NFS mounting database partitions?

 We're debating between a couple of possible configurations for servers  here.

 Basically we have two SPARC5000's serving DBs for Oracle Financials,  various Peoplesoft apps., and general-purpose data warehouse apps.  On the whole they're relatively lightly loaded, though use is peaky of  course and batch processing can be significant. We will need to  increase storage capacity on both machines fairly soon.

 One possibility is to attach an A3500 disk array to each machine (each  ~50Gb).

 Another possibility we're considering is to get a single NetApps NFS  server (~100Gb) most likely connected to both machines via gigabit  ethernet.

 One concern I have about this is that it means the database partions  will be NFS mounted. Is there likely to be any significant problem  with this, either performance-related or for some other reason?  Small test databases seem happy enough (even with an NFS server rather  less capable than a NetApp should be) but is there some reason this  might not scale?

 Anyone have any general comments on this setup? On paper it looks  like the NetApp would potentially offer _higher_ performance than  arrays, as well as more flexibility.

Chris Moll
Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory Received on Tue Jan 12 1999 - 17:00:44 CST