Memory limit for Win2000 and Oracle 8.1.7

We are in the process of setting up a rather large database running under Oracle 8.1.7 and Windows 2000 server(probably advanced server).

In Windows NT 4.0 and Oracle 8.1.7 we had problems with memory. The NT-Oracle combination did not support more than 3 GB of memory for a single Oracle Instance, which was not enough when there were lots of activity. One way of curing that problem on NT4.0 was to reduce the size of the SGA, thus freeing up memory for the free memory used bu oracle. Another way to cure the problem was to start the second instance up and run in OPS configuration, here the SGA could be kept at optimum size while stille allowing for all the loose memory, simply since sessions are distributed over two physical machines.

The Windows2000 configuration will not have the OPS option, simply because the disk system does not allow this.
To get some kind of security in the system there will be a second instance in a failsafe configuration.

So here we have to know if we will be getting the same memory problem.

The Oracle homepage talks about 4 GB pr instance, and if NT allows, there should be access to 8 GB pr instance.

Now that statement is a bit to loose for my taste, 4 GB wont cut it but 8 GB might. Who has experience with this kind of memory allocation in Win2000 with Oracle 8.1.7 ?

The reason our database uses all that memory is that an awfull amount of PL/SQL collections are being used for calculation, and oracle is not so good at garbage collection as they want us to believe :-)

Greetings from Denmark

Jesper Wolf Jespersen

PS. Condolances to victims and relatives of the terrorist attacks yesterday. The world has changed overnight. Received on Wed Sep 12 2001 - 04:51:18 CDT