Re: To ODA or Not?
From: Mladen Gogala <mgogala_at_yahoo.com>
Date: Sat, 28 Mar 2015 00:12:29 -0400
Message-ID: <55162A2D.4080906_at_yahoo.com>
On 03/27/2015 10:45 PM, Seth Miller wrote:
> Despite constant "sky is falling" messages coming from certain
> listers, the ODA is very easy to manage. You don't need to be an
> expert in Linux. You don't need to be an expert in ACFS or ASM. You
> need to have a good understanding of the database (and Oracle VM if
> you go that route) and you need to learn oakcli (the command line
> utility to manage the ODA) and that's pretty much it.
>
> Seth Miller
I am probably meant by the "certain listers" in your post, and I agree that ODA is easy to manage - until it isn't. And oakcii will not tell you if your system is paging, whether your IO is slow, whether you have a network problem or whether the routes are setup correctly. For that, there utilities like vmstat, sar, iostat, netstat, route, iotop, top and alike, are all present on ODA. I have worked with ODA at a client site and it was 2 node RAC with lots of disk connected by Infiniband. There was a problem with routing the backups through the dedicated backup network. What was used was an old fashioned "route" command and modification of network scripts in /etc/sysconfig to add static routes. The "oakcii" command hasn't even been mentioned. Once we got it all working, it was working like a charm.
You can expect problems with any computer systems, sooner or later. Case in point being MS Windows, which is also very easy to manage - until it isn't. Things like active directory, WinBind and SCOM require specialist Windows knowledge that I, as a Unix & Linux person, don't have. Using Linux system in production without someone who understands it well and is able to figure out what may have gone wrong is a recipe for trouble, at least in my humble opinion.
Having said that, I consider both ODA and Exadata extremely well engineered systems. I also strongly prefer Unix and Linux to any other OS. But I have seen my fair share of the problems: fried disks, corrupt memory, fans that have stopped working, misconfiguration, shortcuircuited parts and incorrectly written scripts. When something happens, you need someone to triage the problem. That's the state of technology. And ODA is no exception. I myself prefer the purchase of ODA, because of the savings on Oracle licenses. Oracle is much cheaper if packaged with ODA than if purchased separately on per-CPU thread basis. However, it is a serious Linux system and it does require a Linux system administrator.
Date: Sat, 28 Mar 2015 00:12:29 -0400
Message-ID: <55162A2D.4080906_at_yahoo.com>
On 03/27/2015 10:45 PM, Seth Miller wrote:
> Despite constant "sky is falling" messages coming from certain
> listers, the ODA is very easy to manage. You don't need to be an
> expert in Linux. You don't need to be an expert in ACFS or ASM. You
> need to have a good understanding of the database (and Oracle VM if
> you go that route) and you need to learn oakcli (the command line
> utility to manage the ODA) and that's pretty much it.
>
> Seth Miller
I am probably meant by the "certain listers" in your post, and I agree that ODA is easy to manage - until it isn't. And oakcii will not tell you if your system is paging, whether your IO is slow, whether you have a network problem or whether the routes are setup correctly. For that, there utilities like vmstat, sar, iostat, netstat, route, iotop, top and alike, are all present on ODA. I have worked with ODA at a client site and it was 2 node RAC with lots of disk connected by Infiniband. There was a problem with routing the backups through the dedicated backup network. What was used was an old fashioned "route" command and modification of network scripts in /etc/sysconfig to add static routes. The "oakcii" command hasn't even been mentioned. Once we got it all working, it was working like a charm.
You can expect problems with any computer systems, sooner or later. Case in point being MS Windows, which is also very easy to manage - until it isn't. Things like active directory, WinBind and SCOM require specialist Windows knowledge that I, as a Unix & Linux person, don't have. Using Linux system in production without someone who understands it well and is able to figure out what may have gone wrong is a recipe for trouble, at least in my humble opinion.
Having said that, I consider both ODA and Exadata extremely well engineered systems. I also strongly prefer Unix and Linux to any other OS. But I have seen my fair share of the problems: fried disks, corrupt memory, fans that have stopped working, misconfiguration, shortcuircuited parts and incorrectly written scripts. When something happens, you need someone to triage the problem. That's the state of technology. And ODA is no exception. I myself prefer the purchase of ODA, because of the savings on Oracle licenses. Oracle is much cheaper if packaged with ODA than if purchased separately on per-CPU thread basis. However, it is a serious Linux system and it does require a Linux system administrator.
-- Mladen Gogala Oracle DBA http://mgogala.freehostia.com -- http://www.freelists.org/webpage/oracle-lReceived on Sat Mar 28 2015 - 05:12:29 CET