Re: more info about: Re: Which DEC/Ultrix box to pick?

In article <1992Sep13.165429.9603_at_u.washington.edu> cintra4_at_milton.u.washington.edu (Dave Lange) writes:
>I have chosen Oracle for a database to hold 500M to 1.5G of data for querying,
>not transactions or dataentry. It will be used by a maximum of 5 users at a
>time. I originally intended to use oracl.nlm on a dedicated netware server.
>The hardware was to be an EISA based 486DX2-66 with 17M, an Adaptec 1740 SCSI
>contro and a 32 bit ethernet board.
>
>>I would like to consider shifting this to unix, using the DEC platforms.
>>I understand unix has a flat loading curve as the number of users
>>increases, but this isn't my situation. What I need is the lower part
>>of this load curve to match or exceed the performance the NLM would have
>>provided on the selected platform.
>>
>>Without starting wars over whose system is better, I would like to know
>>what you have found out, in terms of benchmarks or use, about which
>>Ultrix box will give me equivalent performance in my situation.
>>
>>Also, how close to the top of the list is Ultrix in terms of when new
>>releases of Oracle are ported to different platforms?
>>

While I don't have any exact performance specs handy, I can tell you what we are doing here with the DECsystem 5000:

We are running Oracle 6.0 & SQL*Forms 3.0 on 8 DECsystem 5000's that are configured as a distributed database. The exact configuration of each 5000 is tailored to the number of users on each machine. The smallest is a DECsystem 5000 Model 200 with 80M memory. This one supports around 75 users, although the user license limits it to 32 concurrent users. Performance on this machine is satisfactory. The largest is a 5000 model 200 with 224M memory. This one needs to support about 140 users eventually. The license on this one also limits it to 32 concurrent users. In this configuration, it is being overburdened. We are upgrading it to a model 240 (55% faster) and will probably add more memory so that we can upgrade to a 64 user license.

These machines start somewhere in the low $20K range and go up from there. We are considering the new DEC Alpha machine for the future. As I understand, it is about 5 times faster and not much more expensive: i.e. more bang for the buck!

For your application, DEC also makes some smaller DECstation 5000's that might be suitable. These are designed to be individual workstations, but could possibly support 5 users; ask DEC, they can tell you what would be appropriate.

As far as Oracle is concerned, historically, one of the first platforms that Oracle was ported to was DEC VMS. From what I have been told, since the industry seems to be moving away from VMS and toward Ultrix/Unix, Oracle will likely follow suit.

Bob Bailey p228_at_uni05.larc.nasa.gov Received on Mon Sep 14 1992 - 16:46:53 CEST