RE: Oracle File System.

From: Pete Sharman <peter.sharman_at_oracle.com>
Date: Fri, 5 Mar 2004 04:33:18 +1100
Message-Id: <200403041732.i24HWj222440@rgmgw6.us.oracle.com>

Duh, that should be "Production environment", not "Product environment"! :(

Pete

"Controlling developers is like herding cats."

Kevin Loney, Oracle DBA Handbook

"Oh no, it's not. It's much harder than that!"

Bruce Pihlamae, long-term Oracle DBA

-----Original Message-----
From: Pete Sharman [mailto:peter.sharman_at_oracle.com] Sent: Friday, March 05, 2004 4:22 AM
To: oracle-l_at_freelists.org
Cc: Peter Ross. Sharman
Subject: RE: Oracle File System.

A couple of comments on this:

OMF is not just intended for Development. It could work just as well in a Product environment using an LVM. Will it perform as well as a meticulously laid out disk configuration with careful file placement by a DBA who knows what they're doing? Maybe not, but then lots of sites don't have the luxury of that anyway, nor the need for it if their database isn't an incredibly complex one.
Statements like "RAW devices are going to make your database run faster" are not going to be true in all cases. They MIGHT make your database run faster, they might not. And you also need to take into account the added complexity they inherently bring if you're not a competent sysadmin. Note that this last point is again one of those lovely motherhood statements. If you know what you're doing raw is just as easy as cooked.
Another option for what the original poster was talking about might be OCFS, rather than iFS.

Pete

"Controlling developers is like herding cats."

Kevin Loney, Oracle DBA Handbook

"Oh no, it's not. It's much harder than that!"

Bruce Pihlamae, long-term Oracle DBA

-----Original Message-----
From: oracle-l-bounce_at_freelists.org [mailto:oracle-l-bounce_at_freelists.org] Sent: Friday, March 05, 2004 2:24 AM
To: oracle-l_at_freelists.org
Subject: RE: Oracle File System.

John,

He could also be talking about Oracle Managed Files (OMF) which I don't think will work with RAW devices. It's also something that although great for a development environment, is not recommended for a production environment.

Dick Goulet
Senior Oracle DBA
Oracle Certified 8i DBA

-----Original Message-----
From: John Flack [mailto:JohnF_at_smdi.com] Sent: Thursday, March 04, 2004 9:49 AM
To: oracle-l_at_freelists.org
Subject: RE: Oracle File System.

I think Ranga is looking for advantages/disadvantages of storing database files as RAW as opposed to storing them in a file system, not for info on Oracle Internet File System.

Ranga -
RAW devices are going to make your database run faster, because Oracle can read and write directly to and from the disk, instead of requesting the operating system to provide this as a service. On the other hand, because your operating system does not own these disk partitions, it cannot provide the usual services like listing database files with a "ls" command, or showing free space with a "df". You will not be able to do a cold backup with os utilties "tar" or "cpio" - you'll need to use a command like "dd" that can operate on raw devices. However, if you use rman for backup and recovery, you probably won't care that you can't use tar or cpio.

Anyone else want to shed some light?

-----Original Message-----
From: Mladen Gogala [mailto:mladen_at_wangtrading.com] Sent: Thursday, March 04, 2004 9:26 AM
To: oracle-l_at_freelists.org
Subject: Re: Oracle File System.

On 03/04/2004 08:34:48 AM, ramalingam.rangadoure_at_tcs.com wrote:
> Hi All,
> We are using Oracle in Solaris environment for our application.
> We want to know the following things to go for a Oracle file system
>
> 1. Is it good to go for a file system,instead of storing data in
> RAW disk. If we are using file system what are the advantages...... like
> taking back up,crash over recovery,etc ......
>
> 2. Is there any disadvantage for using the file system..........
> like performance degrade.
>
> Please if any of you using the file system give the detail to us .

Oracle Internet File System presents oracle tables as files. It's just a presentation layer on top of the database. As databases are far more complex then file systems, that means that oracle IFS will be much slower then NFS or CIFS (to unix users known as Samba or SMB). On the other hand, loading things to and from the database will be reduced to copying things.

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Received on Thu Mar 04 2004 - 12:51:48 CST