Path: text.usenetserver.com!out04b.usenetserver.com!news.usenetserver.com!in02.usenetserver.com!news.usenetserver.com!cycny01.gnilink.net!cyclone1.gnilink.net!gnilink.net!nx01.iad.newshosting.com!newshosting.com!post02.iad!not-for-mail Date: Fri, 10 Oct 2008 06:12:55 -0700 From: DA Morgan Organization: Puget Sound Oracle Users Group User-Agent: Thunderbird 2.0.0.17 (Windows/20080914) MIME-Version: 1.0 Newsgroups: comp.databases.oracle.server Subject: Re: RAC or Large SMP...? References: <368bb2a8-810e-4d23-9a5e-370ee4f46e36@b2g2000prf.googlegroups.com> <30456044-e3c2-457e-8165-2cabeedafe95@w13g2000prm.googlegroups.com> <1223443114.887587@bubbleator.drizzle.com> <1223446496.385495@bubbleator.drizzle.com> <7778d5a8-3621-4fdc-89f6-9e01487f672b@b30g2000prf.googlegroups.com> <6l6qmcFavcsgU1@mid.individual.net> <1223590623.384497@bubbleator.drizzle.com> <87hc7lmehw.fsf@lion.rapttech.com.au> In-Reply-To: <87hc7lmehw.fsf@lion.rapttech.com.au> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Message-ID: <1223644373.335231@bubbleator.drizzle.com> Cache-Post-Path: bubbleator.drizzle.com!unknown@dsl-216-162-218-178.drizzle.com X-Cache: nntpcache 3.0.1 (see http://www.nntpcache.org/) Lines: 42 X-Complaints-To: abuse@csolutions.net Xref: usenetserver.com comp.databases.oracle.server:448568 X-Received-Date: Fri, 10 Oct 2008 09:12:55 EDT (text.usenetserver.com) Tim X wrote: > DA Morgan writes: > >> At Oracle OpenWorld in 2005 I built a 24 node cluster on the third >> level of Moscone West. We had someone from Sun price it out using >> SMP and RAC. The difference in price, for just one comparable SMP >> machine as compared to our one RAC cluster was in excess of $250,000 >> USD. That pays for a lot of training. >> >> There is a word that describes companies with a single large SMP >> box at a single location. That word is "vulnerable." > > Our analysis of costs and ROI came out about the same, plus we found > that if we hit the max load, adding another large SMP box was going to > be a lot more cost and would likely add a lot more power than needed > than adding another node to the RAC. As we have seen fairly steady > increase in processing power requirements rather than large jumps, RAC > seemed a better choice and we get the additional risk mitigation. > > I'm also not convinced that the fewer servers are easier to administer > arguement is as valid these days. This was certainly true in the past, > but modern package management has become quite sophisticated. > Managing larger numbers of servers dedicated to the same role isn't that > much of an overhead anymore. At least we haven't seen a substantial > increase in administration since moving to RAC. In fact, the added > fault tolerance has reduced impact and stress on staff when hardware > failures occur. > > Tim And one argument I didn't make but you reminded me of ... try to perform a rolling upgrade on an SMP box. It may not be perfect with RAC but I can guarantee you it is impossible with a single server. -- Daniel A. Morgan Oracle Ace Director & Instructor University of Washington damorgan@x.washington.edu (replace x with u to respond) Puget Sound Oracle Users Group www.psoug.org