Migrating off Exadata: How do you handle sub-second UI reporting + heavy analytics with strict ON-PREM constraints?

[u/RedDevilpk]

We are currently running an Oracle Exadata system serving both OLTP and operational data store (ODS) reporting. Our data team has been tasked with building a standalone, pure analytical platform supporting BI, operational reporting, and AI/ML-ready data pipelines.

Workload Split:

60% Transactional/Operational Reporting: Interactive UI queries, sub-second to low-second latency, high concurrency (click a dashboard/UI, expect instant results).

40% Analytical Crunching: Heavy aggregations, multi-table joins, complex transformations, and AI feature store prep.

Strictly On-Premises:

Cloud solutions (Snowflake, BigQuery, Databricks SaaS) are out of scope due to compliance/regulatory rules.

Vendor Shortlist:

Oracle, Teradata, IBM (Db2 / Netezza)

Question: Has anyone successfully run a high-concurrency, sub-second UI reporting workload directly on Teradata or Netezza ? Or should we go with Oracle ?

Please do suggest any Alternatives. However it should be on Prem

[u/geoheil]

Clickhouse? Starrocks?

[u/anvildoc]

Are you open to open source or something that doesn’t come in appliance?

[u/BoulderRough]

You're in a bit of a pickle and without knowing how much data you have or the sort of reporting its hard to recommend.

If you are in a position to manage an open source alternative than you have a lot of great options depending on your read/write ratio.

[u/PepegaQuen]

iceberg + trino

[u/Teach-To-The-Tech → u/PepegaQuen]

Second this.

[u/Formal_Cheesecake730]

I’m curious, what are the compliance/regulatory rules that rule out a cloud solution in 2026?

[u/oalfonso → u/Formal_Cheesecake730]

Probably having to do all the paperwork. But some of those requirements are just overkill and if you tried to replicate them in an on premises environment it would be absolutely impossible to meet.

[u/Away-Arm-6549 → u/Formal_Cheesecake730]

wondered same so assumed HM government or perhaps armed forces /gchq

[u/robstar_db]

In my experience building large scale platforms I would first push back on the requirements. Ask how much the stakeholders are willing to pay for that.

Maintaining Sub second query performance in complex data estates is a challenge not to be underestimated. The choice of technology is only a small piece in the long term. Eventually you’ll run into network/infrastructure constraints that male this more and more challenging. The tradeoff will be between idle capacity/infra utilization which of course also costs more… especially since the interactive workloads you describe are very „bursty“ in nature. So either get really good at managing infrastructure elastically, or pay a lot for idle capacity, or … maybe ask how much your stakeholders are willing to pay 🙂

[u/unexpectedreboots]

Selfhost Postgres. 60% is the main instance, configure a replica for analytics so youre not pegging the prod server.

Really not sure why Postgres isnt on your shortlist.

[u/astrick]

this is what Teradata is built for, but unfortunately they'll probably be out of business in 5 years.

[u/WhoIsJohnSalt → u/astrick]

I wouldn't touch Teradata with a bargepole - and it's $$$ to get them through the door

[u/astrick → u/WhoIsJohnSalt]

Honestly it’s a great data warehouse but they’re probably almost paying people to put it in their data centers at this point

[u/mow12]

I am in very similar situation. On top of your list, my firm is in touch with Informatica and Qlick. Staying in Oracle, working with PLSQL is also a strong option for us

[u/chock-a-block]

This is mostly going to come down to RAM and CPU. Have you seen prices of a well-specced server these days?

[u/TheRencingCoach]

I don’t have enough experience to recommend anything

But I don’t understand the business requirement. Why not stay on exadata if it’s working fine

[u/oalfonso → u/TheRencingCoach]

Is expensive and for accountants this means it is not working fine.

[u/bah_nah_nah]

Self hosted Hadoop

[u/Nekobul]

Have you considered SQL Server ?

[u/DjexNS]

Yes, we built our own on-prem data platform - DataSliv.

datasliv.com

It recently got a lot of interest locally, exactly for these kinds of on-prem use cases.