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Home -> Community -> Mailing Lists -> Oracle-L -> SAC NORAD and Dustin Hoffman. WAS: HA HA HA on your 24/7 systems

SAC NORAD and Dustin Hoffman. WAS: HA HA HA on your 24/7 systems

From: Mohan, Ross <Ross.Mohan_at_PictureVision.com>
Date: Mon, 16 Oct 2000 08:57:07 -0400
Message-Id: <10651.119308@fatcity.com>


That's why they say that SAC/NORAD ( Strategic Air Command HQ, North American Defense ) buried deep into a mountain in Colorado is a "single point of failure" for the US NationalDefense:

All it takes is a direct hit by one nuclear bomb to bring down the whole facility! :-)

In the words of the Marathon Man's tormentor:

"Is it safe?"

<evil laughter>

-----Original Message-----
From: Jared Still [mailto:jkstill_at_bcbso.com] Sent: Friday, October 13, 2000 7:45 PM
To: Multiple recipients of list ORACLE-L Subject: RE: Oracle Parallel Server / Other HA Solutions

Sorry Ross. Yes I am familiar with enterprise class storage systems.

It still isn't HA.

It only takes one bumbling SA ( or DBA ) to bring the system down, one neanderthalic techie in the computer room to push the 'OFF' switch.

Simultaneous failure of both of the controllers for an array, or of enough disks to bring the array down are not unheard of.

Jared

On Fri, 13 Oct 2000, Mohan, Ross wrote:

> I have to say this "disk is a single point of failure"
> is jangling to the cognitive logic subsystem.
>
> Why?
>
> Well, the disk farms i have seen have redundant controllers,
> with redundant channels, TRIPLE power supplies, at least a
> single mirror with dual porting. There's your "single" disk
> point of failure for you.
>
> Now, try this: Take your two "redundant" nodes....put them
> in a really really big rack and then inside ONE big box. <G>
>
> Are the two nodes ( which now have at least redundant CPUs,
> power supplies, etc. ) a "single point of failure"?
>
> Come on, guys, if you've worked with this stuff a bunch you know:
>
> (a) properly configured diskfarms have a great MTBF, better
> than the other hardware, and
> (b) to REALLY answer Mary's class of questions, you need to
> calculate MTBFs and MTTRs.
>
> The rest is armchair clustering!
>
> hope this pertains,
>
> Ross Mohan
>
> p.s. HA is the latest marketspeak for "failover" or "redundant" or
> whatever...
> please try to browse a copy of "In Search of Clusters" by Gregory Pfister
> from
> IBM. It's a cult classic, a helluva fun read, and one of the best
> thought-out
> technical books i have ever seen, period.
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> Sent: Thursday, October 12, 2000 2:00 PM
> To: Multiple recipients of list ORACLE-L
>
>
>
> Mary,
>
> OPS is not an HA solution. While you may still have
> an instance running if a node goes down, the storage
> medium is still a single point of failure.
>
> Jared
>
> On Thu, 12 Oct 2000, Ruiz, Mary A (CAP, CDI) wrote:
>
> > I need a little advice. We have a fairly new (< 1 year) 8.1.5 instance
> to
> > support my company's internet business. We recently changed our network
> > solutions provider and now my management wants to achieve a higher level
> of
> > redundancy than it currently does with mirrored disks. The solution
being
> > proposed by my Sysadmin is an Oracle Parallel Server solution. Some
> > background is in order here - we have always shut our databases down at
> > night for backups. I am not highly skilled in backup and recovery
> although
> > I tried some of the hot backup techniques from this list and was able to
> > recover successfully to another server. I noticed that the course
offered
> > by Oracle in OPS has backup and recovery as well as performance tuning
as
> > pre-requisites, which indicates to me that OPS could be extremely
> > challenging. Also, I have read mainly unfavorable comments about OPS
from
> > this list, but most of those comments were based on the Oracle 7
> > implementations (High administrative costs, difficult to implement,
etc.).
>
> >
> > Have things improved with Oracle 8i ? Is OPS worth pursuing? Or should
I
> > convince my management that extra $$ spent in, say, a hot standby
database
> > is well worth it? Is there any other solution that would not involve a
> > second set of disks, rather a second database on the same set of disks
??
> >
> > Thanks in advance,
> > Mary Ruiz / Atlanta
> >
> > --
> > Please see the official ORACLE-L FAQ: http://www.orafaq.com
> > --
> > Author: Ruiz, Mary A (CAP, CDI)
> > INET: Mary.Ruiz_at_gecapital.com
> >
> > Fat City Network Services -- (858) 538-5051 FAX: (858) 538-5051
> > San Diego, California -- Public Internet access / Mailing Lists
> > --------------------------------------------------------------------
> > To REMOVE yourself from this mailing list, send an E-Mail message
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> > also send the HELP command for other information (like subscribing).
> >
>
>
> Jared Still
> Certified Oracle DBA and Part Time Perl Evangelist ;-)
> Regence BlueCross BlueShield of Oregon
> jkstill_at_bcbso.com - Work - preferred address
> jkstill_at_teleport.com - private
>
>
> --
> Please see the official ORACLE-L FAQ: http://www.orafaq.com
> --
> Author: Jared Still
> INET: jkstill_at_bcbso.com
>
> Fat City Network Services -- (858) 538-5051 FAX: (858) 538-5051
> San Diego, California -- Public Internet access / Mailing Lists
> --------------------------------------------------------------------
> To REMOVE yourself from this mailing list, send an E-Mail message
> to: ListGuru_at_fatcity.com (note EXACT spelling of 'ListGuru') and in
> the message BODY, include a line containing: UNSUB ORACLE-L
> (or the name of mailing list you want to be removed from). You may
> also send the HELP command for other information (like subscribing).
> --
> Please see the official ORACLE-L FAQ: http://www.orafaq.com
> --
> Author: Mohan, Ross
> INET: Ross.Mohan_at_PictureVision.com
>
> Fat City Network Services -- (858) 538-5051 FAX: (858) 538-5051
> San Diego, California -- Public Internet access / Mailing Lists
> --------------------------------------------------------------------
> To REMOVE yourself from this mailing list, send an E-Mail message
> to: ListGuru_at_fatcity.com (note EXACT spelling of 'ListGuru') and in
> the message BODY, include a line containing: UNSUB ORACLE-L
> (or the name of mailing list you want to be removed from). You may
> also send the HELP command for other information (like subscribing).
>

Jared Still
Certified Oracle DBA and Part Time Perl Evangelist ;-) Regence BlueCross BlueShield of Oregon
jkstill_at_bcbso.com - Work - preferred address jkstill_at_teleport.com - private

-- 
Please see the official ORACLE-L FAQ: http://www.orafaq.com
-- 
Author: Jared Still
  INET: jkstill_at_bcbso.com

Fat City Network Services    -- (858) 538-5051  FAX: (858) 538-5051
San Diego, California        -- Public Internet access / Mailing Lists
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Received on Mon Oct 16 2000 - 07:57:07 CDT

Original text of this message

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