Re: UNIX or NT

On Fri, 16 May 1997 17:05:43 -0500, Brett Neumeier <bogus_at_address.for.spam> wrote:

We have been ruinning a 30+ user production database (Oracle 7.3.2.2.1) on NT 3.5.1 since November. Both the database and the server have been suprisingly stable - only 1 unexplained lockup (the server just froze in the middle of the night).

My only compliants on NT center around management tools and the lack of a good OS shell a la UNIX. On UNIX, I could automate anything with the shell, awk and other native utilities. NT gives you the same old DOS batch language and the at command (similar to cron, but not as flexible). I have as yet to get automated exports of my databases, although I have been able to run shutdown and startup scripts from within Arcserve's pre and post job options.

I think the key to running Oracle on NT is to have at least 256MB of RAM and lots of disk. Having two processors on our box seems to help also.

Even though we have had good success on NT, I would still prefer UNIX for my database server. On a decent UNIX box (Sun, Sequent, RS6000 etc.) performance is good, the OS is stable and either the tools are there or can be written quite easily. I believe that we have just been fortunate not to experience many problems with NT.

>Rick Morley wrote:
>>
>> > You would have to be crazy to use NT on this set-up. I wouldn't trust
>> > Oracle on NT even on a 20 user production system, it just isn't stable
>> > enough yet.
>> >
>>
>> Is it Oracle or is it NT that is not stable enough?
>
> That is a difficult question to answer -- in fact, it seems
>insoluble to me. Perhaps NT is unstable; alternatively, perhaps
>the port of Oracle for NT is unstable. Or perhaps the two are both
>unstable.
>
> The problem is certainly not with Oracle in general; Oracle
>on other platforms is quite stable enough to use for any purpose. But
>Oracle-on-NT has not been around for all that long, and may very well
>be unstable. I would be inclined to believe that NT does not provide
>the same system-level services that other operating systems do, so
>there are compromises in the architecture of Oracle-on-NT which make
>it less stable; but I have no particular evidence for this theory.
>
> Does it really matter? Regardless of what piece or combination
>of software is causing the problems, the problems still exist.
>
>-bn
Received on Wed May 21 1997 - 00:00:00 CDT