RE: Dell-Oracle-Linux: Anyone else run this...because its not working for us!

>> I hadn't considered system hangs caused by...hardware
>> I can easily imagine Linux suffering similar problems
I have seen it first hand on $50k hardware *and* million dollar hardware.
(RAC) Instance hang doesn't exclude the rich. ;o)  

>> Because Linux supports such a huge variety of devices, there's really
no way the hardware
Actually there is.
In the x86 world Oracle Corp. provides an almost exact "shopping list" of hardware you *will* use for Oracle-RAC-Linux. This is not true of the high end UNIX (hardware) world. Oracle will not support RAC on an Intel >playground".

>> Chris, I am curious about this: to what extent did Oracle honour
their claims of "unbreakable Linux"?
>> Did they ever "fix" the problem? Did they even try?
 

My TAR is still open for my "unbreakable Linux" Dell-Oracle-RH certified config issues. Hardware *is* the root cause but both nodes fail / hang for one node hardware issue.  

Interestingly Dell support is telling us they no longer support this config; Dell-2*50-PV-PERC...oh they still sell every piece off it on there web site, but not put together for and Oracle (RAC) database. That what they told me last week.  

Chris Marquez
Oracle DBA  

From: Mark Brinsmead [mailto:mark.brinsmead_at_shaw.ca] Sent: Monday, November 21, 2005 1:22 PM
To: Marquez, Chris
Cc: thump_at_cosmiccooler.org; oracle-l_at_freelists.org Subject: Re: Dell-Oracle-Linux: Anyone else run this...because its not working for us!

Interesting. I hadn't considered system hangs caused by flakey hardware / device drivers. This is something I used to encounter a lot (many years ago) with SCO. I can easily imagine Linux suffering similar problems for similar reasons, especially if you start using "exotic" hardware. (I seem to recall a number of horror scenarios with SCO, mostly stemming from using unusual combinations of hardware, like Compaq-proprietary SCSI controllers with token-ring networks...)

Because Linux supports such a huge variety of devices, there's really no way the hardware and device drivers can possible be tested in every combination.

And, of course, a "hung" node is a very different critter from a "failed" node... Yeah, I could envision something like that causing a cluster to hang...

Are such problems unique to Linux, though? I doubt it. But I *could* see them maybe happening more frequently...

Chris, I am curious about this: to what extent did Oracle honour their claims of "unbreakable Linux"? Did they ever "fix" the problem? Did they even try?

Cheers,
-- Mark.

Marquez, Chris wrote:

        2.)                    

			-----Original Message-----
			David wrote:
			Have any of you run into the issue whereby
			you lost an entire RAC 
			db(crash) due to a an instance loss?
			      

	
	You want a count in total or just for one year? ;o)
	I would be surprised if one running RAC at some point 
	did see a RAC instance hang crash cause the other instance to
hang.
	Granted the often the OS/Config is the root cause and to blame,
but I
	have seen session "GC" waits on one node continue right to the
other
	PASSIVE node if we did not shutdown the first dying node.  I
have seen a
	controller error on nodeA hang instance NodeA and during the
reconfigure
	hang instance on NodeB.
	
	What fun...I can feel the panic of management as if it were
yesterday.
	:o|
	
	Chris Marquez
	Oracle DBA
	
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