Re: Oracle and network dasd

Sybrand Bakker wrote:
>
> EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKK
> NFS. You aren't serious, aren't you? Or do you simply have no budget?
> Oracle advises *strongly* against using NFS.

This is very misleading. It maybe true of plain old NFS, but it is certainly not true of nfs for NAS. Oracle supports nfs wholeheartedly with specific NAS implementations, like those offered by Network Appliance and EMC. If they're certified under the OSCP program, then Oracle has given it's blessing.

> It will be dead slow
> (especially using NFS 2 which is the default on AIX) and unstable. If
> the remote system drops the connection, do you know what is going to
> happen? Probably crash the database.

Dead slow and unstable? Hardly so, at least not in my direct experience with the NetApp product. Slower maybe than other (usually more expensive) options, but certainly acceptable for many, many uses. And it is in no way unstable when properly administered. We run many (dozens?) of databases on NetApps and have had excellent results. You may want to see the current thread on SAN's in the comp.databases.oracle.server group, which has drifted into a NAS discussion. NAS is not a high performance solution, but it offers many advantages over direct attached or SAN storage, and is certainly worth considering/testing.

Think of it this way: Oracle itself is a big customer/partner of NetApp. If Oracle runs many of its own databases on NAS, it probably has some merit.

Regards,
Sean Received on Fri Apr 26 2002 - 16:08:24 CDT