Oracle Database Appliance Reviews

ODA has two most valuable features. First, it’s very easy to deploy. Once received, you can unpack it, rack it, install it in less than one day and having a fully usable machine very quickly.

The second feature is its scalability: you can start with a small configuration (regarding Oracle licensing) and then enable Oracle CPU depending on your needs.

Not my organization because I work as a consultant. But one of my customers who has bought an ODA started a database for 10 shops and then he grew the number of CPUs enabled each time he opened some new shops.

Only one time during an upgrade, because the customer made some modifications in the machine configuration and he forgot that ODA is an appliance, not a traditional platform. So you have to be careful when you want to modify the system. A better way to do it is to ask support, when in doubt.

Usually my customers switched to ODA because they didn’t have a full-time DBA in their organization, and they wanted an easy to use solution that can be installed and upgraded easily.

The initial setup is very straightforward. As said above, you can deploy the machine in less that one day. But, as it’s an appliance, if you are not very familiar with this kind of deployment, read the docs and ask support first.

Usually, the customers I work for who chose ODA have licensed their database with the enterprise edition and they usually buy the diagnostic pack and deploy an enterprise manager cloud control to easily administer their OD platform.

The biggest value that customers are seeing, is that it's easy to install, quick to deploy, and easy to consolidate platforms; as opposed to building an environment from scratch. When you get the ODA, all you must do is plug it in and run several commands to get it up and running. This allows for the time to deploy to be really fast. With the addition of the X6-2S, 2M and 2HA, there is a ODA platform that will suit SMB, mid-size and now large scale customer workloads.

Particularly interesting, is that now ODA 2S/M supports Standard Edition (SE2) database configurations, which is great for SMB and mid-size consolidation plays.

Moreover, the ODA X2-HA adds a new whole area for us and our customers, as it adds an all flash storage array option and virtualization capabilities; further improving consolidation densities.

The platform is primarily used for departmental mid-size companies, although I do know large companies that use it, because it’s a great platform for consolidating. It is unable to expand by much, because of the way the ODA configures when you have two nodes and X number of storage. Oracle has done a good job of letting it expand storage, but the number of nodes is still limited to two. This continues to be an issue for customers.

I have worked with ODA for the last five to six years.

It’s a very stable product. As with any other technology, in initial phases, it needed to be tested; but it has become a very solid platform with a large customer base.

The initial idea, was that ODA would be a scalable solution; allowing customers tostart with a small number of CPU’s and grow as the demand increased. As aprimarily consolidation platform, you can consolidate more, by moving move up the CPU’s as needed; pricing goes along with that too.

It’s a very solid platform. Oracle has been good at managing the support.

ODA was initially designed for setup to be easy. Once brought in-house, you plug it in, set up your network connection, run one or two commands, and then set up is complete. Even if it's in a virtualized environment, it's still easy to set up. The quick setup is the beauty and the added value that ODA brings, as opposed to other conversion or engineering systems, which take a little bit more time.

Upgrades are the same; due to its automation, many of the commands, designed by the Oracle development team, allow for easy upgrades for the entire end-to-end stack.

It's a very low-cost, simplistic solution, especially from the infrastructure side. If you have minimal staff and a mid-size environment, this is a perfect platform.

We use the solution for our Java applications. 

The product's pricing is too high. We plan to migrate to another database in three to four years. 

I have been working with the product for 20 years. 

My technicians resolve issues themselves. We do not contact the support team. 

We used IBM before and migrated to Oracle Database Application due to the costs. 

Oracle Database Application's support and maintenance are included in the contract.

I rate the product a five out of ten. 

Oracle Database Appliance could improve by having better integration.

I have been using Oracle Database Appliance for approximately 25 years. 

Oracle Database Appliance is a stable solution. We have clients that have been running it for 10 years.

Database Appliance is highly scalable.

I have contacted the support from Oracle Database Appliance. Their services are no longer up to my expectation.

I rate the support from Oracle Database Appliance a three out of five.

We have seen a return on investment with Oracle Database Appliance. This is why we still support them today.

The price of the solution should be less expensive. However, they will increase the price more.

I would advise others to look for a company that has their own experience, that is local. This will allow them to have a local understanding of what requirements are needed. Sometimes the international companies may not be aware of the local requirements. One of the reasons that we are very still supporting Oracle Database Appliance is because we feel that Oracle has a lot of customers and a lot of implementers that are local. That's one of the key points that we're still with Oracle.

I rate Oracle Database Appliance ten out of ten.

Oracle Database Appliance is the best.

We use Oracle Database Appliance for database consolidation.

I would like it if the scalability could be increased without having to change versions. There is only so much that you can do with it. It's not like software that you are free to install anywhere.

I have been working with Oracle Database Appliance for a few years.

We work with two versions, but they are not new versions, and they are not the same versions.

Oracle Database Appliance is a stable solution.

Oracle Database Appliance, as an appliance, is limited in terms of how far you can scale it. Because it comes with prebuilt equipment, there is a limit to how much storage you can put into it. It's a prebuilt Appliance.

If you want to scale, then you have to change. You now have a more recent version. There are several variations. As a result, you must upgrade to a newer version.

In our company, we have six engineers who use this solution.

Oracle has good technical support.

Whether it is local or on the internet, they have good support.

It's not difficult if you've done installations before. There is documentation.

Everything is labeled, but it cannot be done by just anyone; you must have knowledge of the infrastructure.

Even though the documentation is available, everything is labeled and you simply plugin according to the diagram. It isn't a problem. It isn't difficult.

The deployment can be done by one person, either a technician or an engineer.

You must pay for the license. It is usually an annual subscription.

I would give it a seven out of ten as there is a limit to how much you can scale. You can't go beyond what the appliance provides.

We value the following features:

• It is easily scalable.
• All patches (OS, DB) are bundled by Oracle, so patching dependencies are resolved.
• Oracle guarantees that the setup works if you keep up with the patches.

Setup of the server and database was easy. At a later point in time we decided to virtualize it, and the basic setup of the box was also quite easy.

The following issues need some attention:

• There is no option to combine a second ODA X2 in real application cluster mode. Therefore high availability is limited to same-cabinet RAC, and to offsite standby.
• Storage expansion was not possible for ODA X2 so we frequently ran into storage limitations.
• Even in an RAC setup it is not easy to avoid downtime because OS patching requires both nodes to be patched with very short overlapping.
• Apparently there is a way to avoid downtime, but we did not explore that option anymore because we added a remote standby.

We used the solution from 2012 to 2016.

We had some stability issues.

In the beginning, soon after initial setup and go-live, a bug caused one of the nodes to use all cores while on the other node only the requested cores where activated. This led to instability.

Also, later a hard disk caused instability while it was "dying".

We had an issue with scalability, but only in terms of storage.

Technical support was excellent.

We didn't use a previous solution. This solution was recommended by a consulting company because of ease of scalability and patching.

Initial setup was easy.

Pricing was reasonable given the high quality hardware parts used and the high availability.

I was not involved in evaluation of alternative solutions.

The ODA is a great server solution for mid-size companies but be aware of the limitations when it comes to real application cluster.

Also, make sure the solution provides enough disk storage for the life time of the product.

The databases run smoothly all night without any administrative hassles. If the database goes down on one of the servers, the load is automatically shifted to another server. You can troubleshoot the one that is down without affecting uptime.

Virtualization needs improvement. It's not easy to back up the virtual machines in the Oracle VM architecture. I would also like to see native support for Veeam Backup Software.

I've been using Oracle Database Appliance for about two years.

Oracle's support is not very good.

Setup was easy. Everything is step by step from the first to the last stage.

A company installed it for us but we were with them during implementation.

The price should be lower.

I would rate Oracle Database Appliance six out of 10.

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.