Re: Parallel Server

Pete Sharman wrote:
>
> Kev
>
> OPS is used for one of two reasons - performance or high availability. If
> your web site needs to be up and running 24 hours a day, it would be
> worthwhile investigating OPS a little further.
>
> The dual processors have no bearing on this.
>
> HTH.
>
> Pete
>
> kev wrote:
>
> > Hi,
> >
> > I'm building an Oracle-backed website that will run on a dual processor
> > machine. I've learned recently of the Oracle Parallel Server option, and
> > am wondering whether I should have overlooked it until now. Is it usual
> > to implement the parrallel server option for a web site? Why (not)? It
> > looks very complicated, and I don't know whether I 'should' use it. Any
> > info/advice would be gratefully appreciated here, especially from people
> > running Oracle-backed sites on dual processor machines.
> >
> > TIA,
> >
> > - Kev
>
> --
> Regards
>
> Pete

OPS is seldomly used for performance reasons. The main use of the OPS is fault tolerance.
OPS can perform really well, but the application must be written to take advantage of the
parallel server. That usually means that you cannot have users accessing the same data
accessing the database from the different nodes. What's more, OPS is very demanding to
set up and monitor. Hardware is very expensive as well, because SCSI based clusters are
too slow for any real use. To have a real cluster, you need a FCAL based RAID, usually EMC,
and a lot of memory and CPU power on all involved nodes. It also takes an expensive backup
software like Legato or Alexandria and DLT robots, usually FCAL based as well.
The only proper way of thinking about OPS is whether your business needs 24x7 availability
or not. If it does, then you need OPS. You must think in terms of ROI, not fancy technical
stuff.

--
Mladen Gogala Received on Sun Aug 22 1999 - 21:42:30 CDT