Re: Sun/Oracle server growth: more CPUs or additional servers?

In article <316453B5.7665_at_ci.seattle.wa.us>, Steve Miles <steve.miles_at_ci.seattle.wa.us> wrote:

> -How well does Oracle scale on a multiple CPU system like Sun's? Can you
> max out the server with CPUs and memory and continue to see better
> performance? Or does performance plateau at some point?

Our experience on a 75-mhz Sparc20/Solaris 2.4: when we dropped in a second CPU we doubled our database's capacity. It was truely amazing, and all it took was 5 minutes and $7K+. Of course, our database was CPU-bound. If it were IO bound other solutions would have been appropriate.

> -Is it a sound strategy to keep all your eggs in one basket (i.e., one
> big server, instead of multiple interconnected servers)?

You have to draw a conclusion based on your applications and needs.

> -What performance issues are there with multiple servers? For instance,
> what if I want to run a query that joins tables on different servers?

I'm not expert on this, but certainly there will be a potential for communication bottlenecks (bandwidth, latency) plus the non-reliability of the network. Received on Sat Apr 06 1996 - 00:00:00 CEST