Oracle Exalogic Reviews & Insights

Score9 out of 10

14 Reviews and Ratings

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Reviews

4 Reviews

The Key Values of Oracle Exalogic for Java Applications

Rating: 9 out of 10

Incentivized

May 8, 2017

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Oracle Exalogic is the best solution for Java applications in terms of performance and high availability. My customer was able to consolidate several installations of WebLogic servers in one single Exalogic virtual configuration, without re-writing the applications. So, my customer saved the maintenance costs of their systems and also improved the performance of mission critical applications without any code change.

Pros

Private Cloud: in the virtual configuration, you can create several accounts and assign different resources (vCPU, RAM, etc.) to several departments in your organization.
SDP & Infiband: Oracle Exalogic can be connected to Oracle Exadata using Infiniband Fabric, to take advantage of high bandwidth and low latency network to connect Weblogic to Oracle Database.
Standardization: Oracle Weblogic Server running on Oracle Exalogic is the same software running on a normal Linux machine, so you can easily move Java applications without changing it, and immediately benefit from the Exalogic Optimizations.

Cons

My customers don't appreciate the Enterprise Manager Ops Center to monitor/maintain Exalogic. Maybe, the user interface could be simplified.

Likelihood to Recommend

Oracle Exalogic was designed for Oracle Weblogic Server, the best scenario is for two specific tasks:
1) consolidation of different installations (in a virtual configuration)
2) maximize the performance of java applications (with any code change)

Oracle Exalogic is not appropriate to create custom vServer. For example, it's not possibile to install Microsoft Windows operating systems. There are specific Exalogic vServer template to be used instead.

Simone Traversari

Solution Architect - Cloud & On-Premise Database & Middleware - Engineered Systems Specialist in Information Technology at Bridge Consulting S.r.l. (51-200 employees)

Vetted Review

4 years of experience

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Exalogic - when you need Weblogic on Steroids

Rating: 8 out of 10

Incentivized

May 2, 2017

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Currently, as a consulting company, we have implemented and are implementing Oracle Exalogic for several of our customers. We also support customers who are existing users of Exalogic. Customers generally purchase Oracle Exalogic for specific use cases then depending on circumstances the portfolio of applications migrated to Exalogic often expands. Usually, Oracle applications that are WebLogic based and are business critical or mission critical are the first to be moved to the Exalogic Platform.

Pros

Because Exalogic uses SR-IOV it is the only virtualization technology that can provide wire sped transfers to the virtual machines. This enables performance indistinguishable from physical machines.
Since Exalogic comes as a integrated engineered system the maintenance is much more codified. This reduces vendor finger pointing and guarantees that things will either work well with each other from the get go or will be speedily resolved. The ability to have that level of confidence in the stability of a platform is very encouraging for customers.
Oracle has provided special optimizations specifically for Weblogic. There are special communication protocols that are enabled when Exalogic communicates to an Oracle Database Running on the Exadata Database Machine that multiply benefits. things like RAC aware databse connections allow quick recovery in case of loss of a database node with minimal disruption to individual transactions and no loss in availability of the overall applications.

Cons

Currently, the management of Exalogic is a little arcane. There is a good chance that Oracle can bring flexibility into the control stack because we have seen changes with each version of the software Echo was an improvement and foxtrot even more so. The ability to easily change VM shapes was another welcome change.
Again the fact arises that to build a very high performance machine there will be idiosyncrasies and a certain amount of retraining may be required. I think this is one area where Exalogic lacks not as a product but as a solution is that there isn't as much good knowledge available about it as there is for other engineered systems.
The Exalogic default setup could do with an SSD storage option, currently the onboard comes with a spinning disk.

Likelihood to Recommend

Best suited - In conjunction with Exadata to run Weblogic/Oracle database based packaged applications like EBS 12.2 Peoplesoft , SOA, AIA ,Oracel revenue billing and retail type of applications.

Exalogic is not suited as a general purpose converged infrastructure.

Robin Saikat Chatterjee

Principal Consultant in Information Technology at Tata Consultancy Services (10,001+ employees)

Vetted Review

3 years of experience

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Exalogic, wish I had one at home.

Rating: 8 out of 10

Incentivized

December 11, 2015

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

It is being used to host SOA composite applications for the majority of the company. Allows for SaaS, PaaS and uses best of breed hardware and software. It allows multiple clients to directly connect to our systems and provides various resources used by user interfaces. The ability to create VMs quickly is key when new resources are needed. It allows the infrastructure team to delegate control to the various groups when needed. The Exalogic hooks into the application stack really does improve performance.

Pros

Private Cloud
SOA Performance
Ease of Management
Oracle Traffic director really does a good job of fronting the applications.

Cons

Patching
Networking Complexity
Virtual Assembly Builder
Dynamic Resource Allocation

Likelihood to Recommend

If managed and setup correctly it can enable safe self service to developers. Setting up networking can be a pain for non network engineers. The cost of the hardware, consulting costs to get it installed and configured and licensing can be prohibitive. You can however save money on Oracle licensing by purchasing licenses for only the amount of cores you need. If you do not have resources in house there are experienced with ExaLogic there many consultants in the field that now have this experience.

Brad Gibson

Senior Solutions Architect in Professional Services at ROLTA | Americas (1001-5000 employees)

Vetted Review

2 years of experience

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Oracle Exalogic, why or why not - a technicians tale

Rating: 7 out of 10

Incentivized

December 10, 2015

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

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.

Pros

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.

Cons

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.

Likelihood to Recommend

Oracle Exalogic in conjunction with an Oracle Exadata based platform is what I would consider the best of breed solution; however the performance may be overkill for what you need. Don't spend the money unless you need the performance, Oracle offers other solutions at a much lower cost. Purchase what you need not what's the shiny new product.

Nathan Normandin

Solutions Architect in Information Technology at Data Intensity, LLC (51-200 employees)

Vetted Review

5 years of experience

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