Re: How closely do you adhere to OFA standards? e.g. arch directory?

Richard A Papaj wrote:

> How closely do you adhere to Optimal Flexible Architecture (OFA) standards?
> Where, if any, are the areas where you think it makes sense to deviate from
> the standards? We're a Sun Solaris environment.
>
> For example, the standard (Appendix A in the Sun Sparc 8.1.7 Administrator's
> manual) calls for a minimum of 2 mount points (to separate data from
> everything else) with the administrative sub-directories (e.g. arch, etc)
> being defined within the non-data mount point. Therefore, the archived redo
> logs would go within that area according to the standard. As long as there
> is enough space allocated for that partition (and you set up a script to
> possibly compress and eventually purge older, backed up archived log files),
> the archived redo log files won't fill up the partition and lock the
> instance.
>
> Another view is that the archived redo log files should be separated from
> the common mount point (i.e. ORACLE_BASE) that it shares with the product
> software. Are there enough benefits that warrants separating them out?
> That arrangement would deviate from the OFA standard.
>
> Aside from the mount point dedicated for data, does it matter from a
> contention issue where the archived redo log files go (i.e. the non-data
> mount point vs its own unique mount point)? Is a unique mount point just
> for archived redo log files overkill? As long as there's sufficient space,
> should the arch directory remain in its location according to the standard?
> Are there any implications if not complying with the OFA standards?
>
> Thanks in advance for any feedback,
> -Rick

Rick,

Use one mount point on an expensive external storage array and let the RAID cache handle all of your I/O worries. Or you could check out Gaja's book - "Oracle Performance Tuning 101".

Kevin Loney discusses storage configuration in the Oracle 8i DBA Handbook. I haven't seen if his 9i book is out yet.

Look for the paper "Optimal storage configuration made easy" on technet.

Paul

"Think for yourself - question marketing." (if Maynard James Keenan had to purchase computer hardware) Received on Wed Feb 27 2002 - 01:49:57 CST