Re: Oracle on NT: DEC Alpha or Compaq Proliant???

From: Vince Cross <vcross_at_bnr.ca>
Date: 1995/12/15
Message-ID: <4asjho$liu_at_crchh327.rich.bnr.ca>#1/1


In article <4as633$14jc_at_news.ccit.arizona.edu>, Ronald L Misiorowski <misioror_at_GAS.UUG.Arizona.EDU> wrote:
>Anybody got any opinions/war stories on running Oracle Workgroup
>on a Proliant 1500 133MHz vs. Alpha 2000 275MHz under NTAS 3.51?
>
>Our database is expected to be about 3.5 GB, used 90% for queries,
>supporting 10-20 users.
>
>The quotes I'm getting show the Alpha about $7,500 more than the Proliant,
>with similar configurations. Is the price worth it? My feeling is that
>since my application will be I/O bound, I'd be better off spending the $$
>on more memory or faster disks. Any comments??
>

I'm sure someone will correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe that the Alpha is the only platform that Oracle supports 64K database block sizes on. I think everyone else is limited to 16K. From the sound of you application, you may want the capability of the larger block size.

I don't have any personal experience with the Alpha, but we have several Compaq 133's here being used as NT workstations. They're good machines, but we had to get several BIOS and driver updates to fix some problems we were having initially. If you want to get the most out of a Pentium 133mhz processor, I would go a system that uses the full Intel chipset on the motherboard. Compaq has a proprietary design. They rank very "middle of the road" on speed and throughput compared to systems with Intel chipsets. Food for thought...

Vince

-- 
* disclaimer - My views respresent NT/BNR in every way, NOT!
NOTE - my real email address is bartok_at_bnr.ca, NOT vcross_at_bnr.ca
* non-work related email to vlcross_at_aol.com (Having an AOL account doesn't
  make me a complete idiot. Excessive drinking makes me one.)
Received on Fri Dec 15 1995 - 00:00:00 CET

Original text of this message