Re: Oracle on Linux ... Production Strength ???

> We are considering both Red Hat and Suse distributions. We have discovered
> that regardless of the Linux distribution .... support is generally
> expensive. That is not a particularly 'deal breaker' determining factor ..
> BUT .. I question the quality of support, the expediency of response and the
> 'sense of urgency' experienced in the event of a critical application being
> down. I am familiar with limited Oracle-Linux implementations but not to the
> 'industrial strength' degree that has been proposed (but already
> implemented) by our requesting user community.

The prices for 7x24 support are roughly the same for linux and Solaris, HP-UX, or AIX. One other option is to buy the linux from IBM, with support. IBM seriously wants linux to succeed on thier platforms and has good support.

Linux Care and Cygnus (now part of Red Hat) have been dealing with mission-critical systems for some time and are capable of fixing things. Obviously, setting up the system in a supportable fashion (e.g., supported hardware, up to date drivers) will get you better response times.

> Is there a preferred distribution ????

Sure: Red Hat preferrs that you buy theirs, SuSE wants your money also.

Beyond that the kernel -- a.k.a., "linux" -- is something you download from the net and compile locally. It has relatively little effect on the difference between distributions. The real distinctions are in SysAdmin tools and the installation. Most of it is a purely religious issue, all you can really do is set up a few machines and try them.

So far as I know HP and IBM are both going with Red Hat as their base distro's and Oracle only supports Red Hat so that is probably what you'll end up with. Eyeball the available support contracts to be sure.

The net result will depend heavily on the hardware you're running. For serious databases X86 platforms don't work well because of hardware limitations. You are probably better off looking at the hardware first and then finding out which software vendor is supported (probably Red Hat for HP or IBM systems).

> My initial implementation is Suse 7.2 Enterprise on an IBM NetFinity, 4 cpu,
> 2 Gbyte (memory) server using a Net Appliance Filer. There are six instances
> currently up and running. Thus far there have been no occurrences of
> swapping or i/o bottlenecks .... but then the system has yet to be fully
> 'stressed' and there are scalability concerns. The USER also wants to put
> Oracle 9iAS on the same box - I have managed to delay that for now, pending
> further research. I have had a couple of worrying episodes where a file
> system 'filled up' (on the Filer) that completely 'hung' the system ....
> requiring a full system re-boot. Incidentally the aforementioned NetFinity
> implementation is 'a given' as the six instances have already been migrated
> from an aged and de-commissioned HP system. I have inherited the results and
> there is no going back at this juncture.

What file system are you running? Are you using LVM? devfs? A full system lockup in this case seems suspicious.

--
Steven Lembark                              2930 W. Palmer
Workhorse Computing                      Chicago, IL 60647
                                           +1 800 762 1582
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