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Re: Advice on hardware for running oracle 8 on nt

From: Stephen Gabor <sgabor_at_removethis.jamesway.com>
Date: Thu, 3 Jun 1999 07:57:11 -0400
Message-ID: <37566eba@news1.us.ibm.net>


For 200 users, I would seriously consider using Unix instead. If you really want to run Oracle on NT for 200 users I would recommend the biggest quad processor server you can afford, with lots of RAM, and lots of disks. Stay name brand (Dell, Compaq, HP, IBM). Configure your tablespaces to balance load across multiple disks. Ideally, put the tables on one set of disks, indexes on another set of disks, a disk for the SYSTEM tablespace, a disk for the ROLLBACK table space. Get Kevin Loney's Oracle DBA Handbook. I have the 7.3 edition and assuming the 8.x edition is similar, read the chapters on hardware configuration, logical database layouts, and physical database layouts before spending a cent on hardware.

In general, one big RAID 5 array will kill performance. My preference is RAID 0+1 (Spanning and Mirroring) but it depends on how you use RAID 5. If you set up one RAID 5 array for the tables, another RAID 5 array for indicies, and put Rollback on a mirrored pair, and SYSTEM on a mirrored pair it would minimize the performance hit. Make sure that the disk controller does the RAID. Don't let NT do it.

We run 55 seats of Oracle NT Workgroup 7.3.4 on a Compaq Proliant 6000 (4 x 450 MHz processors, 1 GB RAM) with all the data in an external fiber channel array which houses 9.1 GB, 10K RPM drives. The performance has been excellent. Reliability is typical for NT - marginal. Too many reboots compared to our old RS6000. If you require 24 x 5 operation or greater do not go with NT.

Daniel A. Morgan wrote in message <3755CFC5.132476E0_at_attws.com>...
>> we're setting up a 200 user mts based system using oracle 8.
>>
>> We're probably just going to buy a commercial 'high performance' server
such
>> as a compaq proliant, as this is what some of our clients use.
>>
>> Does anyone have any advice or tips when choosing hardware for this
system?
>
>My first advice would be to consider a UNIX box or running Solaris on the
Intel
>platform if you go that way. My experience with Oracle on NT is not
impressive.
>Oracle is stable as a rock. NT is another story entirely.
>
>One thing you don't mention is your requirements for security and
stability. How
>much downtime can your users accept? The answer to this will greatly affect
your
>hardware requirement.
>
>No matter what you do go with mirrored drives: Do not use RAID 5.
>
>Daniel A. Morgan
>
Received on Thu Jun 03 1999 - 06:57:11 CDT

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