Re: Space wasted because of automatic undo management

From: Mark Bole <makbo_at_pacbell.net>
Date: Fri, 01 Apr 2005 20:56:35 GMT
Message-ID: <7Ai3e.5666$FN4.734@newssvr21.news.prodigy.com>

HansF wrote:

> On Thu, 31 Mar 2005 18:07:54 -0800, Vsevolod Afanassiev interested us by
> writing:
>
>

>>Any thoughts?
>>

>
>
> Yup. Ask your boss which is cheaper ...
>
> a) your salary for the time you spend managing rollback segments, or
> b) 200GB worth of disk drive to set it up automatically
>
> Note that even high-end SAN certified drives go for under $2000, and Linux
> or Windows-ready ones for [well under] under $200.
>
> Any counter-thoughts?

I couldn't agree more with the arguments in favor of adding more disk space in this situation. However I wish folks would stop needlessly weakening the arguments by citing retail $/GB numbers for adding disk storage as if they comprised the total economic cost.

For every disk added to production, frequently the same amount (or more) of disk must be added to test, development, etc. Then there's the increased cost for backup retention, online standby, and hot spares to match the increase in primary storage. Power supply, rack space, and so one are not free. And I've seen too many examples first-hand of administrators who incur labor costs ten times greater than the cost of the disks just trying to configure and integrate them into a running system, because it's not something they do often enough to be good at it.

-Mark Bole Received on Fri Apr 01 2005 - 14:56:35 CST