Re: UNIX vs VMS

In article <45227r$qrm_at_kettle.magna.com.au>, kulin_at_juicer.magna.com.au (Kulin Contracter) wrote:

> We have decided to go ahead with ORacle Financials. We still haven't
> decided wether we will be running it on UNIX or VMS platforms. I am
> personally in favour of UNIX platform but someone else in the organisation
> favours VMS. THe issue will be resolved after round the table discussion
> sometimes this week.
>
> What I was after was some solid statistics about performance of Oracle
> on UNIX and VMS platform (preferably on DEC Alpha 8200) Also, VMS supports
> clustering which has advantage that offsite (remote) mirroring can be
> done. IS there something equivalent in UNIX that allows offsite mirroring?

I don't have any hard figures on Unix and VMS performance (I would guess that Unix has the edge on speed), but I have been running OpenVMS databases for quite some time and would prefer a VMS environment for a number of reasons.

The biggest reason is the clustering capability. I am running Oracle Parallel Server. This allows me to have the same database being served by more than one Alpha running OpenVMS. If one fails, the second machine automatically recovers the database transactions that halted on the failed machine (like, in 5 seconds!). Current transactions on the failed machine will roll back. Clients can then restart the client applications and connect to the second machine. The real beauty is that the machines are actually in separate buildings on our campus, but on the same VMS cluster. We could lose a building due to fire/explosion/etc and our database would be unaffected (aside from the performance degradation). If we had a site outside of town, putting the second machine there is also a relatively easy task (the technology is there, tested, and proven).

Unix can probably provide an offsite mirroring capability, but I would wager that it would be costly, proprietary, not very flexible, etc. OpenVMS systems offer this flexibility built into the operating system. The track record of OpenVMS clusters goes back years with high reliability.

Also, unlike the other 79 platforms on which Oracle runs, the Digital business unit has a dedicated team of developers specifically for OpenVMS. Although the ports may come out behind the Unix ports, they are far more stable (IMHO).

Drop me a line if you wish to discuss this further (and, no, I don't work for Digital).

Matt... Received on Tue Oct 10 1995 - 00:00:00 CET