Re: Why shouldn't I run an Oracle database on a PDC?

seanb_at_lonelyplanet.com (Sean Brandt) wrote in message news:<110b6d4f.0305300732.13db112c_at_posting.google.com>...
> Hi,
> I haven't yet had the oportunity to work with any Oracle products so
> I'd like to find out the answer to the quesion of why I shouldn't run
> an Oracle database on a server that is acting as the PDC of a Windows
> NT domain. Here's the situation...
>
> I'm purchasing a new server on which to have an Oracle database
> installed. The specs of the server are:
>
> Dell Poweredge 1650
> 1.13 ghz processor
> 512 mb ram
> 36 gb HD
>
> The DB is HR/payroll related. According to the documentation if there
> are roughly 5000 employees the Oracle db will require 2.6 gb. We have
> 80 employees whose records would be in the DB, so I imagine it would
> be considerably less. We would have only 2-3 people actually accessing
> the DB on a daily basis.
>
> Our NT 4 domain has again, 80 users with a PDC and BDC on one subnet,
> and an additional BDC on a seperate subnet.
>
> My boss has requested I make this new server the PDC of our domain, in
> addition to running DNS,DHCP and WINS.
>
> So, considering the activities of this server as related to the NT
> domain and networking services, the specs of the server and the size
> and activity of the Oracle DB would it be ok to have all of these on
> the same server?
>
> Any help would be greatly appreciated.
>
> Thanks,
> Sean

Its just this simple:

don't do it.

1. the oracle server software install attempts to create a local group, "ORA_DBA".
2. one has to install the software as a member of the local administrator's group. Guess what? there are no local accounts on a domain controller.
3. compromise of this system due to a listener vulnerability or buffer overflow in the oracle.exe process would provide the attacker with localsystem on your PDC. (this is bad). Have you ever heard of Nimda?
4. you need to be a member of the domain admins to logon to an NT4 domain controller. I have never logged onto a W2K domain controller, as I have no oracle installations on W2K domain controllers, or MS Active Directory servers. DBAs and Network Admins are separate groups in most businesses. This is for a good reason.

Download and read the platform-specific release notes for the version that you plan to install.

The oracle server software alone retails at $15K (USD) per CPU. This project should have a bigger budget for a better server. You need more memory, you need more drives, you need to configure this server storage system as hardware raid. this is not a good (Dell) server to use.
That server uses PC133 ram - instead of DDR400. You will lack CPU capacity, memory bandwidth and I/O bandwidth. how large is your database going to be?
how large is the daily transaction log volume? will you be keeping exports, hot backups and rman backup sets on disk?

if you're looking for a bargain, hit the Dell outlet at http://www.dell.com/outlet - get a refurb unit. We picked up a DR server (PE2650, 2 GB DDR RAM, 2 x 2.4 GHz, 5 x 73 GB) for under $3800 (no operating system).

good luck.

Paul Received on Fri May 30 2003 - 18:05:21 CDT