Oracle8i with large no (thousands) of OLTP users

Hi all,

We're planning on running a typical OLTP client server application on oracle8i (8.1.6) with about 3000 to 4000 users, with two connections each. (Yes, a badly designed application, but we've got to deploy it and live with it).
So the expected number of NET8 connections is 6 to 8 thousand. (We can't use parallel server).
Does anyone out there have a similar configuration? What are your sizings, experiences and advice?
Should MTS be used?
We expect to use a fairly large server (20 CPUs, 20 GB RAM -even a bigger server if needed- with EMC).
- What hardware config are you using?

• Is there a problem if we run in a didicated server config if we have enough RAM?
• What is the impact of Thousands of Oracle shadow processes on Solaris? Connection times?
• What about MTS? Someone told me it is very CPU intensive and he thinks leaving the OS to shuffle the background processes is cheaper than CPU cost of MTS. Is this true?
• If we use MTS, what SGA size is needed? (Yes it differes based on application and parameters, but what do you guys have out there now)? We'll need 64 bit Oracle for a large SGA. Can we get away with 32 bit Oracle if we can get away with the didicated server model.
• What unexpected hassles, surprises to expect from such a config?
• If we run MTS, is there a value in running the connection manager? It only decreases the number of TCP/IP connections going into the server and no the number of server processes needed. What value does that add to scalability/performance? I know there isn't much info to make decisions from my questions, but I'm only looking for approximate answers and openions based on current confiurations of similar magnitude.

I would be very thankful for any information you could spare about the current configurations/experiences you have.

Regards,

Haitham Received on Fri May 18 2001 - 06:59:43 CDT