Re: Oracle 8i on NT - Your Opinions

PS. We also do not expect more than 5 users.

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 - 20:49:39 CST