Re: Oracle 10g on W2k3 - 32 bit or 64 bit?

Walt wrote:
> I'm looking at speccing out new server hardware. We want to move to 10.2.
>
> Any reason not to use the 64 bit OS instead of the 32 bit version?
> Anybody here using 10.2 on Windows 64 bit? Comments? Observations?
>
> Smallish to mediumish database. Our network administrators are mostly
> Windows, so hosting on Linux or U*ix is probably a non starter. The
> advantages of sticking with the 32 bit version is that it's not "new" -
> we have a base of W2k3 32 bit boxen, so from an OS care and feeding
> perspective it's just another box in the rack just like the others. The
> advantage of 64 bit is the larger addressable memory space which *may*
> improve performance. As a shop we'll be going to 64 bit for many
> servers before long anyway (MS Exchange, for instance), so might as well
> do it now. But I'm not sure that Oracle is the best candidate to be the
> guinnea pig....
>
> (current version 9.2 on W2k3 32 bit)
>
> //Walt

If you have the opportunity to go with the 64 bit version of Windows 2003 and the 64 bit version of Oracle 10g R2, definitely select it over the 32 bit version. The 32 bit version of Windows 2003 Standard Edition is limited to 4GB of memory, with a maximum of 2GB per process.  The 64 bit version of Windows 2003 Standard Edition is limited to 32GB of memory, with a maximum of 32GB per process. There is significantly less chance of bumping into the maximum per process limit on the 64 bit version of Windows 2003, which reduces some types of odd behavior when the Oracle process hits 2GB of memory allocation.

Negatives: the 64 bit version requires more memory than the 32 bit version for the SGA, sorting operations, and probably most other operations. If you have a virus scanner that you typically install on your servers, you will need a 64 bit version of that virus scanner. There are a couple of fun bugs in the 10.2.0.2 version of Oracle, at least on 64 bit Windows 2003.

Charles Hooper
PC Support Specialist
K&M Machine-Fabricating, Inc. Received on Fri Aug 04 2006 - 17:57:26 CDT