Oracle CPU/Mem/Disk config recommendations

I will soon be tasked with building 3 new servers for Unigraphics. I currenlty have a 250 for imanweb, a 450 for the file server and a 4500 for the Oracle database.

The new boxes will all run Sol8 (our IMAN team says this is ok), and have decided on what to use for imanweb and file server, but have some questions on the oracle server. When doing large imports on our current 4500 (Sol7-32bit, 4x400mhz, 4gb RAM, 72gb RAID5 on A1000, boot disks and swap on OLD slow 7200rpm diskpacks) there have been complaints about performance, although day to day use by about 100 users is fine. We made all requested changes for Oracle and for shared memory tweaks in /etc/system. Iman support says it's configured optimally.

My current spec is for a E4500, 4x450mhz, 4gb RAM. I was planning on using a D1000 with 4 36gb disks (10000rpm), two for mirrored root, 2 for mirrored database. Our future database needs will never exceed 20gb. I'm also planning on using the 64bit kernel.

Questions 1: I may have the option of using a 3800 with 750mhz UltraSparcIII chips, but I would have to go with 2 to stay on budget. What will the performance of the 2 faster processors compare with 4 slower ones? I'll still have 4gb RAM.

Question 2: I have the option of using the D1000 only for boot disks and using an A1000 for the database disks. This would allow me to use the hardware mirroring available with the A1000. Would the performance increase justify the considerable increase in cost? I'm guessing no, but would like your advise. BTW, I'm aware of the redundancy benifits of the A1000's dual controller, but I'm quite confident in the reliability of the D1000/ diff scsi combo.

Question 3: Should the disks be newfs'd any special way for optimal Oracle performance?

Question 4: I've read that swap should be distributed across spindles, but shouldn't I add more RAM before worring about swap config? If not, should I buy more disks and stripe/mirror (Raid 1+0) them for the databases and swap?

Thanks for any input and literature you can point me to. I've read thru Unigraphics Solutions' IMAN sizing guide for Solaris, but It doesn't get specific enough.

Thanks
-krp Received on Sat Apr 21 2001 - 01:31:40 CDT