Re: Oracle on a webserver

Piotr Kolodziej wrote:

> R.A. Khan wrote in message <367118D2.9A730DA0_at_informatik.fh-hamburg.de>...
> >It is a little bit strange, to run a 32bit Operating System on a 64 bit
> >Machine, isn't it ? [...]
> >It seemed to me this was the same as to put a Porsche engine into a
> >beetle and to espect it to be as fast as an original Porsche, not
> >considering the chassis of a beetle. (The original one)
>
> Some people are excentric. They are able buy pink porshe to paint green
> flowers on it ;)

How can i explain it ?
Running NT on an Alpha is like driving a Porsche with a beetle engine ? Like that ? What i tried to say is, that it is never a good choice to run an OS (designed in a particular manner for some sort of chip) on a subtantiell different chip, with doubled(4th) wide register, address and controll structures.
You will always have a performance loss. NT is a 32bit system, meaning that it is designed for 32 bit. The memory management is designed for it, the storage management is designed for it and the OS-Management is designed for 32bit. If it comes to a 64bit Processor it will still be a 32bit system, trying to run on a 64bit chip. The kernel is trying al the time to fit accesses to the alpha chip. And exactly that was my experience : When i ran NT on Alpha, it were dissapointing slow.

>
> >And if you would do, is Oracle/NT a 32bit or a 64 bit Product ?
>
> I don't know exactly. For example, on Digital Unix 64-bit oracle option
> is required to enable using 64-bit features.

No, Oracle on Digital Unix is compiled for 64bit (though i don't know if it was programmed for 64bit, but i believe it). Don't confuse the 64-bit Oracle Option with the fact, that Oracle is a 64-bit application ! The 64-bit Oracle Option means the VLM (very large memory) settings. (With 64 bit, you are easily able to adresse several Terrabyte of anything, with 32bit, you can only address 4GB).
The 64-bit option is a STANDARD feature since Oracle 7.

>
> >From my experiences on an 433Mhz Alpha the Applications i
> >ran with FX!32 were as fast as on a 200Mhz Intel
>
> It depends on type of computing and number of connections.
> With not too very large number of connections and well tuned sql statements
> CPU rarely become a bottleneck and adding then CPU power may not improve
> performance. In such case the primary concern is proper memory sizing and
> disc configuration.
>
> Piotr Kolodziej

Therefore it is a waste of money and computing power to run a oracle application on NT on an Alpha processor. If you want power, go with Digital Unix, VMS or Linux (for 64bit), but don't slow this Alpha chip down with windows NT. I think, Alpha didn't deserved that . If you don't want Power (and save money), run it on NT.

regards, and excuse my bad english

--
Ronald Ali-Khan
khan_at_informatik.fh-hamburg.de
Hamburg, Germany Received on Wed Dec 16 1998 - 09:25:27 CST