Re: Is anyone running Oracle on Netware?

mkx_at_mailexcite.com wrote:

> With Oracle 8 (5 user) now shipping with Novell Netware, we are
> looking at running Oracle 8 servers on Netware 4.11 or 5.0. As all of
> our current servers are Netware, this would make sense from an ease of
> management standpoint.

Okay, I got to admit I'm somewhat of a Netware biggot, we've been using Oracle on Netware since version 6 and it's been really reliable. That's four years of experience for me and another couple for my predecessor, so I know what I'm talking about I guess. The few times a server has ABENDed during these last 4 years (and I can count them on one hand), the server has *always* recovered without going to backup tape. Luckily, Oracle seems to have some talented NLM coders in their midst and they write very stable code. In my opinion the issue of stability in this case is more application oriented rather than platform oriented (NT vs. Netware). If the code is crap, it doesn't matter what OS it runs on, it's going to be a help desk problem generator. The other piece to the puzzle is obtaining stable hardware from a good vendor (Compaq, HP, etc.), it makes a difference no matter what OS you choose.

Needless to say, I'm not impressed with NT server despite MS's hype to the contrary. It's still far too imature (and has too many roots in desktop OS and peer-to-peer networking) for my taste. We have one NT server that I've had to manage for about 2 years now. I've already had to rebuild it from the ground up which cost me four days to get everything back to normal. The boot sector took a dirt nap and NT's repair "feature" in setup could *not* repair it! Talk about frustration! In contrast, in 4 years, I've not had to *ever* rebuild a Netware server -- and we have 11 of them. So, I'd say your trust in it's stability is highly warranted. It's been my experience also.

However, that being said, it would be easy for me jerk my knee and say that Netware is the answer. You really have to consider how the DB is going to be used. In other words, use the right tool for the right job.

My opinion on the OSes:

Advantages of Netware: Pound for pound (i.e. same hardware), an Oracle server on Netware is faster than on NT if both OSes and DBs are properly tuned. The tests prove it. NDS and other manageability features (rconsole) are also an advantage. Support from Oracle is good, they have a good working relationship with Novell.

Disadvantages of Netware: Oracle on Netware does seem to have a disadvantage in memory management which can provide for some scalability problems with large user counts. Also, Netware's disk subsystem is not multithreaded which means that it can only process a request to retrieve a block from disk one at a time. However, this can be somewhat overcome by stuffing the server with gobs of RAM and caching as much of the DB as you can, which you want to do anyway. Also some of these disadvantages may be alleviated by NW5 with it's new memory architecture and support for virtual memory, I just haven't seen any evidence if it works with Oracle as it's currently written yet.

Advantages of NT: Evidence suggests that it's SMP support is a little more scalable (although not much from what I've seen) and it can maybe handle more concurrent users on one server due to more advanced memory architecture (than NW4 at least).

Disadvantages of NT: Immature. Stability is a question. Remote manageability is poor. Intregration with NW4/5 networks is poor unless something like NDS for NT is added.

Well, that's my 2 cents worth. Hope it helps.

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mbullen_at_voyager.net