Re: Nicing Down User Oracle Processes -- Any problems?

I assume you would do this by writing some sort of demon process that scans for usage of oracle processes.
Next I guess you would renice the processes.

This in itself isn't really harmful as far as the system is concerned, but what happens at the oracle database end is not so pretty. When processes are running on tables and such, what happens in most cases is that the process will
lock certain tables while they are updated. This prohibits others from accessing those tables. If you slow down something that takes very long, to take even longer, you will just backload oracle to the point that the users will revolt.

But to answer the question, I don't know of any problems that renicing will cause with the system or with oracle.
It will on the other hand cause what is already ,Assumption, a slow database to be even slower from the user side.

Look into improving oracle's performance by possibly going raw. Also check on sqlnet traffic.

Are all of the .dbf files located on the machine where oracle is running, or is it over nfs(VERY BAD).

Are you running in archive mode, if so where are the redo logs being kept. Your DBA should know all of this, and if you are experiencing problems with the system being slow because of oracle, I am sure your users are experiencing a lot of problems with oracle.

To summarize: I suggest you work on tuning oracle to run at it's optimum, rather than trying to slow it down.

M. D. Parker <mdpc_at_netcom.com> wrote in article <mdpcE53Esr.D1p_at_netcom.com>...
> I am a sysadmin running Oracle on an HPK4 machine with 4 CPUs. Its
> purpose is running oracle jobs. Some of the jobs are very CPU intensive
> on the user side. In order to load balance, I am thinking about
> nicing down user oracle processes if they exceed the usage of
> 30 CPU MINUTES. My DBA seems to indicate that that will cause
> problems with Oracle, and that oracle itself does not recommend
> such a procedure but I do not understand the problems here. I am a
> UNIX wizard but not an oracle wizard.
>
> I was curious as to (1) if this is really true, and (2) the downsides
> of such a procedure, (3) does anybody else out there doing such a thing
> for load balancing, (4) reasoning?
>
> Thanks...
>
> Mike
>
  Received on Tue Feb 04 1997 - 00:00:00 CST