Re: 7.3 on Intranetware SMP

Your situation sound extreamly similar to ours. We've been using Oracle 7.3.2 Workgroup Server on a HP Netsever Dual Pentium Pro 256 MB machine running NetWare 4.11 with the SMP option since August (upgraded from a HP P90) and have had few problems. We did need to ensure that we had all the latest patches NLM versions appied (they are outlined in the Oracle server instalation manual) and we needed to upgrade Oracle from 7.2 to get everything to work correctly. As far as stability, once we got all the lastest versions of the NLMs and of Oracle we've experiance no crashes that can be attributed to SMP. I can't recall if we've even experianced an abend at all.

Both processors are indeed used by Oracle, but because we only have Oracle Workgroup Server queries can only be executed on a single processor and not in parrell on both. Because of that, we saw little overall improvement in speed of query execution but the server supports many more users (around 250) without becoming over utilized. You'll notice that a lightly loaded server will have all the user processes on processor 1 and none on processor 0. As load increases, the user processes gradually migrate to a roughly even split over both processors.

While we're on the subject if you planning this big upgrade why not move to NT? I've found Oracle to be quite a bit faster on an NT box then on a similar Novell box. We would have made that move but there was little point because we're going UNIX on a Dec Alpha in April.

Brett J. Stonier wrote:

> I apologize if this has been discussed before, but I couldn't find any
> answers through Deja News or on Oracle's website (sheesh, is that thing
> slow!)
>
> We're currently looking at hardware options for upgrading our Oracle 7.3
> Intranetware database server. My current vision is to move it from a
> P90 to a dual pentium-pro 200 (with some additional controllers and
> memory.)
>
> I have some questions as to what SMP would get us, though. I have heard
> it said that when SMP is used, Oracle takes one processor and Netware
> takes the other. However, I have also been told that Oracle bypassses
> most of Netware and does its own I/O, etc. If both of these statements
> are true, then I see one processor (Oracle's) doing most of the work and
> the other one (Netware's) standing largely idle. Are dual processors
> worth it, or would a single pentium-pro 200 be almost as good? I am
> hoping that one of those statements (or my conclusion) is not quite
> accurate, and therefore 2 processors will perform significantly better
> than 1.
>
> Secondly, I have heard grumblings that Oracle on SMP is not very
> stable. Is this true? Are there certain versions of Oracle on SMP that
> are more stable than others? Any horror stories I should be aware of?
>
> Thx for any and all help ...
>
> Brett S.
> http://www.mtjeff.com/~calvin/devhbook
Received on Sat Jan 03 1998 - 00:00:00 CET