Re: Upgrade Plan
Date: Tue, 20 Jan 2009 08:33:23 +0000 (UTC)
Message-ID: <gl428j$2s9$1_at_solani.org>
On Mon, 19 Jan 2009 14:13:16 -0600, Michael Austin wrote:
> I came from the DEC/VMS world -
Interesting. So did I. It was a long time ago, my last VMS was 5.5-2 on VAX 6640. I consider VMS to be the best OS ever made. I am not, however, sorry that DEC has failed because those #$%! have well deserved it with the story of DECSystem, MIPS and Alpha. I'll tell you all about it over a pint, should an occasion arise.
> the one true cluster that no one has
> been able to duplicate in the more than 25+ years that the DEC cluster
> has been around and in conjunction with the formerly-DEC-now-Oracle Rdb
> was what Ellison always dreamed his RDBMS would become.
Actually, if you have ever worked with the Tru64 UNIX clusters, you will find out that Oracle processes in the new CRS system correspond with Tru64 on one-to-one basis. Essentially, I believe that HP has turned the code for those processes over to Oracle and that Oracle has adjusted them to Linux. At least that is what my private sources within the Oracle Corp. indicate that has happened.
> His many
> attempts at OPS failed miserably even on VMS.
I would disagree completely here. I was working for Oxford Health Plans from 1999 - 2004, when they were bought by United Health, on a very successful OPS implementation. Arup Nanda was working with me, so the DBA team was fairly strong, but it was a successful implementation of Oracle OPS on Oracle 8i/ 4-way HP 9000/N.
> When 9iRAC was first
> introduced back in 1999, the Oracle engineering rep at that time stated
> categorically, that it only worked as was originally designed on 2
> platforms. OpenVMS and Tru64 UNIX clusters - because they are the ONLY
> ones that can natively mount ALL storage devices concurrently.
Oracle8i OPS did not work anything but raw devices. It wasn't an easy setup to do, but it was possible.
> ASM and
> CRS make that a bit easier, however, having a single set of OS files and
> directories across the cluster will continue to elude the UNIX market.
Actually, it is already available. There are at least 2 open source cluster file systems (OCFS and GFS. GFS is quite interesting and Matt Zito of GridApp, one of the best RAC guys in the world, recommended it to me a long time ago), there are also commercial ones (VxFS/VCS, HP PolyServe) and, of course, there is a native implementation of JFS2 on AIX. Oracle pushes ASM because it's unusable for competition. If you put your database on VxFS, it can also be used by UDB or MySQL. If you put your files on ASM or Exadata, Oracle is certain that you're a true blue Oracle site and that they have a vendor lock.
-- Mladen Gogala http://mgogala.freehostia.comReceived on Tue Jan 20 2009 - 02:33:23 CST