It is a robust and reliable machine and can be used in different scenarios. If you have a requirement for a high end physical server to host your organizations different online services then you can use ProLiant DL. It can also be used in an environment where there is a need to host multiple different virtual machines on two or more physical servers.
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.
With upgrades to newer versions of VMware, HP has not provided VMware images with loaded drivers, this could be an issue for future upgrades to VMware users on HPs. The support forums discuss this and we wonder why no images are available.
Lilo support can be limited. These servers were preconfigured for us. HP was not able to help with this, telling us it must be in the preconfigured setup.
The base server did not meet our needs and the price ramped up quickly with add-ons to utilize SAN.
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.
Usability is generally good. I mostly like to use the management interface on HPE servers. GUI is well placed and provides easy access to management and reporting. Firmware upgrade is usually smooth, drivers install correctly and provide good quality of service. We have enough ports and interfaces to connect to the servers and some room to upgrade.
In over a decade, not once had we had a bad call with HPE support, not only were they have extremely qualified engineers but the speed in answering and addressing users is bar none. The same can not be said about support from other competitors in our experience over the years.
It is a very condensed version of what used to be rows of servers. I like that storage, networking and compute nodes fit in one rack. The power and the software are top notch. The only problem is cost. You need to do some serious processing to get the true value out of the Exalogic system.
I've used Dell poweredge servers and they were great too, but I found remotely deploying HPE hardware was significantly easier and faster. One thing I love about HPE is when i got to deploy an OS remotely via iLO I can utilize the virtual media URL as opposed to mounting an iso. these eliminates the SSL overhead and the OS can be deployed in under an hour. Mounting an ISO has proven reliable but due to the SSL overhead it can take hours. In addition i found im able to register my HPE hardware with HPE and they provide me a clean IT dashboard of all of my hardware and they give me alerts as to expiring support coverage, if a server is down or reporting an error. its a very solid and reliable solution all around.
It's hard to compare Oracle Exalogic Engineered Systems with anything else on the market. It's so purpose built for application performance and intended to be used in conjunction with other Oracle Engineered Systems. As I alluded to earlier in this review the cost may not be worth the investment if the performance isn't needed. Oracle offers other solutions like the Oracle PCA which will meet the need for licensing compliance at a much lower cost of ownership and may fit better into your current infrastructure.
They last forever. We only replace them when newer versions of VMWare don't support our oldest models. Our refresh cycle on virtual hosts is 6 or 7 years.
Plenty of third-party service support available when the warranty is up. This helps extend the life cycle as well.
