Re: Advantages of Oracle on Windows over Unix

DA Morgan wrote:
> HansF wrote:
>
> > Based on my personal experience, I'd say there are absolutely no
> > advantages of running Oracle on WIndows over Oracle on Linux. And
> > absolutely none the other way 'round either.
>
> I can give you one the other way 'round.
>
> Every experience I have had with Oracle RAC on Windows has involved
> failovers that were within Oracle's published numbers but were
> glacial. Take the same hardware, install RedHat 4 Update 2 and those
> exact same failovers, on the exact same hardware, are subsecond.
> --
> Daniel A. Morgan
> University of Washington
> damorgan_at_x.washington.edu
> (replace x with u to respond)
> Puget Sound Oracle Users Group
> www.psoug.org

Windows can be very powerful in the hands of a skilled admins. This means they know some scripting version, be it perl, vbscript, or other interface. It also means they know or are getting to know Powershell. They have skills with fsutil, OLD DB, ADO, HTA, WMI, ADOX, Dot Net, Server Resource Kits, Sysinternals (now Windows owned) tools. They should also know how to setup, or at least the reasons why a firewall and database DMZ is better than blanket virus scanning database servers. They should also be familiar with Cygwin and should know why running "DOS" (command shell) programs is not extensible or good for error handling. They should also know how to debug, non-paged pool error and what the paged/non-paged pool does and its limitations. They should use the command line more than the gui. They should understand server hardening. To date, I've only worked with 2 people like this, but my experience is limited to my geographic location. I know others are out there...

Most Linux admins I know have a very good grasp on the OS parameters and live and breath shell scripting in some fashion, thus they have a higher level skill-set off the bat because it is usually required to keep the system secure, healthy and running.

So, in my opinion, the Windows vs Linux debate is really one of entry point. Windows Admin entry point requires less high-end performance knowledge off the bat than does Linux or any other non-windows OS. This makes working with Linux easier for a non-sysadmin dba because the team has a higher skill-set. It also means that this knowledge gap on the Window side will usually only become apparent when there are performance problems that require an advanced Windows skill-set to solve. If all skill-sets are even, then I would say the race is about dead even on performance, for non-large-scale cluster/RAC systems and may be there soon even there.
I have not run RAC on Windows so I'm going by what I've read.

Here's a good blog link I like.
http://ewhalen.blogspot.com/
Other links:

http://www.microsoft.com/resources/documentation/windows/xp/all/proddocs/en-us/fsutil.mspx?mfr=true
http://www.microsoft.com/technet/sysinternals/default.mspx
http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/dnanchor/html/Scriptinga.asp