Sparc vs. Intel - Central vs. Local Storage

Greetings!

I've been somewhat removed from Oracle for some years now (~1998/99). However, given the much reduced pricing structure now it's again an option on the table.

Our usage would be to facilitate fairly aggressive scientific data storage and analysis (very large datasets) with fairly light to moderate reads and updates. This is an internal database so it won't be serving Yahoo! traffic or anything like that.

At the time of my last research on the matter (early days of 8i) their linux distributions never really lived up the Solaris releases in the various performance benchmarks that I had looked into. Some of this undoubtedly was on Linux's back.

Is this still the case?

What would be the best option for an application similar to the one above? We are considering either a Dell Poweredge 6600 (dual ~1.4Ghz XEON, 8GB RAM w/ Linux) or a SunFire V880 (Dual Sparc III @ 900Mhz w/ only 4GB of RAM w/ Solaris 8 or 9).

Ideally, we want to get the most bang PER processor to minimize Oracle licensing fees.

ALSO, Previously, I've used NetApps extensively to support database storage and it has worked great. However, I'm curious if anyone out there has used them with Oracle and/or has any opinions on them vs. locally attached storage.

Thanks! Received on Wed Jun 05 2002 - 11:36:41 CDT