Oracle filesystem layouts (was: Installing Oracle on /usr ?)

Hi,

I worked 6 years as an IT Manager at Oracle so I know a little bit of these matters :) Here's my $.02 worth.

Within Oracle we chose to use a very structured filesystem layout. Due to many, many problems with customers, Oracle published and offers OFA (Optimal Filesystem Architecture) as the default installation setup.

Personally I don't like OFA because it is targeted to systems using several / mounted filesystems. I prefer mounting filesystems deeper in the fs tree, ie, each fs is built for a specific function and tuned accordingly.

Anyway, the approach made by OFA and my own system is similar:

/<base>/oracle I used /local/oracle

/<base>/oracle/products Where Oracle products are

                                        installed.

/<base>/oracle/products/<version>

 		/local/oracle/products/7.3.3
 		/local/oracle/products/8.0.4
	


 /<base>/oracle/dbs			Where databases are installed


 /<base>/oracle/dbs/<SID>


 		/local/oracle/dbs/ORCL		all ORCL database files
 		/local/oracle/dbs/WWW		all WWW database files



 /<base>/oracle/admin			Oracle admin scripts and .ora files


 /<base>/oracle/backup			Backups

The difference between OFA and my system is:

OFA uses a multiple base system as in:

	/u1/oracle/products/8.0.4
	/u2/oracle/products/7.3.3
	/u2/oracle/dbs/SID/files
	/u3/oracle/dbs/SID/more_files

My system is more compact as I always have a SINGLE path to a directory/file. I mount specific filesystems under the apropriate directory to get the results I want. Ex:

	/local/oracle/dbs/SID		can be a separate filesystem
					OR part of the /local/oracle/dbs
					OR part of the /local/oracle
					OR can have multiple sub-dirs
					   with special filesystems with
					   stripping or RAID5 for special
					   tablespaces like indexes or
					   temporary data.

As a result, backups are a lot easier to admin as you don't have to maintain a database of mount-points. The usual error with Oracle backups is that, when the backup scripts are done, only the original files and directories are backed-up and the new additions forgotten. You can't possibly imagine the number of times I saw that happen. As usual, the client only saw the problem after formatting the disks and then finding out that his backup was incomplete!! :)         

I hope this helps you.

-- 
Acacio Cruz		acruz_at_acacio.com
IT Consultant		Personal WWW site: http://www.acacio.com
Dynamac Corp.

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