[reactor]

First hand experience, I work for a bank which is a Fortune 100, and our department was heavily relying on Oracle Exadata, paying between 1-2 millions (don't know exact figure), we moved away to PostgreSQL and Casandra. Cost factor was not the only motive (1-2 millions was actually penny for this bank) but our Director was convinced that exadata was unnecessary.

[chris_wot]

Out of interest, what are the benefits of Exadata, or is it really a bit of emperorer's new clothes? Can you not get similar performance with similar good hardware?

[jerven]

Exadata:Hardware used to be competitively priced (at least in the x4 age), its the licensing for the software on top that makes it really expensive.

The other thing is that some oracle features only work on exadata or other engineered systems. The hybrid columnar compression for one and query offload as well as some forms of the in memory stuff. The problem is that these are very high end features and most of us live happily without these. Postgres is going after the bread in the oracle db market while exadata is the exclusive cheese shop. Much smaller market even if the margins are better.

[reactor]

We were on x5-2 and it was a beast, but in reality we never needed those specs. I think, Oracle sales guys got to those MD's who were calling the shots.