Re: Oracle on NT with raw devices

Stilian,

Raw partitions do not require a drive letter.

You simply map them to a meaningful name using setlinks.exe.

If you have performance figures for the gain in using RAW over NTFS then please make them known to the rest of the group. I'm sure lots of people are interested.

Chris.

Stilian Elenkov wrote:
>
> Don Khan wrote:
> >
> > Does anyone use raw devices for Oracle datafiles on NT? In the UNIX world
> > this is common but I am wondering if DBAs for large Oracle on NT
> > installations use raw drives. What about when NT volume sets cannot be
> > allocated a drive letter because all drive letters have already been used.
> > Could Oracle still use a raw volume set that does not have a drive letter.
> > Reason I'm asking is because I'm working on a product that does backups of
> > VLDB installations for NT and I need to figure out how Oracle NT customers
> > are using storage. If you are in such an environment I would appreciate any
> > info. Thanks.
>
> Using Raw FS increases performance by 10 - 15% for NT, but decreases
> manageability by 50%. Raw partitions also require a drive letter. If you
> have used all the letters for drives you might want to consider merging
> more physical drives into a single volume and/or use RAID for fault
> tolerance and performance improvement.
> Use of NTFS rather than RAW can save you a lot of headache in the long
> run and with the right combination of RAID implementation(s) (NT allows
> software 0, 1, and 5) and hardware 0/1 the performance and manageability
> are great.
>
> Stilian
Received on Tue Mar 30 1999 - 13:30:32 CST