Re: Opinions Wanted on Oracle for NT

On Thu, 01 May 1997 21:43:44 -0400, Ed Jennings <jenningse_at_mindspring.com> wrote:

>
>I've been administering Oracle on Unix for the last few years and know
>very little about Oracle for NT. A vendor has proposed a monitoring
>package for our company's infrastructure. The application will run on
>NT, and the Oracle database can be anywhere. Since this application
>will be deemed mission critical with 24x7 uptime requirement, I
>naturally recommended Unix as the platform of choice for the database.

You have good instincts, run with them.
>Our NT administrator thinks this recommendation is in error, and
>believes that Oracle on NT is a much better choice. I don't have
>sufficient knowledge of Oracle on NT to challenge her. I am under the
>belief that Oracle for NT is little more than a souped up Personal
>Oracle.

Its better than PO7, but we have to remember the hardware we are talking about.
>
>The application in question will be firing thousands of transactions
>(1-2 K each) a day at the database, and will have 25-75 users querying
>the database. In addition, batch reports will be generated at night.
>
>Can anyone tell me if NT is stable enough to handle this?
>Is Oracle for NT robust enough to handle this.
>Can the App & Oracle reside on the same NT box?
>Do I need two NT servers (one for the app & one for Oracle)?
>Can I have more than one instance of Oracle running on one NT box?
>Should I move to squash this now and insist on a unix database?
>

Here are a couple of observations about Oracle on NT. First, its not certified on NT4.0 (at least the last time I checked). NT is a very immature operating system. Unix has been around a while. I ran Oracle 7.3.2.3 on NT 3.51 SP4 (20-30 users) on a Proliant 4500 w/ 3 processors. It was a DOG. Oracle on NT still exhibits a fair amount of ORA-0600 errors, usually dealling with cursor memory. This has yet to be fixed. You are much better off with a 'primary' port of Oracle usually Solaris or DEC Unix. I also noticed that there was a very significant memory leak with Oracle on NT, where eventually despite the amount of memory, the system would begin to page in the swapfile. Been there, done that. Wont do it again.
>
>I'm prone to the last choice myself, but I welcome all input.
>
>Ed Jennings
>Oracle DBA
>EPS, Inc.
>302.791.8176
>--
>~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
>jenningse_at_mindspring.com

Alan Caldera
Sr. Systems Analyst
Michaels Stores, Inc. Received on Fri May 02 1997 - 00:00:00 CDT