Re: Oracle 8i on NT - Your Opinions

Thanks

In fact, we are planning to do nightly cold backups. The chem software manufacturer recommended this course of action for us. So, staying up for years is not really an issue and I doubt we would get larger than 30 or 40 GB max.

jph

On Mon, 12 Feb 2001 08:38:25 +1100, "Howard J. Rogers" <howardjr_at_www.com> wrote:

>This one does the rounds regularly enough that you could probably search
>Deja.com and find all previous rants and rages on the subject....
>
>Nevertheless, my particular advice runs like this: One performance tuning
>guru, who shall remain nameless, was heard once to say that running on NT
>was the questioner's first problem, and that tuning NT properly is
>intrinsically much harder than Solaris, and the results are always worse (NT
>does things with its thread priorities behind the scenes that you or I could
>not influence in a month of Sundays).
>
>Windows 2000 is extremely stable in comparison with any earlier version of
>NT, which is good (and I use it myself at home, on an Oracle Server) and
>it's been up and running for months at a time. But I think most Solaris
>Users would just laugh when we MS users state with pride that we've kept a
>server up for 9 months -they can measure their up-time in years (if they
>know what they are doing, of course).
>
>Solaris will scale into the Petabytes and the thousands of Users. I'm not
>saying Windows 2000 can't do it, but you'd be embarking on a bold new
>journey if you were to try it -it's still to new to know whether it will
>scale successfully into the statosphere or not. But since you don't seem
>likely to push the stratosphere in the future, this shouldn't be a concern
>(but I bet its lurking in the back of your IT folk's head as a "good thing"
>for Solaris. So it is -but if you don't need it, the advantage is moot).
>
>At the end of the day, the thing will have to be looked after by a DBA (and
>team). Do they know and love Solaris? Or are they Windows bods? If they
>have sold their souls to the great Satan, can they be trained to get it back
>again as they learn to tackle Solaris?
>
>I think my point comes down to this: Windows 2000 is a reasonably stable
>platform for Oracle, but if stability were absolutely critical, then Solaris
>would beat it. Windows 2000 can be scaled (to a point), but if you've got
>ambitions in that direction, Solaris would beat it. Performance is adequate
>on Windows 2000, but if performance was absolutely critical, Solaris would
>beat it.
>
>BUT... you need people who can actually work with your choice.
>
>In short, Solaris would be a gold-plated solution, and Windows might well be
>good enough. Make sure those recommending the Solaris solution are not just
>indulging in an intellectual wank along the lines of "Microsoft is evil,
>Unix is good". Get *them* to justify their push for Solaris, and weigh
>their arguments on their merits and (above all) their *relevancy* (by which
>I mean that it's no good pushing for something that can stay up for years at
>a time if you are in fact intending to do nightly COLD backups!)
>
>Just my two cents'-worth
>
>Regards
>HJR
>
>
>
><precipice_no_spam_at_gci-net.com> wrote in message
>news:3a86d4f2.3916010_at_news.gci-net.com...
>> Hi
>>
>> We are in the midst of setting up a small to medium size project for
>> some chemistry tracking procedures. We are using a commercial product
>> that will act as a front end to the chem stuff but uses Oracle as a
>> back end. We were considering using Oracle on NT (8i) as our database
>> server to leverage some of our existing experience and to perserve the
>> sanity of the specialist we are going to hire that will have to
>> maintain an IIS web server and act as a part time dba. Learning 1
>> system is always easier than 2 distinct like NT and Solaris.
>>
>> We anticipate 1 heavy user to generate about 5 mb of data per week for
>> the first year of the project. The others should be well under 1 mb
>> absolute max per week. After the initial data explosion - we know
>> that the users will be focusing in on specific portions and resting
>> some of their results with the data already entered and adding a
>> minimal amount of new data. We are a research institute and not a
>> commercial enterprise. In other words, as the project goes on we
>> should not have large data requirements. We were going to leverage
>> the Oracle server machine to store some web results and act as a
>> backend to some data that we were going to present on the web. Not a
>> whole lot.
>>
>> Some of our IT folks are extremely adamant that we should not choose
>> NT and go Solaris. My question to the Oracle gurus is whether or not
>> we are totally off base in attempting to use NT. What are your
>> opinions - pro and con. How well does it run as compared to Solaris,
>> is it stable, what type of hardware would we need.
>>
>> We were thinking of something along the following lines for hardware:
>> · Dual Processor 933MHz with 256K Cache,P3 Xeon
>> · 2GB RAM,133MHz,8 X 256MB DIMMs
>> · PERC3-Di RAID Enabler Kit with128MB Cache
>> · 2x18G,10K,1.0 IN,U3,Removable,w/Cage
>> · 8-Bay Split 2 X 4 Hard DriveCage
>> · 6X18GB 10000RPM,1.0 IN,U3,HardDrives
>>
>> Perhaps a Dell Poweredge 4400.
>>
>>
>> Thanks
>>
>> jph
>
>
Received on Sun Feb 11 2001 - 19:43:43 CST