Re: RAC Clusterware Question

From: DA Morgan <damorgan_at_psoug.org>
Date: Tue, 25 Jul 2006 22:00:28 -0700
Message-ID: <1153846857.418369@bubbleator.drizzle.com>

boogab00_at_yahoo.com wrote:

> DA Morgan wrote:

>> boogab00_at_yahoo.com wrote:

>>> hpuxrac wrote:
>>>> boogab00_at_yahoo.com wrote:
>>>>> hpuxrac wrote:
>>>>>> DA Morgan wrote:
>>>>>>> Greg wrote:
>>>>>>>> Currently I'm using Oracle RAC with OCFS for Oracle on Linux.  It is
>>>>>>>> pretty much a broken and BAD product. Is anyone using the Veritas
>>>>>>>> Clustering and Veritas file system for Linux?
>>>>>>>> Experience?
>>>>>>>> Pros/Cons?
>>>>>>>> Share any info?
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> -Greg
>>>>>>> What version of Oracle?
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>  From my experience OCFS is a stop-gap solution for a problem that
>>>>>>> no longer exists. Veritas? I wouldn't spend $5 on it if I could use
>>>>>>> a 100% Oracle solution and you can with 10g.
>>>>>> Is that like your advice for implementing production systems on mac os
>>>>>> x ... subject to later revision?
>>>>> Who the heck would recommend that and why in the first place?
>>>> At one point there was a lot of self promotion in this newsgroup about
>>>> rac clusters on mac os.  ( Well self promotion is being polite ).  Try
>>>> searching the google newsgroup with things like "mac cluster" or "kent
>>>> stroker" and you will find the postings.
>>>>
>>>> Certain of the people posting here were giving advice here and telling
>>>> people to run production systems and rac clusters on mac os.  How you
>>>> get patches and patchsets when you run into issues ... that's a good
>>>> question eh?
>>>>
>>>> That answers the who part anyway.
>>>>
>>>> The "why" is a better question.
>>>>
>>>> It is fine to get excited from time to time about oracle announcing new
>>>> platforms.  Over the years many of us have seen a history of "one time"
>>>> or "two time" releases of oracle on certain platforms that are
>>>> subsequently "no longer supported".
>>> Hmmm, interesting.  It must've been from someone who's never been a
>>> production DBA and have to support something like that.

>> Not at all. Apple is one of Oracle's largest customers and a
>> strategic alliance was created between the companies. One of
>> the world's foremost RAC experts, and an associate of mine, built
>> the very first RAC cluster on Apple's hardware and we were
>> invited by both companies to be partners too.

>>

>> Benchmarking clearly demonstrated that RAC clusters built using the
>> Mac OSX operating system blew away, by both cost and performance,
>> those from Dell, HP, IBM, and Sun.

>>

>> At Oracle OpenWorld last year Oracle gave me one of only two booths
>> in the Conference facility at Moscone and an associate of mine built
>> a 24 node cluster. There were also two 10 node clusters built for a
>> major commercial bank in Japan to run SAP and there are quite a few
>> working clusters here in the US and also in Western Europe (mostly
>> Germany).

>>

>> Were it not for the success of the iPod and Nano it is likely that
>> Apple would not have changed its mind about a major move into the
>> corporate data center and would today be a major player.

>>

>> Also before you join a certain other person in trashing Apple in
>> the data center you might want to look at the size of their non-Oracle
>> footprint in the corporate world. We tend to think of TB databases as
>> large. Apple customers, editing video, move around that much data
>> regularly and with ease. Thus the bus structure and the high-end IBM
>> CPUs were all designed to provide far higher performance at a far lower
>> cost.

>>

>> It isn't a platform I'd choose today. But not due to any failing of
>> the hardware or O/S. Just the fact that they didn't continue their
>> support to 10.1.0.4 and beyond.
>> --
>> Daniel A. Morgan
>> University of Washington
>> damorgan_at_x.washington.edu
>> (replace x with u to respond)
>> Puget Sound Oracle Users Group
>> www.psoug.org

> 
> Nothing against the Mac OS (I think it's great) but I wouldn't put a
> mission critical database on zLinux either for the same reason.  Not
> enough of a customer install base.  Always behind in version releases,
> bug fixes etc. since it's not Tier 1.  Supporting this would be
> interesting to say the least.

Interestingly enough the installed base of Mac OS is huge. Far larger, in fact, that that of some better known companies. It just isn't in the data center hosting Oracle. So there is a very substantial track record in major corporations.

I certainly gave consideration to the argument you made but here's what persuaded me to follow Oracle's lead. When I moved from Sun Sparc to Sun AMD what was the installed base? Zero! I trusted the name Sun. When I moved from AIX 5.2 to 5.3 what was the installed base? Zero! I trusted the name IBM. Same goes with for my experience with HP.

I saw no reason to believe that the reputations of two very large corporations wouldn't hold here just as well. And as our benchmarking proved the Mac hardware and OS were far superior, at the time, to the offerings from Dell, HP, IBM, or Sun. I personally think Apple made a huge mistake. But then that an opinion written from a position of liking low-cost resilient hardware that is screamingly fast. Take a look at this for example: http://www.apple.com/xserve/raid. Enough said!

On the maintenance side one of the pluses was that Apple provided all of the tools. No need to purchase tools from third-parties and try to integrate them. Far fewer potential testing issues. Again lower cost.

The mistake here, if there was any, was made by Apple by not following through. It cost them their credibility.

-- 
Daniel A. Morgan
University of Washington
damorgan_at_x.washington.edu
(replace x with u to respond)
Puget Sound Oracle Users Group
www.psoug.org

Received on Wed Jul 26 2006 - 00:00:28 CDT