RE: AUTORAID and VA7100 disk arrays for rp7400

Are you sure you didn't work here on our current 6-way K-570 w/AutoRAID? I've been here for almost 10 years, but I don't recall... ;) For us, we were just oversold. Not anymore.

BTW, I believe ours is known as an "AutoRAID 12H". The "Virtual Array" VA7100 is a separate RAID unit that sounds a lot like a SAN. The only problem is that I know the VA7100 does RAID5DP (double parity), but I'm fairly certain it can NOT do any combination of 0 and 1. If it can't, don't do it. You *will* suffer in an I/O hell by using RAID5, despite the hype of huge I/O caching on the SAN (or VA in this case). I believe there are some horror stories around the list about RAID5 and Oracle DBs.

If that's true, I'd say run far away from both of them. I suppose the HP Surestore Disk Arrays are priced too high? I know they can do RAID 0/1 at least. You may want to check out
http://welcome.hp.com/country/us/eng/prodserv/storage.html

HTH! GL! :) Rich

Rich Jesse                           System/Database Administrator
Rich.Jesse_at_qtiworld.com              Quad/Tech International, Sussex, WI USA

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Vergara, Michael (TEM) [mailto:mvergara_at_guidant.com]
> Sent: Thursday, January 23, 2003 3:40 PM
> To: Multiple recipients of list ORACLE-L
> Subject: RE: AUTORAID and VA7100 disk arrays for rp7400
>
>
> I'm not sure what a VA7100 is, so I don't want to tell you
> to avoid it. The AutoRaid I used just said "AutoRaid" on the
> front. It had 12 disks...I think they were 9G or 18G each.
> It had only 96M of cache, not expandable. Only 2 SCSI
> channels - not expandable.
>
> What happened was that our whole database was on this array.
> Yes, even on-line and archived redo logs. The array did so
> much internal thrashing that the disk response times were
> abysmal.
>
> <RANT>
> The boss got it cause he didn't want to pay the extra $$$
> for a 'real' array from EMC, Hitachi, or IBM. It had the
> magic word 'Raid' in the name so he went for it, and then
> was all over me because the system was so slow. I should'a
> known what was up when a JBOD D-370 2-way did stuff faster
> than our K570 6-way and the AutoRaid.
> </RANT>
>
> Take my advice - don't go with an AutoRaid.
>
> Cheers,
> Mike
>
> -----Original Message-----
> Sent: Thursday, January 23, 2003 12:45 PM
> To: Multiple recipients of list ORACLE-L
>
>
> Michael,
>
> a dumb question. does this stops me from using VA7100 with
> 0+1 or are u talking about going some other disk array product?
>
> Thanks
> Mandar

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Author: Jesse, Rich
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