Oracle Exadata Express Cloud Service Reviews

We have been implementing Oracle Exadata Express Cloud Service for our customers for more than 10 to 12 years for our various customers through the on-premise Exadata offerings Oracle has.

Automation backup is useful for certain industries such as banking where zero data loss is required. It is very much useful because a lot of DBA work can be reduced by having an automated backup feature on Oracle Exadata Express Cloud Service, so we always use this auto backup feature on ExaCS.

Most of the Oracle Exadata features are available on ExaCS, and the advantage of ExaCS is that you can take a slice of Exadata and can start using it. For example, if a customer wants to do Exadata on-premise, the investment is upfront, whereas when you start using Exadata Cloud Services, you can start with a small investment and then keep on increasing it, which is very useful when you are deploying something. Your development and test environment can have a small infrastructure, and when you go live, you can increase the capacity of ExaCS on-demand and deploy your production environment on that, so it's very great in terms of cost control and getting the same performance without doing any upfront investment.

You don't require a third-party solution because you get the OCI Cloud security, which is the first layer. You can have an external firewall on top of it, but even if it's not there on the first layer, you have OCI security and then you have Exadata security features, advanced Oracle advanced security features you can turn on, so if you use these two, you don't require any third-party security software on top of it.

We are satisfied with the performance of Oracle Exadata Express Cloud Service, and most of the customers who are on-premise Exadata, when they go to ExaCS, they expect similar performance, so we are able to get better performance on ExaCS. Also, increasing your cluster horizontally in terms of adding the resources is very fast, which helps a lot, so performance-wise, we never faced a problem.

When customers are migrating from Oracle Exadata Express Cloud Service and need to remove some of their test and development environment, what happens in normal virtualization is that they can just switch it off, but in ExaCS, they need to terminate the entire thing. Most of the customers are not aware of this, so they keep spending money even if they want to shut down their UAT environment or development environment, so Oracle needs to make it simpler in terms of reducing the bill on ExaCS when customers want to shut down certain environments. Today, you have to terminate the entire VM, and only then your billing will stop.

The only functionality I would expect from Oracle Exadata Express Cloud Service is that if Oracle is able to support Oracle MySQL Enterprise also on Exadata, that will solve a lot of problems.

For more than 10 to 12 years.

The initial setup for Oracle Exadata Express Cloud Service depends on the team's experience. If you have an experienced DBA team, then it's not complex, but it's not simple for inexperienced people, as it takes certain expertise, core DBA expertise, storage expertise, and Linux expertise together to commission Exadata, and you need to have certified Exadata people with you to do that.

The stability of Oracle Exadata Express Cloud Service rates at a perfect score.

The scalability of Oracle Exadata Express Cloud Service rates at a perfect score.

Technical support from Oracle rates at five out of ten. Oracle support is 24/7, but if one support engineer is not able to solve the issue, you have to explain the problem again. Unless you have advanced support, normal support is not that great, so I would rate it around five or six.

Neutral

If customers have experience with Oracle Exadata on-premise, then they can implement it on cloud, but they still require some external expertise, which we provide. It's not just about Exadata commissioning. After commissioning, you have to do database consolidation on Exadata, which is the real use of Exadata on cloud also, so you require expertise from a partner who will commission Exadata or ExaCS and then help them.

We are Oracle partners, so we implement Oracle Exadata or Exadata Cloud Service or Exadata on Cloud for many customers, and our expertise is across all the Oracle systems.

The database integration with Oracle Exadata Express Cloud Service can easily be done by using GoldenGate, or if you are doing the ETL and pushing the data into Exadata, you have the ODI as a tool available on cloud or on-premise. The Oracle integration cloud is also available, but typically Exadata is only for databases, making integration of Exadata database with other databases very easy, and if you require real-time, you have GoldenGate also.

There is no competitor for Oracle Exadata Express Cloud Service.

The pricing for Oracle Exadata Express Cloud Service is high because the requirement is for high-end workload.

I rate Oracle Exadata Express Cloud Service an eight out of ten.

Neutral

Bigger customers from banking or insurance domains use the solution to have maximum performance and availability for their databases.

The performance of the tool is valuable. Some of our customers use the product because of the stability and scalability of resources like CPUs.

The support must be faster.

I have been using the solution for ten years.

I rate the tool’s stability an eight out of ten. There are some misconceptions regarding maintenance. I have never set up an infrastructure with zero downtime. Oracle must provide an infrastructure that has no downtime.

I rate the tool’s scalability a ten out of ten. It is scalable if we have enough resources and infrastructure. We cannot measure it. Either we can scale it up, or we cannot. About 50 to 70 customers use the product. We need two managers and ten engineers to maintain the solution.

Oracle’s support is not the best.

The initial setup is very simple because it's done in the cloud. There are some forms that we fill out and click on deploy. We install the infrastructure for customers and then install databases on the infrastructure. It’s the same on-premises and on the cloud. 

We need to know what the customer needs. Like a project, we gather some statistics and recommendations from the vendors and expectations from customers. Then, we put it in Excel sheets or PowerPoint slides. Finally, we deploy it.

We can pay the licensing fee monthly. We can also choose to pay upfront for a year. The tool is not cheap, but it is not really expensive. It depends on our usage. I rate the pricing a seven to eight out of ten. The customers must pay additionally for storage, infrastructure, and the right to use the database.

People who want to use the tool must talk to Oracle regarding the price of the product. They must also talk to Oracle’s partners to get the right solution for their problem. Overall, I rate the product an eight out of ten.

Most companies are affected by the European and Belgian governments ' rules concerning data, policies, security, and performance. The data on the platform may not be built for outside inquiry in Belgium.

Dealing with data is Europe's policy. When dealing with personal information in the medical sector on medical websites, it's dangerous to place it in the cloud. It's also forbidden in Belgium to share human resources like salaries on the cloud. Human resource companies calculating salaries, and so on cannot allow this information outside their database or Belgium. Putting this kind of information in online databases is dangerous because if they are hacked, or the data disappears, it can cause problems for people with personal data on the human resources or the medical side.

We use artificial intelligence for deep learning, and it would be a huge benefit to implement this in Oracle Exadata, though it would be difficult for the actual database. Artificial intelligence and deep learning could used for document processing, for example. Other tools need AI, deep learning, and tools for human behavior, and it would be useful in the database, though difficult.

Oracle should work on Oracle Exadata Express Cloud Service's AI capabilities.

I've been familiar with the solution for four years.

I have no complaints about the solution's stability. But that depends on which database I use. I have other databases in projects and databases on very high container databases. People who have all the information from smartphones and events are placed in the databases one by one when they are looking and doing some business actions. These are very fast databases. These are not relational databases anymore. These are real containers.

The quality of the technical support depends on what you want. In Belgium, we depend mostly on partners. We had our own Oracle service in the past, but it's not within our country anymore.

We only have support for marketing and selling products and for providing information. For technical issues and technical problems, we have to go directly to Oracle in the United States.

I have worked with Azure and AWS. We are still working with projects using Azure and AWS. The differences between Oracle Exadata Express Cloud Service and its competitors depend on the availability of the data in the cloud.

The solution's cost depends on whether you're in the banking or industrial sectors. The solution is good for the pharma sector.

I recommend the solution for medium companies and not smaller companies with about 50 employees. The solution would not be necessary for them and would be expensive.

Apart from Oracle Exadata, I recommend Microsoft because some clients already have Microsoft Stack for Azure. Microsoft's advantages over Oracle depend on what clients want to use it for. Business analysts and technical analysts in companies with architecture analysts use Oracle.

I rate the solution an eight out of ten.

The product's installation process needs improvement. It could be more accessible.

We have been using Oracle Exadata Express Cloud Service for four to five years.

The product is highly stable. I rate its stability a nine out of ten.

It is a scalable product. I rate its scalability a nine out of ten.

It took us 20 days to define the parameters to prepare for the installation and five working days to complete the configuration. It requires three engineers for maintenance.

Our organization has a system integrator to help us with the implementation.

I rate Oracle Exadata Express Cloud Service an eight out of ten.

Oracle Exadata Express Cloud Service is an excellent platform for consolidating various Oracle databases into one place. It provides high-performance levels and is the best solution for running databases at that level. 

Additionally, it has a unique solution in the cloud, allowing for easy migration of Exadata databases to the cloud without significant changes. This makes it an ideal solution for anyone looking to improve performance, scalability, and security for any Oracle database that requires high-end performance. The built-in high availability feature of Exadata ensures that it is a reliable solution.

We are a solution partner who implements this solution for our customers. So far, we have implemented this solution for around thirty to forty customers.

One of the most valuable parts of the solution is the high availability within the system and the performance enhancement without making any changes or fine-tuning the databases. These are the two main valuable features.

They need to simplify the monitoring of the Exadata services. They have to make it more simple for the users to operate or manage. 

And one more thing, I would expect that other databases of Oracle, like MySQL Enterprise Edition, if technologically, Oracle makes some advancement and allows MySQL Enterprise Edition to run on Exadata, I think that will improve their market share exponentially.

Today, on Exadata, you run Oracle databases, which is given. Apart from that, Oracle also has Oracle MySQL database, open source. If that open-source database also runs on Exadata, I think that will help a lot of customers.

In the next release, Oracle can provide a script-level solution to migrate or consolidate cross-platform databases from Unix platform to Oracle Exadata on Linux platform; if they can provide some migration tools, I think that will help.

We have implemented Oracle Exadata-related solutions for the past few years.

I would rate the stability a nine out of ten. 

I would rate the scalability a nine out of ten.  If we look at our customers, we have large banks using this solution with hundreds of users, some with seven or eight hundred users, and smaller data sets with around one hundred users. When large banks use it for customer-facing applications, those are unlimited users from the internet. We also have internal applications with around three to four hundred users.

There is room for improvement in the support. 

Neutral

I would rate the initial setup a seven out of ten, where one is difficult and ten is easy. The mid-level deployment took around four weeks. Once the Exadata machine is commissioned by Oracle, we basically take various Oracle databases running on different platforms, consolidate them into Oracle, migrate them, fine-tune them if required, test them, and then commission them. We ensure that the applications are running as intended. It's a very straightforward methodology. Sometimes we have to use tools like Oracle Golden Gate, but otherwise, the normal database migration methodology will work.

We work with all three different deployment options for Exadata: on-premise Exadata, Exadata Cloud at Customer, and Exadata Cloud Service. We have experience with all three versions of Exadata machines.

The licensing cost is high. But the price-to-performance ratio is good. It is worth the price. There are different licensing models available. There are no additional costs. 

If you are using Oracle and your support and license cost is around 80k USD or more, you should seriously consider using Exadata from a pricing perspective. And, if you have any applications requiring high-end performance and scalability, especially for Internet-based applications, then there is no platform like Exadata, whether on-premises or on the cloud.

Overall, I would rate the solution nine out of ten because there is no comparison of this product anywhere else. Firstly, Oracle runs the fastest on this particular technology.It's based on Linux, specifically Oracle Linux, which makes portability from other Linux systems to Oracle Linux straightforward. Additionally, the high availability is robust, and the scalability is massive.

The use cases for Oracle Exadata Express Cloud Service depend on each client. Many clients nowadays prefer to use cloud solutions because cloud-based solutions don't require in-house servers, and for one of my clients based in the US, the client was on ODI because the company was a startup and didn't want to go with anything in-house. Hence, that startup used Oracle Exadata Express Cloud Service.

How Oracle Exadata Express Cloud Service helps improve organizations depends on client requirements. For example, my current client said, "Why don't we use the PL/SQL to do ETL services?" And that's where the question on using Informatica or ODI came in, particularly the question, "Why write entire queries just to do this?" That's when I started my research, so it depends on what my client requires.

My main job is to help clients choose a better solution that serves them long-term, so I usually recommend Oracle Exadata Express Cloud Service because it's easier to use and good long-term. The vendor will also assist you, so you won't need to hire people, so Oracle Exadata Express Cloud Service also helps save on costs.

I like that Oracle Exadata Express Cloud Service is easier to use and is a cost-saving solution because you won't need to hire people to run and maintain it.

Scaling Oracle Exadata Express Cloud Service can be done, but the process is a little tedious, which could be an area for improvement in the solution.

I've worked with Oracle Exadata Express Cloud Service for six to seven months.

Stability-wise, Oracle Exadata Express Cloud Service is more of a seven out of ten. For example, when you have a requirement related to the solution's performance, you must contact the provider to request specific changes. It's similar to every other application.

Oracle Exadata Express Cloud Service scalability can be defined from different perspectives. One is load, so it depends on the amount of data there is. If more data is coming in, can you scale the product to handle more data, basically sizing and performance, for example?

So, Oracle Exadata Express Cloud Service is scalable, and I'd give it an eight out of ten, scalability-wise. Scaling it can be a little tedious, but it can be done. I found the overall scalability of the solution good.

The initial setup for Oracle Exadata Express Cloud Service was easy, so I rate it eight out of ten.

Deploying the solution doesn't take long, assuming you've set up the securities, accesses, and groups correctly. It would take less than a day. It all depends on how the security is set up within the company.

Most of my work within the past five or six years has been based on an Oracle product that different clients consult with me on. It's Java-based, but it's a database-driven application focusing more on AML. It's Oracle Exadata Express Cloud Service.

My company is an Oracle partner that integrates and implements Oracle Exadata Express Cloud Service. Sometimes, my company resells the solution as well.

One of the job roles for Oracle Exadata Express Cloud Service is identifying how to extract the data most proficiently. If you're working with overwhelming records, you often can't just write simple queries to extract data. You have to specify how you write the query. You identify the cause of the slowness and how to perform better through Oracle Exadata Express Cloud Service, and then you have to take care of the solution to ensure it meets each user's requirement.

The providers maintain the solution, so my company didn't have to assign staff to maintain Oracle Exadata Express Cloud Service.

My rating for the solution is eight out of ten.

• For our customers who are currently running this solution, my first client's use case is they are moving their data to this solution.
  
  
• The second case is customers who are running a large number of database servers that want to consolidate them for better performance are switching to this solution because it has a better value proposition than Exadata on-premises.
  
  
• The third case is if customers are running some customer-facing critical applications and performance is an issue, it is best to move to this solution. However, their compliance authorities have to allow them to go to the cloud, if they are not allowed, we suggest Exadata on-premises.

• What is most valuable about this solution is there is no comparative solution by any other vendors. If you look at the SAP side with the HANA database package I do not see any other comparative product with this one. If customers are running a large number of databases on different Unix servers, they can use this solution running on Oracle Linux. The performance will be excellent and is the most important thing. The performance is key and this is where this solution scores.
  
  
• Having the prediction happen in the modular format allows you to start with a lower version of Exadata and then you can keep on upgrading it as per your requirement. 
  
  
• It is important that the solution is mainly based on Oracle Linux allowing for everything to be fine-tuned. The hardware, network, IO, operating system, database, and everything else works seamlessly together.

The customer's default choice is the on-premise version of this solution. Only when Oracle or the partners like us, can explain to customers the cloud value proposition, and if the compliance authorities allow, they can look into this cloud solution. It will take some time for Oracle to change its perception of customers' de-facto standards. Exadata used to be treated as a black box, which is not the case now. The customer is aware of what is happening inside, how the configurations have been made, and what patching has been applied. Oracle needs to market the cloud version better.

In the future release, if large enterprise customers are running this solution they should have OCI, PaaS, and SaaS all combined together. This would allow them to have the security of all three. Then the various departments can provision as per what meetd their requirement.

I have been using this solution for approximately three years.

The solution is very stable. We have customers who are running their mission-critical applications on Oracle Cloud, OCI Cloud, or Oracle Cloud Infrastructure with PaaS. Additionally, we have customers who are running their core ERP application on the SaaS. It is very stable and Cisco is committed to the service availability. The is one of the biggest things as compared to any other vendor. We have not faced a major problem, any downtime, customer losing data, or any similar situation.

The solution is scalable. The whole idea of the cloud is to allow the ability to start small and then you can expand. Additionally, depending on the environment, you can switch it on or switch it off, if it is a UAT test environment or something similar. If it is a production, you can always scale up because provisioning of additional hardware is very fast on Oracle Cloud. The provisioning for the additional resources can be done within a couple of hours, and that is where the scalability comes into the picture. This reduces the project implementation time also because you do not have to install anything from the beginning, you only need to select the infrastructure and it can be provisioned very fast.

We have been using Oracle for our customers since 1994. We use Metalink and depending on the product, the support qualities are great. The good thing is that if customers are running Oracle Linux or this solution and then Oracle on Oracle, you can raise a single SR. That is not the case if you are running Oracle on Red Hat or Oracle on another platform because then you have to manage two different vendors. Having just one SR ticket you can raise it on Oracle Linux and sort out the problem with Linux, Oracle, and with Exadata with middleware. They have simplified the process a lot and the support has been good.

The installation is straightforward. With Cloud Services or Exadata on-premise, once the initial configuration has been done this is when the real work starts. We have to consolidate the databases, fine-tune them, implement GoldenGate along with it, or whatever else is required. It takes some time because it is not a small implementation. We have not been faced any major issues with Exadata implementations.

We do the implementation of the solution ourselves.

The typical ROI consideration is the license of your organization which you can do when you are consolidating your servers. Imagine a customer who is running a number of Unix servers and they have been underutilized, but you have spent a lot of money on the license for Oracle because of the usage, for example, the number of CPUs. When you consolidate the servers to Oracle, it gives you a considerable value proposition with a high ROI. 

The price of this solution is very comparative to others on the market. There is no direct comparison between this solution and with something else because I do not see any other similar product. If you compare this solution with the on-prem deployment of the application on a Unix server, there is a huge value proposition because of the speed and scalability because of how we can reduce your costs by optimizing some of your infrastructure on the cloud services. Having the ability to switch off and on and bring your own license policy, is one of the biggest advantages. 

If someone quotes you for this solution it may sound high, but when you have looked at the configuration, the return of investment, and the whole picture it changes your perspective. Your current investment is protected because they have the bring your own licenses policy. There is a huge value proposition.

My advice to those wanting to implement this solution is they have to understand the value proposition of Exadata itself over the legacy Unix servers which are coming towards the end of their life cycle. If you have a large number of databases, spending a considerable amount of money on the licenses, and annual technical support you need to see how you can consolidate. You need to figure out how can provide the right resources for the right application. 

You can enhance your position by considering this solution because you get everything that you get in Exadata on-premises. Additionally, it is a cloud service and managed the way any other server which is managed in the cloud operates. You receive all the cloud advantages plus you get all the Exadata advantages. If you better understand the Exadata value proposition and the cloud value proposition and add these two together you will the benefits of this solution.

I rate Oracle Exadata Express Cloud Service an eight out of ten.

Positive

I work for a company that implements analytics solutions, so I'm not an end-user. I'm a data architect and consultant in that area. Exadata Express Cloud Services is usually used for small to medium-sized enterprises. 

I would like to see Express add some more of the features from the Enterprise Edition.

I've been working with Oracle Exadata for 15 years. When we started using Exadata, it was only available as an on-premises appliance, but they moved this technology to the cloud to make it more flexible.

Exadata is a highly stable and mature solution.

In the cloud, Exadata is more scalable. The on-prem version was limited. It wasn't that scalable because it only came in a quarter rack, half rack, and full rack. In the cloud, it scales to what you need.

Oracle's support could be better. There are a lot of online materials with all the error codes, and lots of information is available on Oracle's knowledge basis. This is great. But if you have a real problem that nobody else had before and need to create a ticket, the support you get could be better.

The cloud version of Exadata is easy to set up.

I think Oracle pricing is usually above average market price.

I rate Exadata Express Cloud Service an eight out of 10.