Re: Q: Performance probs SC2000/Sol 2.3/Oracle7.0.16

[ Stuff about performance on Sun/Oracle deleted ]

: 1. don't use the 2.9 drives; they're way to big. use 1gb drives
: instead (yeah, real nice to know after you put up a lot
: of $ for them).

This is a case of not thinking on the part of the buyer. A database needs lots of I/Os per seconds (commonly called iops). Iops are a function of the number of disk arms you have, not the number of gigabytes you have. If you can handle the admin load (use a logical volume manager) then your best bet is a large array of fast small drives, like 200-500 MB drives.

: 2. there's a paper out (not sure if it's white) that sun uses
: internally for optimizing oracle to run on sun...it
: contains a lot of info for setting parameters in the
: /etc/system file. Some of the paramaters have to do
: with mouse/monitor interaction...important on a sparc 5
: or 20, but a moot point on a 1000 or 2000.
 

: set slowscan=100
: set fastscan=16000
: set lotsfree=512
: set desfree=256
: set minfree=128

These guys control the pager's thinking. I'm a little confused by the values here - I think the alg hasn't changed much since the BSD days. Take a look at the 4.3 kern/vm_page.c at the function pageout() and you'll have a good idea of what is going on. The 4.4 stuff is different.

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Larry McVoy			(415) 390-1804			 lm_at_sgi.com