Re: Oracle on NT with raw devices

"Christopher M. Day" wrote:
>
> Stilian,
>
> Raw partitions do not require a drive letter.
>

Yes you are right about that.

> 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.

See http://www.ipass.net/~davesisk/oont_performance.htm

I did some testing a year ago but do not have the numbers. For me the performance increase was not worth the time and bother to implement RAW partitions. A RAID 0/1 and careful layout of the storage across multiple drives gained much better results and manageability, a lot easier.

>
> 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 Thu Apr 01 1999 - 13:51:56 CST