy.

Our total user count is around 3,000 end-users, including everyone who uses our organization's applications such as normal end-users and the many administrators who work on it.

We use Oracle as our single source of support most of the time whenever we need to patch the system, because this is usually done by Oracle as a matter of course.

Their support is very good, not only when it comes to their direct help in patching our systems, but also in general. They are a helpful team of people and passionate about their work.

Positive

The setup and configuration is difficult for the end-user because almost all of the time, Oracle supports the system themselves. They perform the configuration of the SuperCluster and set up the machines, and normally they do the patches as well.

For us, the licensing costs are a large amount, but we are also paying for the rack, the SLA, and other extras. When I look into our organization's requirements regarding performance, machine load, etc., I believe that, while expensive, SuperCluster is nevertheless good for us.

Additionally, in our case, it doesn't seem to make a difference in cost whether you pay a monthly amount or go with some other arrangement. 

On the whole, SuperCluster is a smart, sophisticated machine, and when I look into the performance of it, I'm happy. However, in some cases, the system itself is somewhat larger than necessary for our environment, and can be considered underutilized when we only have minimal amounts of data to process.

I would rate Oracle SuperCluster a seven out of ten.

We use SuperCluster for the bank's financial application, which covers the core banking and internet banking functionality.

The core banking application and database is completely based on Oracle solutions, which provides us with not only good performance, but also the scalability we need to ensure the growth of the bank. We have not experienced many challenges in terms of meeting our performance requirements.

SuperCluster is basically a combination of Oracle, with Exadata and Compute node features, so it is a computing cluster that is integrated in a single infrastructure such that we don't need a separate solution for the application database, the data storage database, and everything else the application needs.

A major issue for us is that after the most recent update of SuperCluster, they have now stopped all future production of new versions. That is to say, after M7 there was M8, and now there are no future versions planned (e.g. M9) in the market.

As for features, even though they are not planning new releases, I believe SuperCluster could do better with their administration GUI. At the moment, most of our administration takes place on the command-line because the GUI is inadequate, so an improved GUI would suit us well.

I've been using Oracle SuperCluster for almost six years now.

There are no problems with stability.

It is scalable, but as mentioned, if you want to update your SuperCluster to the next version, you are out of luck as there will be no future development on it from Oracle.

As it is now, both the banking application and a few other applications are running fine for our users on SuperCluster. 

Their support is good. I would give them 8/10.

Positive

At this time, we also have other solutions available to us, but our experience is that the SuperCluster solution is superior.

The setup depends on the design. With SuperCluster, what you're setting up is less straightforward than most deployments because there are more virtualization areas to deal with. There are a lot of activities that need to be carried out in order to set it up properly. 

It was initially set up by the vendor itself, but going forward, any extra requirements are handled by myself as a consultant and the appropriate team. As for updates and maintenance, all this is done by us on a yearly basis.  

Due to the multiple products involved in our use of SuperCluster (including different software, hardware, etc.), I cannot comment on the licensing aspect.

When you look at SuperCluster's complete infrastructure as a whole and the fact that we can run the database and application all on the same infrastructure, I feel that SuperCluster is a better solution than most. It has good performance and works well for us.

Given that they have stopped upgrading and supporting SuperCluster, I am hoping that Oracle will be able to provide a similar type of solution with the same integrated infrastructure but with better performance in the future. I know there is a solution called PCA (Private Cloud Appliance), but this doesn't have the Exadata functionality that we need.

I would rate Oracle SuperCluster an eight out of ten.