Re: file placement and SAN

Knut Talman wrote:
>
> Sybrand Bakker wrote:
>
> <snip>
>
> > Evidently we have here the frequent problem of system administrators
> > not cooperating with DBAs. The first thing you should do is check out
> > whether Oracle supports using a SAN for your platform *at all* (and
> > IIRC there a pretty few vendors they support for SUN, and for NT it
> > might be not supported at all, as Oracle also can not deal properly
> > with networked drives)
>
> In a SAN a drive should work like a local drive so Oracle won't see a difference
> if the drivers are not questionable.
> NAS is a different story...

NAS != SAN, that's certainly true, but Oracle can run on SAN or NAS just fine as long as the hardware vendor has certified the setup (note that Oracle doesn't certify the hardware - it's the other way around). Certainly Network Appliance's NAS implementation is fully supported on Sun, HP, and others (not sure about NT, but a quick trip to www.netapp.com would probably answer the question).

As for SAN, again, as long as the hardware vendor has certified Oracle, there shouldn't be a problem.

But it sounded like the OP wasn't so much concerned about how the host was attached to the disk, but how to setup the disk itself. The fact that the disk is accessed over a network is largely independent of which version of RAID the OP chooses. So, my advice would be to not worry so much about the fact that the disk isn't direct-attached (assuming you've got a good SA and everything is certified), but just take this opportunity to follow the advice in the "separate data/index" thread. Look into the SAME methodology, show the OTN whitepaper to your SA, and test, test, test.

Regards,
Sean Received on Wed Apr 24 2002 - 12:07:52 CDT