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Oracle Exadata

Oracle Exadata

Overview

What is Oracle Exadata?

Oracle Exadata is an enterprise database platform that runs Oracle Database workloads of any scale and criticality with high performance, availability, and security. Exadata’s scale-out design employs optimizations that let transaction processing, analytics, machine learning, and mixed workloads run faster.…

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Recent Reviews

The best you can get!

8 out of 10
October 23, 2019
Incentivized
I have been using Exadata for about 8 months and have been loving it. Most of the time it is used by the BI applications team and we don't …
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Exadata is wonderful

9 out of 10
September 17, 2019
Incentivized
Oracle Exadata Database Machines is being used for one of our mission-critical databases supporting the revenue cycle department. It has …
Continue reading
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Awards

Products that are considered exceptional by their customers based on a variety of criteria win TrustRadius awards. Learn more about the types of TrustRadius awards to make the best purchase decision. More about TrustRadius Awards

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Pricing

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Database Server

$2.9032

Cloud
Per Unit

Quarter Rack

$14.5162

Cloud
Per Unit

Entry-level set up fee?

  • No setup fee

Offerings

  • Free Trial
  • Free/Freemium Version
  • Premium Consulting/Integration Services
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Product Demos

1Z0-485 - Oracle Exam 1Z0-485 Test Questions PDF

YouTube

Oracle Patching Demo || PSU Patching || 11g Release 2 11 2 0 4 || OPatch

YouTube

Oracle Exadata Tutorial | Exadata Architecture | Mindmajix

YouTube
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Product Details

What is Oracle Exadata?

Oracle Exadata is an enterprise database platform that runs Oracle Database workloads of any scale and criticality with high performance, availability, and security. Exadata’s scale-out design employs optimizations that let transaction processing, analytics, machine learning, and mixed workloads run faster. Consolidating diverse Oracle Database workloads on Exadata platforms in enterprise data centers, Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI), and multicloud environments helps organizations increase operational efficiency.

Oracle Exadata Competitors

Oracle Exadata Technical Details

Deployment TypesSoftware as a Service (SaaS), Cloud, or Web-Based
Operating SystemsUnspecified
Mobile ApplicationNo

Frequently Asked Questions

Oracle Exadata is an enterprise database platform that runs Oracle Database workloads of any scale and criticality with high performance, availability, and security. Exadata’s scale-out design employs optimizations that let transaction processing, analytics, machine learning, and mixed workloads run faster. Consolidating diverse Oracle Database workloads on Exadata platforms in enterprise data centers, Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI), and multicloud environments helps organizations increase operational efficiency.

Amazon Redshift and Microsoft SQL Server are common alternatives for Oracle Exadata.

The most common users of Oracle Exadata are from Enterprises (1,001+ employees).
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Comparisons

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Reviews and Ratings

(201)

Reviews

(1-21 of 21)
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Andrea McConnell | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Currently, I use Oracle Database Exadata Cloud Service to run an extensive range of enterprise workloads with automation which reduces operational costs and time. Oracle Database Exadata Cloud Service is used across the entire organization, but not in all business units.
  • Oracle Database Exadata Cloud Service provides elasticity and scalability.
  • Consolidation of thousands databases in one unified solution.
  • It involves less time to run analytics workloads.
  • Lack of enough documentation and whitepapers for features.
All marketing processes in my organization have been simplified by Oracle Database Exadata Cloud Service through infusing AI and personalizing analytics in real-time.
Gene Baker | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Oracle Exadata Database Machine is our enterprise standard for SQL databases. My department has a large application on Sybase ASE 16 and we evaluated a number of platforms to migrate onto from Sybase. After reviewing MS-SQL, SAP HANA, IBM DB2 and Exadata, Exadata emerged as the winner. We put in place a two year project plan to migrate about 50 TB of data, 24 databases * 7 instances, 8000 stored procedures and about 1,500 tables. Our business problem we were solving was to collapse 7 instances of our application into 1, eliminate multiple copies of data and migrate off of dedicated hardware, moving to our enterprise Exadata offering us the database as a service.
  • High Speed Computing
  • History Tables
  • Implementation of temporary tables
  • SQL Developer attempt to convert T-SQL to PL-SQL could be better
Oracle Exadata Database Machine is a great platform. My only concern with the platform is the fact that it runs on dedicated proprietary hardware provided by Oracle because it is treated as a "machine." Our prior database installation of Sybase could run on a variety of hardware devices. Same with SAP HANA, MS-SQL, and DB2. But given the way the organization is utilizing the Oracle Exadata Database Machine as the enterprise solution and providing the database as a service. I was less concerned about that because my team is no longer responsible for patching the hardware or database software. That is all handled for us because we are receiving the service. Oracle Exadata Database Machine is well suited for mission-critical large scale installations given the cost of entry to get the platform. We are running on-premise. I do know that oracle also offers a cloud-based service.
Ankur Karmakar | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Recently our client's Oracle database servers were migrated to Oracle Exadata Database Machine. Due to this migration, downtime has reduced drastically. Previously we had downtime during Oracle patching but now there is no downtime. The Oracle Exadata Database Machine is faster. It supports scripting using bash. The computing speed is high. The performance of queries has increased a lot. Our business is running smoothly due to this.
  • Zero downtime for Oracle patches
  • Faster I/O as compared to non-exadata
  • Scripting using bash and sh
  • Patching is complex because of zero downtime
  • Configuration is complex
  • Hardware needs improvement
Oracle Exadata Database Machine is suitable for critical business for which there should not be any downtime. It is suitable for business which requires fast computation speeds. It is suitable where business runs many queries. The performance of queries is really very good in Oracle Exadata Database Machine. It is suitable for business where we need scripting through bash and sh.
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Exadata is used extensively to support various business intelligence teams. It allows for high speed delivery of data as well as fast replication to other environments. It also allows for a siloed approach for delivering discrete database solutions. As an architected solution, we can quickly realize features and components that will be highly utilized as well as those that will not.
  • RAC/clustered database technology
  • RMAN duplicate and cloning
  • Full sh/bash/ksh support
  • Generally faster i/o throughput versus non-exadata
  • Patching can often become quite involved and convoluted. It should be more transparent and straightforward.
  • Storage metrics can be difficult and time consuming to obtain.
  • Basic administrative functions can be hard to repair when discovered.
  • Vendor support can take a while to obtain. Generally several attempts are necessary to reach the right area of vendor expertise.
Any area where a highly architected database solution is needed, Exadata is a good fit. It is generally built to order so cooperative configuration and build phases are executed between the vendor and business and technology teams. When full adherence to the latest database technology and hardware support are needed.
Anytime RAC/clustered database technology is needed.
Habeeb Akbar | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
ResellerIncentivized
The Exadata Machine is used as a centralized database for ERP applications, and some other inhouse applications. It is used for the whole organization. It helps us increase processing speed and leads to less downtime.
  • The transaction process is very fast.
  • Scalable and reliable.
  • The best IO performance for large data.
  • Hardware support needs improvement.
  • Configuration should be easy, and customers should be able to handle it without experts.
  • It should also be available with the Solaris operating system.
Exadata machine is well suited for customers who have mission-critical data with high transactional and high availability database requirements.
We had 9 Oracle databases on different Hardware machines, we merged all those databases into a single Exadata, and today we are having higher performance than before. It is not very appropriate for customers who have a very small database, and users below 25.
October 23, 2019

The best you can get!

Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
I have been using Exadata for about 8 months and have been loving it. Most of the time it is used by the BI applications team and we don't get any bad feedback from then. If you want the ORDM, go for it. It's fast and effective. Migration to the database is easy as well.
  • Fast.
  • Effective.
  • Easy to migrate.
  • Can be time-consuming in the beginning.
Oracle Exadata is well suited to simplify databases and IT management with high levels of consolidation.
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Our organization utilizes Oracle Exadata Database Machine as analytical database system. It is primarily used by business analytics and reporting units throughout the organization. As an enterprise grade database appliance with optimized computing platform, it enables users to execute aggregation of huge data faster than using commodity servers. Thus it is a dependable system to generate mission critical reports.
  • Customize-able for specific functionality optimized for combination of online transaction or analytical processing.
  • Ability to serve mix workloads with resource management feature enables prioritizing allocation for certain workload.
  • Scale-able on-premise with compatibility for cloud deployment offers flexible solution for organization considering to transition from on-premise solution.
  • Integrating with different types of databases can be a challenge
  • Having a hardware platform optimized to run specific database software surely comes with a price
  • Single vendor to support same hardware and software will make migrating to different hardware and/or software become a hassle
Oracle Exadata Database Machine is perfect for organization which already familiar with Oracle Databases which want to run their database on an infrastructure specifically engineered to run Oracle Database efficiently and get the best performance possible. Using same vendor for both hardware and software for database also eliminate the complexity of managing multiple vendors for different hardware and software. However, for organization which already invested on various commodity hardware and using multiple databases software. Migrating to Exadata Database Machine which can only run Oracle Database will surely comes with a price.
September 18, 2019

No Alternative Competes

Jon Shale | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
It has leveraged as our enterprise Oracle Database platform. Helped us with the consolidation of all Oracle Databases including both OLTP and DW/ODS.
  • Increased performance of queries without indexes.
  • Maximize usage of Oracle Database licenses.
  • Offload SQL queries to storage.
  • Upgrade Infiniband to 100Gb.
  • Better service by Platinum Services.
It has increased the performance of databases and has helped with the consolidation of databases.
September 17, 2019

Thoughts on Exadata

Score 7 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
It is being used across the entire organization for database needs.
  • Database compression is excellent.
  • 12 C containers for VM databases.
  • Would be nice to have a better connection with different vendors or external storage or products.
It is well-suited for anything database related!
September 17, 2019

Exadata Review

Anna Lard | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We use the Exadata enterprise wide. It has all of our OLTP production databases as well as the data warehouse. We also have a standby Exadata where we use Active Data Guard.
  • Storage cell offload
  • Full table scans
  • Manages itself
  • Easier to add storage - it only gets shipped with so much and you have to purchase additional storage. That's not cheap, and they have to be installed.
  • [Could be] less expensive
It suits our enterprise well. This would be good for any enterprise level database company. This would not be good for super small companies.
September 17, 2019

Exadata is wonderful

Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Oracle Exadata Database Machines is being used for one of our mission-critical databases supporting the revenue cycle department. It has given a great lift to our batch processing which runs every single day. It improved performance and run times of BI reports.
  • Cell smart-scans.
  • Storage indexing.
  • OS monitoring.
  • SNMP configuration.
  • Integration with OEM.
It is best suited for environments where performance, consolidation and scalability plays a big role. It might be less appropriate for small scale applications/companies since the investment is very big.
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We run all our mission-critical databases on the Exadata platform. It provides us the extreme reliability and availability to achieve our extremely high SLA's.
  • Availability.
  • Performance.
  • Security.
  • Time to provision - It takes a whole village to provision a brand new Exadata. Would be great if the time to provision could be decreased.
Exadata is a machine built to run databases and it does it extremely well. It helps in driving the overall Opex cost lower without compromising uptime and performance.
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We are using Oracle Exadata Database Machine for all of our Oracle databases which includes Supply Chain, Order Management, Finance, Integration, etc. Exadata improved all database performance. It has been most beneficial to our warehouse operations. We used to have a lot of IO issues, and to troubleshoot them, our DBA has to spend 3-4 hours daily. Now, IO is no longer the issue.

For all other processes like RMAN backups, export/import and data loads, we saw a lot of improvements.
  • Sparse clone helps us to quickly provision the dev/ test databases in less than 30 minutes and also saves storage.
  • Compression features in Exadata greatly helped us to save storage and improve performance.
  • Redundancy at every level in Exadata keeps our Oracle databases always up.
  • Platinum patching support is not as good as we expect.
Best for both analytics and OLTP loads. Redundancy at every level makes it highly available. Patching process is being simplified over time, making it easier with less downtime. Good to consolidate lots of databases in a single Exadata rack which makes the management of databases easy. Very large databases are well supported.
Olivier Ameryckx Oliva G. | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Oracle Exadata Database Machine is the best solution when you need to integrate several databases or you have done some acquisitions. We need to make reports every Wednesday and getting that outlook is a huge amount of data. With Oracle Exadata Database Machine, we could reduce the downtime and accuracy of our database. It is used by everyone in the company and also running our Eloqua BI platforms.

The run is super easy and the performance given is one of the best in the market. Oracle could position the Exadata system as the Rolls Royce, so you could start a lower entry level and then upgrade it as you needed it. It helps us to gain performances and scalability.
  • Performance in running the database
  • Fast execution and easy to plug in
  • All in one solution
  • Scalability and upgrades
  • Allowing to run with VMware
  • Upgrade from old machine to new one. If you have an old machine, it is quite hard to upgrade them as Oracle withdraws some products after a new release. So, it is not cool for a customer who wants an upgrade but has to buy a new machine because the old one doesn’t exist anymore.
  • Mandatory installations from Oracle
Exadata is well suited for large enterprises and data integration.Not suited for SMB or non-Oracle driven databases.

It is a question of pricing. Oracle Exadata is a big machine which is not suitable for SMBs. I recommend more sparse server or Oracle Database appliance for SMBs. Enterprise companies have much more data to run, so need better performance.

In most of the cases, you can start with an entry-level machine and upgrade. But once you use Oracle Exadata Database Machine you cannot move to another machine. This is one of the best in the market. Exadata in the cloud is also a great solution.
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
It is used throughout the organization as the primary reporting database for patient data. Multiple instances are running, one for each region/state.
  • Group shared space offers easy management and flexibility.
  • Consistent response times, faster than the vendor replaced by Oracle.
  • Oracle SQL Developer is full featured and intuitive for accessing Exadata.
  • The learning curve for syntax (aliasing, dates, etc) is steeper than some database vendors.
  • Initially had issues with response times but this was resolved with some configuration changes.
It has proven to be an excellent large-scale system to support several thousand users, multiple 3rd party tools, and a large number of daily extract jobs.
October 29, 2018

EXADATA

Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
It's the best platform to run Oracle Database. You can consolidate all your DB workload to Exadata and it will perform much better than other platforms. We got almost a 3-5x boost on Exadata. It is one of the best and easy to manage platforms and gives full control to DBA. Backup and restore of Database is also easier, simpler, and faster.
  • It runs analytical workloads much faster.
  • The HCC compression helps to reduce the storage cost and increase storage efficiency
  • Ideal platform to consolidate database.
  • It's difficult to find the cons.
  • Entry cost may be high but if you compare overall cost with performance, then it's not a big factor.
  • It does not support legacy database version.
The machine is best suited for data warehouses and analytical workloads, and with new features it even provides better performance on OLTP as well. It keeps improving with every version and getting better and better day by the day. The DBAs will enjoy the full control of the system and enhance their skills. It's best for OLTP and DWH.
Ray Hirte | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We are using it for our PeopleSoft application across the enterprise. This addresses some of our performance issues. Our payroll calcs went from 25 minutes per calc to 6 minutes greatly improving our payroll confirm. Better performance for our database backups.
  • Speeds up backup and restore.
  • Improved performance for payroll processing
  • Platinum support and proactive monitoring of database hardware
  • Batch processing performance improvement.
  • Platinum support patching has suffered lately in performance of the patching event
  • Cost for additional applications such as RAC
  • Cost of the hardware and support
Performance improvement in our payroll processing. Payroll calcs going from 25 minutes to 6 minutes was a game changer for us, as well as backups going from 5 hours to 20 minutes. This allows us to do testing and then restore the database and test again.
Gurcan Orhan | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
The most valuable feature of the solution is that it is durable. It is a highly relevant option with extreme performance. The extreme performance is one of the key features when you're using Exadata. There are known points that you need to take care of, simply "beware of update".!

I implemented a data warehouse on Exadata. Before this solution, we were aiming for this to be completed by 8 a.m., when our ETLs would finish. With the help of Exadata's special features, this was reduced to 3 a.m.

This solution allows us to bring more data within the same time period. It provides us with more subject areas that provide more reports to our users. Our ETL times reduced to 65%, then to 50%.

  • Oracle Database : Deliver industry-leading security, high availability and scalability with Oracle Database, which has been significantly enhanced to take advantage of the Oracle Exadata Storage Servers.
  • Exadata Smart Scan : Improve query performance by offloading intensive query processing and data mining scoring to scalable intelligent storage servers.
  • Smart Flash Cache : Transparently cache 'hot' read and write data to fast solid-state storage, improving query response times and throughput. Exadata systems use the latest PCI flash technology rather than flash disks. PCI flash delivers ultra-high performance by placing flash directly on the high speed PCI bus rather than behind slow disk controllers.
  • Hybrid Columnar Compression : Reduce the size of data warehousing tables by 10x, and archive tables by 50x, to improve performance and lower storage costs for primary, standby, and backup databases. Query high, query low, archive high and archive low.
  • Infiniband Network : Connect multiple Oracle Exadata Database Machines using the InfiniBand fabric to form a larger single system image configuration. Each InfiniBand link provides 40 Gigabits of bandwidth–many times higher than traditional storage or server networks.
  • Petabyte Scalability : Easily scale data warehouse to support enterprise data growth.
  • There's nothing bad to say about Exadata. It's stable, durable, and always up and running. My DBAs do online patches and online backup.
  • I would like to see more database features and maybe more archiving features, because we need to do data archiving. I would like to see additional database memory.
  • It could be cheaper. :-)
  • First, get the database on Oracle. If you are in an Oracle stack, it would be much better to use the Oracle products. If you are driving a Ferrari, you wouldn’t put a Mercedes engine in it. If you are writing a query, you cannot rely on other brands. Since I'm an architect, when I look for a product, I look for performance.
  • The installation is easy because it comes out-of-the-box and you just start using it.
  • Previous to Oracle Exadata, we were using a normal Oracle RAC service. We were just waiting for this product to come out.
  • I'm currently writing a data warehouse on Exadata. Before this solution, we were aiming for this to be completed by 8 a.m., when our ETLs would finish. With the help of Exadata's special features, this was reduced to 3 a.m. This solution allows us to bring more data within the same time period. It provides us with more subject areas that provide more reports to our users. Our ETL times reduced to 65%, then to 50%.

Score 7 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
I use Oracle Exadata in relation to Banner reports, I can use these reports specifically for budgeting and accounts payable.
  • Oracle is able to take a lot of data and put it into concise reports.
  • Oracle is super fast, for the amount at data it needs to contain and access at any time.
  • It might just be Banner, but the user interface is clunky when you're just getting started to learn it quickly and easily. It would be great if Banner had more customer service help lines as well.
It's great for organizations where you need to create, collect, and track information to continue to grow rapidly.
March 20, 2017

Data in Exadata

Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
It's being used as a data warehouse across the whole organization. It solves the issue of performance. We have a lot of data and Exadata resolves the issue of storing and querying it.
  • Performance
  • Cloud Service
  • Storage
  • Flexibility to make changes without Oracle
  • Improved performance.
  • In memory options.
Bert Scalzo | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We used Exadata across the entire organization. We needed a super high-performance database platform for Oracle - and Exadata was exactly what we needed. While the initial cost and learning curve were a bit steep, the performance improvements in all our database applications were nothing short of phenomenal. If we could have afforded to switch over entirely to Exadata we would have had stellar results. For those database applications we did not place on Exadata it was painful to know there's a better platform and way to go. If budget were not an issue we would have done so. It's almost impossible to value the smart scan technology and cell offloading until you see it in practice. The technology delivers on every promise and in general, is far better than one expects.
  • The smart scan and cell offloading churn through massive amounts of data in a far more efficient and timely manner than any other Oracle database platform option available.
  • We did not have to change any application code to deploy on Exadata. We never allowed optimizer hints in our application code so we had zero issues when we upgraded.
  • We actually were able to consolidate many databases onto a single Exadata box - far more than we had ever expected.
  • I wish Exadata costs were just a little lower to overcome new users initial price shock. But once you see it in action the issue disappears.
  • I wish the Exadata technology were available on non-Oracle hardware/servers. In theory it should be able to be done on other servers, but it's blocked by Oracle it seems.
  • The new Exadata Express in the cloud is misleading, it does not have full smart scan capabilities. So people who try to experiment with Exadata first on the cloud may not see the real benefit and not understand why.
Exadata's platform is ideal for database consolidation. With Oracle's multi-tenant (pluggable) databases one can put hundreds of databases on one machine.
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