Item: Oracle Exadata
Rating: 8
Author: Gene Baker

Overall Satisfaction with Oracle Exadata Database Machine

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

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.

Pros and Cons

Pros

High Speed Computing
History Tables

Cons

Implementation of temporary tables
SQL Developer attempt to convert T-SQL to PL-SQL could be better

Return on Investment

Standardization of hardware
Standardization of software

Alternatives Considered

IBM Db2 Big SQL, SAP HANA and Microsoft SQL Server

Oracle Exadata Database Machine had the best performance overall hands down. It clearly beat the competition and we were seeing 1000X improvement on SAP HANA. Oracle Exadata Database Machine beat that without us refactoring our code. To achieve that in HANA, we had to refactor the code somewhat. Now this was for our limited POC of 5 use cases. Given the large number of stored procedures we had in Sybase, we need to capture more production metrics but we are seeing incredible performance.

Key Insights

Do you think Oracle Exadata delivers good value for the price?

Yes

Are you happy with Oracle Exadata's feature set?

Yes

Did Oracle Exadata live up to sales and marketing promises?

Yes

Did implementation of Oracle Exadata go as expected?

Yes

Would you buy Oracle Exadata again?

Yes

Other Software Used

SAP PowerDesigner, Microsoft SQL Server, MongoDB Atlas

Likelihood to Recommend

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.

Comments

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Oracle Exadata Database Machine offers in-memory performance for our DB transactions