Oracle Exalogic, why or why not - a technicians tale
December 10, 2015
Oracle Exalogic, why or why not - a technicians tale
Score 7 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Overall Satisfaction with Oracle Exalogic
Over the past two years Data Intensity has worked with many customers to deploy different Oracle Engineered Systems, including ODA, Exalogic, Exalytics and Exadata. Over the last 12 months I have actively worked to deploy 5 Oracle Exalogic, 5 Exadata and 3 ZFS devices as the base platform for a large ERP deployment. Oracle applications which are running in this platform include Oracle EBS, PLM, PDH, SOA, OBI, and GRC.
- The primary benefit we have noticed from the Exalogic platform is performance. This systems was definitely purpose built for the needs of a highly available and heavily utilized application environment. The incredible throughput over NFS and heavy read cache ZFS appliance lend well to high read quick transaction type workloads. When implemented in conjunction with an Exadata environment the throughput between your application and database is simply amazing.
- Additionally we have found that the time to deploy is lower than that of a more cumbersome Oracle VM infrastructure. I don't believe that this specific value proposition is all that great when comparing the deployment time of a VMware based solution, but will add value when compared to an in-house solution based on the same Oracle VM virtualization.
- Finally we have found that the standardize configurations, while not all that unique to engineered systems, have added value when deploying Oracle application which tend to have strict configuration requirements.
- My major complaint with the Exalogic platform is in the resilience of the ZFS appliance within the platform. This device should fail-over to the redundant controller when issue occur, however we have had three events in which this did not happen and a complete outage followed.
- Additionally Oracle sales has a tendency to exaggerate the simplicity of this platform. The management overhead is great, and while my company provides managed service, for our specific customer they were surprised to find out how much work goes into run-and-maintain support.
- Unfortunately we are still early on in the deployment phase so true ROI isn't calculable at this point. We do however believe we have built a highly scale-able solution that will allow the companies core ERP systems to grow as they do.
It's hard to compare Oracle Exalogic Engineered Systems with anything else on the market. It's so purpose built for application performance and intended to be used in conjunction with other Oracle Engineered Systems. As I alluded to earlier in this review the cost may not be worth the investment if the performance isn't needed. Oracle offers other solutions like the Oracle PCA which will meet the need for licensing compliance at a much lower cost of ownership and may fit better into your current infrastructure.