Re: Physical Layout of disk to use Oracle

Y. Gagnon wrote:

>Hi,
>
>My previous msg was a bit short and can confusing, let me detail.
>
>OFA specify to have at least 7 area of storage (ideally independent storage
>volume). I should confess that this is a now a bit too by-the-book since the
>hardware manufacturer don't want to sell any more small drives and to use a
>72GB(or 144GB) drive to hold the archive logs is somewhat expensive.
>
>SAME is a solution that I'm using only for DW that don't have any time
>constrainsts for load (e.g.: small DW used only 9-5); for any other system I
>will first separate files with OFA in mind and move them around after some
>monitoring. Otherwise, I see SAME as a solution for small shop that can't
>afford a real DBA to monitor files and move them according to DB hot spots.
>
>Also, I agree with Howard (another sub-thread) that SAME should not be confused
>with the use of RAID-5 that is only acceptable for some specific use (e.g. applications or, in some case, disk backup).
>
>BTW, OFA still of actuallity and has been updated in 1995.
>
>Yannick
>
>On Thu, 18 Sep 2003
>22:23:56-0700 Daniel Morgan<damorgan_at_x.washington.edu> wrote:
>
>
>> <snipped>
>

1995 in IT/Oracle years is just about forever. I am a strong advocate of OFA but that has nothing to do with my need for speed. It is a question of making sure that systems are maintainable.

I don't think anyone that understands the concepts could confuse SAME with RAID 5 or at least they certainly
shouldn't. But where I disagree with you, and Howard, and I rarely disagree with Howard, is the SAME is the best possible starting point. In the real world where a decent DBA may be asked to manage 10-20 instances and often mixed environments containing Oracle and DB2 or Oracle and Informix it is just unrealistic to expect the time or expertise to be doing that level of tuning. The days of DBAs wearing suspenders, being grouches, and having the luxury to do that kind of activity may not be over. But from where I can stand I can see that far.

I always start with SAME. Performance test. And then make changes if and where I find specific issues. To start
from the standpoint of manually tuning every table, etc. is a one-way ticket to having your job off-shored.

-- 
Daniel Morgan
http://www.outreach.washington.edu/ext/certificates/oad/oad_crs.asp
http://www.outreach.washington.edu/ext/certificates/aoa/aoa_crs.asp
damorgan_at_x.washington.edu
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