[CLUE-Talk] Oracle on Linux in production?

[Match Grun]

Just some comments to add to others in this thread. You may find something useful.

It is interesting to note that Oracle are migrating to Linux for their development. Also, Sun announced that they will be actively promoting Linux for low end servers. I don't know what that means... but remember that they did buy out Cobalt last year. Cobalt make those cute MIPS based cube and rack servers that run Linux.

We use NFS on Solaris boxes. I am told that NFS is notoriously unreliable. I don't have enough experience on NFS to comment. I have suggested that maybe Plan9 be considered as an alternative network file system.

With regard to backup of Oracle databases, the best solution I encountered was a client we worked for. They created a private FDDI network to interconnect servers. This was *ONLY* used for synchronizing the files between two servers. The Sysadmin was extremely pleased with that setup.

At the same time I worked for another company that used the regular 100Mb/s ethernet for backups. Come 5pm performance of the entire network took a nosedive as soon as the scheduled backups kicked in.

Match

On Fri, 15 Feb 2002 10:13:26 -0700 (MST)
Jim Ockers <ockers at ockers.net> wrote:

> Hi all,
> 
> I need some feedback or ideas.  We are working on a major project where
> we will have a single database server back-end in a critical production 
> environment.  We will not be spending the money for "clustering" or other 
> buzzword compliance so we just need the database and server software to 
> be reliable.
> 
> We will be using server-class hardware of course.  Our choices for database
> (I have no control over this, I was going down the MySQL track but got shot
> down) are: 1. MS SQL Server 2. Oracle .  The software is already written to
> support both of those and we are not going to rewrite it this month to use
> a different database engine.
> 
> I would rather use Oracle than MS SQL server just because I can run Oracle
> on a UNIX platform and I'm not convinced of the reliability of W2K/MS SQL
> on a critical production environment.  That is to say, I'm not willing to
> bet my reputation as a provider of reliable infrastructure on Micro$oft
> software.
> 
> I also would rather not spend the $bigbucks on a Big Iron UNIX server
> such as IBM, DEC Alpha, Sun, etc., if I can get away with a PC server
> running Linux to do the same basic job.  The double-your-money license
> costs for enterprise Oracle vs. SQL are not an issue.
> 
> I need some feedback from the user community regarding the use of Oracle
> on Linux in a production environment.  Are any of you doing this?  How
> well does it work?  Have you had any problems with the software side of
> things?  What were the nature of the problems?  Any downtime due to
> software failures, including deficiencies in the Linux kernels, difficulties
> scaling to accomodate growth of data or traffic, etc.?
> 
> As most of you know I am a huge Linux evangelist.  However, I am also very
> aware that Linux is a low-end OS and only recently in the 2.4 kernel have
> enterprise-grade features started to show up.  The things I'm concerned about
> are the ability to handle large files, large data sets, move large files
> around over the network, etc.  As you may know NFSv2 is still the default,
> I think, in the Linux kernel, and you can't copy more than 2GB files to or
> from any NFSv2 software.  NFSv3 is not in the 2.4 kernels yet, AFAIK.
> 
> I just don't want to get bitten by the low-endedness of the Linux 
> architecture on this critical application.  (It is important to realize that
> Windows NT/2000/XP are low-end as well, and only recently have enterprise-
> grade features started to show up and possibly be usable on NT.)
> 
> I guess I would also like to hear stories about difficulties or problems
> using MS SQL server in the same sorts of environments, as I'm sure there are
> some people on the list who work in MS SQL server environments.
> 
> Thanks for your feedback!  Reply directly to me or to the list - I'll see
> your response either way.
> 
> -- 
> Jim Ockers - Pason (ockers at pason.com)
> Contact info:  http://www.pason.com/ockers.html
> 
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