Re: Oracle on NT versus UNIX???

John Martin Kvalsund wrote in message <77f0tj$4m5$1_at_readme.online.no>...

>I have an appliction (IFS applications, any experience with that??) running
>on Oracle 7.3.3 on NT server 4.0 SP3. The hardware is a Compaq Proliant
>2500 containing 2 CPU's (Pentium Pro 200) and 1 GB of RAM. With approx. 30
>users of the application this server meets the limit. All available memory
>is consumed by Oracle and the CPU usage hits 100 % in long periods, (end
of
>months etc.). I have two choices:
>
>1: By a new 4 processor NT box.
>
>2: By a suitable Unix box (i.e. Sun Enterprise server 450) and convert the
>Oracle database.

What will happen when you need to scale further up from a 4 SMP NT box end of this year? My suggestion is to look at Unix as an alternative. Hardware and Unix are proven in the SMP - NT not. Not yet anyway IMHO, as I do not have much faith in Microsoft's clustering technology at this early stage.

You have hit one of the biggest problems (IMHO) with NT - scalability. As soon as you scale over 4 CPUs with NT, you're in relatively uncharted waters. You now need to have a special HAL (Hardware Abstraction Layer) for the hardware you're running on - and this HAL is supplied by the hardware vendor. Nah, in such a case I rather deal with a "trusted Unix vendor" that has support and development staff developing their brand of Unix for many many years. More familiar territory IMO.

The suggestion from Alex to try Linux to get a feel for Oracle on Unix is also an excellent idea.

regards,
Billy Received on Wed Jan 13 1999 - 08:04:38 CST