Oracle Database Appliance Reviews

We support their warehouse and we are looking into the network data warehouse product, which is tightly integrated. This is pretty much the go-to product for that process due to the fact that it's all in one box, and is pre-packaged. It's all Oracle servers, and Oracle hardware, and Oracle software and it's all in one.

We used to have different vendors and servers. Everything was all over the place. Now that we are on Oracle, everything is centralized, removing a lot of complexity.

The deployment is super-simple as everything is pre-packaged. There's very little configuration to worry about.

We manage everything through the appliance. It's easier to manage from our side of the managed databases and add more storage, et cetera. It's very easy to mimic what we need. we can easily add more storage whenever we want. The scalability is great.

We had Commodity servers - those bales servers on-premises - and there was a lot of maintenance going on with that. After moving to RDA, life is much easier because everything is managed through those deployed solutions. It's easier to manage this way.

From a maintenance point of view and from an upgrade and migration point of view, it is very easy because most of the upgrades are fast. We can take one down and finish the upgrade and move onto the next as necessary. It's easier to manage the patches and upgrades.

The solution is pretty automated, which takes out the possibility of human error.

The pricing is great. It's much better than what the competition is offering.

The product is pretty user-friendly.

There aren't really any features that the solution is lacking.

The product is quite complex to set up, initially. It would be ideal if it was simpler.

Any limitations within the solution are case by case. The solution may work for some, but it isn't for everyone.

The product is still evolving. It could still, for example, be more user-friendly. It's not quite perfect yet.

I've been using this solution since last year.

The solution is pretty stable. I don't recall bugs or glitches. It doesn't crash. I find it pretty reliable overall.

The solution can easily scale. We've found that if we need to add more storage, it's very straightforward to do so. If a company needs to scale, it's not a problem with Oracle.

In our case, because we are on-premises, there are some limitations due to the fact that we only have two servers. We understand our limitations and we know it will work well for us over the next five years or so. And then, if we need to expand, we can plan for that.

We have about 500 active users within our company on the solution. We have reporting applications and a lot of data manipulations, and all that going on, on this database. It's mostly IT personnel on it currently.

We've worked with Oracle a lot, compared to other previous solutions. The company sells it with support and clients get account managers that they can reach out to. Overall, technical support has been good. I'd rate it a nine out of ten. They are very knowledgeable and responsive. They are very good. We've been satisfied with the service provided.

We used to have similar databases on different servers, and we had to work through different vendors. We had different storage, then different servers, then different vendors and the backup solution was on another vendor as well. There was a lot of coordination required. It added a lot of complexity to everything. With this kind of a solution, everything is on one kind of a black box. We don't have to worry too much and the level of coordination required has dissipated.

The initial setup is not straightforward. It's quite complex. Once you get the hang of it and get it going, it's easier for others on our application team. It's also easier to manage int he long run. The main problem is that it's quite different from what we used to do, so there's a bit of a learning curve during the setup.

The pricing is really good for us. We have no complaints there. It's not as expensive as other products on the market. The excellent price point is one of the reasons we moved to RDA.

We're just a customer. We don't have a business relationship with Oracle.

Due to the current contractual agreements, et cetera, within our organization, we are not doing or considering anything on the cloud - from the database side at least.

I'd rate the solution eight out of ten. There are still some limitations. That said, it did simplify a lot of things for us, compared to our old setup.

We use the histories to make reports like the MIS (Management Information System) reports. Mainly it is a database.  

I think the most valuable part of the Oracle Database Appliance is just the ability to use the database. We make the reports on our own and let Oracle do what it does best.  

We try to operate through the ODI, or Oracle Data Integrator, to maintain data integration. We have plans to use Visual I/O for data mapping, data flow, and things like that. Oracle could improve the capabilities for visualizing without other, third-party tools. But it is OK.  

We are not looking for any new features in the product. Whatever additional utility we need we have been able to do using Hadoop for now. For us, the product can stay the same. The only way it can improve is by doing even better with integrations to other products like Hadoop.  

The company has been using this product since before I came here. It has been in use for a very long time. I would say it is maybe 10 years or more.  

Over the course of these ten years, I would say that this product has been stable.  

We have recently moved the Oracle Database to work with SAP (Systems Applications and Products in Data Processing). We did this because we are planning to start now to scale up. We have a very good profile now to work with. I think scalability is good.  

I think we already have 100 users working with this product in their organizations. We are planning to scale up.  

Most of the time we are doing the technical support by ourselves. When Oracle does not offer much support, we have to do it by ourselves.  

We started with Oracle. We did not use another product before that.  

The initial setup is easy to do because we have the ability to do it in house. We are able to deploy this product by ourselves, without an integrator. That suggests it is easy enough to do.  

We have a team of six people that we need for deployment and for maintenance.  

There are no additional costs beyond the standard licensing fees.  

It is not a product we evaluated to use instead of Oracle, but we have some small products we use with it to enhance the functionality and capabilities. For example, we use Hadoop for data modeling and other things. We plan to keep on using Oracle Database Appliance and we will do our data mining with Hadoop. We saw there was reason to use Hadoop with Oracle to have a better overall solution.  

I think for people interested in using Oracle Appliance the main thing is to rely on Oracle for the bigger stuff that it does. Maybe it cannot provide the kind of reports that we want. This is how we have determined the importance of Hadoop to our processes. Hadoop is part of my recommendation to other users who try this product. Oracle can do what it does best and Hadoop can help with reporting on the data. For other use cases, companies may need a different solution to enhance what Oracle provides — to complete one small part of the picture. When you find it, you should use it.  

On a scale from one to ten (where one is worst and ten is best), I would rate Oracle Database Appliance as an eight-out-of-ten.  

The features that they're providing as skills are the solution's most valuable aspect.

The solution is simple to use and easy to maintain.

The testing aspect of the solution could be improved. Right now, it's done by us, but if they'd improve it with tools that would make things easier.

If we were able to use Oracle Database to create mobile apps, that would be great. I don't know multiple languages, like Java, etc. I need to learn a separate language, right now in order to do this.

We primarily use the solution for data storage.

The solution does crash. It doesn't happen often, but it does happen occasionally.

The solution is scalable. We have a few hundred people using the solution currently.

We've never been in touch with technical support. We don't have the internet password needed to connect. We typically use a third party if we require assistance.

I'd rate the solution nine out of ten.

We primarily use the solution as an operational system.

The performance of the system is the solution's most valuable aspect. In combination with the database, it gives perfect results. It's a better system than using other kinds of integrated systems. In general, the ODA control is much simpler to use and offers up the best performance.

Technical support could be much better. The maintenance for an enterprise system isn't so great. It's also much expensive.

A future release should improve the availability of networking interfaces.

Hardware expansions availability should be in-line with product support. 

The solution should have the ability to offer an integrated management dashboard with virtualized systems and oracle DB manager in all DB supported versions.

The machine should have a visual monitoring interface, not also for hardware but also to DB and virtualized hosts.

The solution is very stable. We haven't had any issues over the past two years.

We're not too pleased with technical support. The cost to have access to them is way too much money.

The initial setup was fairly quick. It was easy to deploy.

The pricing of the solution is fair but the technical support pricing is quite high.

We use the on-premises deployment model.

I'd rate the solution eight out of ten. It's a very good system.

Report processing time has been reduced. We can use it in the future for our BI tool.

The performance due to the all-flash of ODA is very nice. 

The main thing would be to make ODA more affordable, to make it a more economical machine. Also, I would like to see virtualization, so you could implement all of your functions on one machine. Finally, improvement in the speed and performance would be good.

Stability is very good. There has been no downtime.

Scalability means you can increase the storage. 

ODA support is very good. Oracle support is very good. Online support is very good. Our local partner is also very good.

Previously I was using Exadata. Our technical team was already familiar with Oracle products so that's why we choose ODA. We had a license for Oracle Database.

When selecting a vendor the main criterion is support. Oracle support is very good.

The initial setup was very easy.

My advice would depend on the needs of the company. If the need is like ours, number of transactions per day, number of transactions per year; and whether the operation time is 24 hours, eight hours; these are the types of things to consider when deciding. Also, what is the downtime you can afford?

ODA performance has been very good for our requirements.

I would rate it at eight out of 10 because the product is stable, it has very low downtime, and the support of Oracle is very good.

Our primary use case is OLTP.

Cost.                                                                                                                                         .

Oracle RAC.                                                        .

Patching: Oracle Database Appliance patching comes out two to three months after the regular patching cycle.                     .

In regards to licensing, it is cheaper to maintain for Oracle applications, and it's an all-in-one solution.

We had been using a separate server, separate storage, and a separate switch for our Oracle Database, which was costing us a lot of money, because you have to have licenses for each of those devices. But now we have all of them in just one box. We don't have to buy a separate switch. We don't have to buy separate storage. We have everything in just one box.

That's the advantage. It has been cost effective. They have really helped us on that line.

Currently in Ghana, where I work, there are just a few companies that can afford it, because the price is a little bit high. Even though for the private sector it's not that high, if this would come in much smaller boxes, and much cheaper, it would be much more affordable for SMBs, that's small and medium businesses. That would be helpful.

It's very, very stable. From the day of installation we did not have any challenges with this product.

Scalability is not limited. It's scalable because you can add a standard device to the storage space. You are just looking at storage space. You are not looking for memory, because the memory range is high enough. And the capacity is also very fast.

I've worked with HPE, I've worked with other vendors' support. In terms of phone support, I get faster response from Oracle. The support is the highest standard I've seen. They will get to you by all means, and attend to you, the challenges that you have, and in a timely manner. They have the expertise and they have the know-how. The first time we contact them, our issue is solved.

The reason for our switching is that we wanted an all-in-one solution across databases, and we need to implement an all-in-one solution for our customers' databases. This is very simplified, it's easy to use, you can be in production immediately when you buy the product. That's why we went that direction.

If you work with other companies, you often see a lot of challenges because the storage is usually separate. If they have all-in-one, the licenses are too expensive. What Oracle did was they reduced the price because we are buying their solution. They reduced the prices for the Oracle licenses.

I can set it up in a matter of a very short time. The worst case scenario is an hour, and that happens only if I don't have the information from the customer, That's when it would take an hour. But if I have all the information in front of me, the box can be set up and ready to use.

We had two products in mind. We had a product from HPE, but we did not go with that product because it required us getting extended storage. We were looking at space in the datacenter; we don't have a lot of rack space in the data center. So, we factored all of that into our decision, and then we decided on Oracle.

In addition, it was the licenses, because we use Oracle, and when you buy their product they reduce the cost for you. So, I could use an Oracle database and buy an HPE product where I will not have a reduction in price for licenses. You have to leverage that opportunity from Oracle.

I give it a nine out of 10 because it gives the customer easy access to a complete database solution within 30 minutes. That is, someone can go live with in 30 minutes of buying the product, it's very fast to use. For instance, if you have a small company that you want to set up, and you don't need to put your infrastructure on the cloud, you buy this product and you are ready to go in the next 30 minutes. That's one of the reasons why I give it that rating. 

As well, it's easier to manage, because you have a central point of management which is the Oracle ODA. You can manage it by using the browser interface. 

Database consolidation and for X6-2L also database performance improvement due to NVMe storage being used, which dramatically increases I/O performance

We value the appliance architecture with its “everything-in-a-box” highly standardized setup.

For the new ODA X6-2 models there is a possibility to deploy also SE/SE2 databases in a bare-metal deployment as well as the boosted I/O performance due to NVMe Flash disks.

For one customer it consolidated several databases from several Windows physical servers into one single ODA and resulted in increased stability.

For another customer it was used to “isolate” the last Oracle database system on one single ODA, thereby freeing-up SAN storage and rack server slots used by an old Linux cluster.

The following issues need some attention:

• Ease of administration and deployment. With ODA X6-2 there are different “OAK” administration commands for the S/M/L models (e.g. “odacli”) compared to the HA model ("oakcli").
• In my opinion only one single command should be used for all ODA models, as it’s confusing.
• Some of the new commands have limitations/restrictions, though I assume they’ll be improved over time.

We have been using the solution since 2012. We implemented 2x ODA V1 systems.

With the X6-2L we had a couple of early replacements, e.g. PCI card and battery

We only had a stability issue with the ODA V1 due to an ASM disk mount issue (“ORA-600 [KFDJOIN3]”, bug). This issue delayed the go-live for production databases, but was fixed with the assistance of Oracle Support relatively fast.

We only had a scalability issue regarding local storage, especially on the ODA V1.

I would rate the technical support as six out of 10. Over the past couple of years, I’ve found that the quality of Oracle Support first-level has decreased.

We used custom-built single-server or cluster solutions. The ODA provides a high degree of standardization.

The initial deployment of 2x ODA V1s was accomplished in one day, including unpacking and rack-mounting.

Leverage the Pay-As-You-Grow licensing, and consider using the ODA X6-2 S/M/L models also for SE2/SE.

We evaluated Exadata, which often is overkill for many small and medium sized databases.

If you go with 1x ODA then at least establish a Data Guard standby system on a Linux server, e.g. Public Cloud. I suggest to use 2x ODAs in each DR setup.