Hey Ethan,

Our problem with 64 CPUs is the Oracle licensing cost.  $2.5M exceeds our
entire IT budget (I think).  Not to mention that machines that can handle 64
CPUs -- HP's PA-RISC and Alphas and Sun's Ultras among others -- are
prohibitively expensive for us.  Also, if the server cluster ain't DEC's
(Compaq/HP), it ain't right.  DEC invented and perfected it.  I worked on a
VAXCluster in the 80's and it was very stable (two 11/750s and a 11/780 --
2.3 whole VUPs between the three!).  There's my 10 years of DEC SA bigotry
sneaking in... :)

As a knee-jerk reaction, I would agree with your Top Three Downtime Causes,
which I would lump into a single "Human Error" category.  There is only so
much one can do to prevent this, no matter what hardware or DB is in use.
We've encountered all three on our "big" DB, with relatively minor whiplash.

Our DBs are small in the Oracle World.  The largest is only 30GB on disk.
With proper setup, this could be only 1 or 2 hours for complete recovery.
That could negate the need for incurring the high cost of an HA cluster
(aside from RAC).

I appreciate the feedback!  This is exactly the stuff I'm looking for!  Like
I mentioned, this kinda thing really needs to be good shouting match over
beer.

Thanks!
Rich


Rich Jesse                        System/Database Administrator
[EMAIL PROTECTED]           Quad/Tech International, Sussex, WI USA

-----Original Message-----
Sent: Thursday, February 13, 2003 11:14 AM
To: Multiple recipients of list ORACLE-L


If you asked me last week I might not have formulated much of an opinion,
but I have been tainted by Mogens presentation on RAC or Not To RAC.

Here are some questions you need to ask...

Why not go with a box capable of the CPU's you will eventually need.  Why
add machines when adding CPU's might be just fine.  Will these apps really
not run on 64 CPU's?

The added complexity of RAC and administration needs to be a factor in
calculating your target uptime?  My experience has been that most database
downtime is a result of the following items.

1. DBA/Unix admin errors.
2. Application errors (run away batch jobs)
3. User errors (truncate table)

RAC doesn't fix any of these things.  However, a stand-by running a few
hours behind could provide feasible solutions to most of these items.

Just recently I saw a HACMP cluster (not RAC) come down causing a 1 hour
outage as a result of the instructions provided directly from an IBM support
rep to the Unix admin.  The complexity of HA was the issue, so point #1 only
becomes more likely as you add the complexity of running RAC to your
environment.

If you could chart all this stuff I got to feel that at some point the
likelihood of one of issues above surpasses the likelihood of an actual
hardware failure causing an outage.

I think another point made during the presentation is that some very unique
and hard to pinpoint errors can arise from running RAC.  Don't be surprised
if the answer back from Oracle is very vague (i.e. perhaps parameter X is
set to high when circumstance Y happens...

My 2 cents...

- Ethan

-----Original Message-----
Sent: Thursday, February 13, 2003 9:40 AM
To: Multiple recipients of list ORACLE-L


With all this discussion on "Why RAC?", I thought I'd chime in with our
reasoning, at least as it stands before any testing.

We currently have a few "major" databases for our ERP/MRP system,
Engineering drawings, and "legacy" (I loathe that word) data.  These
databases are spread across three larger systems: Solaris, HP/UX, and
OpenVMS.  They are set up as any three independant systems with their own
disks, own CPUs, own memory, etc.  These relatively expensive systems are
under utilized, and finally, are beginning to show their age (up to six
years old).

By combining these systems under a single system, we will be saving money in
hardware cost (future upgrades and repair) as well as in service contracts,
not to mention the utimate savings -- computer room floorspace!  What I
don't want to do is have the consolidation negatively affect the DBs in
performance or downtime (perceived or real).  So, the idea right now is to
use "commodity" (read: "inexpensive") servers, dual Intel (AMD???) 1Us, with
a SAN, and 9iRAC.

The theory being that while we'll take an initial kick in the fiscal crotch
with the Oracle licensing, since we currently refuse to let go of our
Concurrent User, we'll come out ahead in the long run with the added
performance and unlimited user (per CPU) licensing.  Also, with the
commodity servers, we can switch out the server for faster CPUs without
incurring more licensing cost should the need arise (yes, Cary, I'm well
aware of the "CPU Upgrade Myth"!).

With our testing, I hope to see that we'll be able to provide better uptime
and performance with RAC than the total sum of the current boxes (save for
the uptime on the OpenVMS box, which has 10 minutes of total downtime in the
past 770+ days).

Any comments on this?  In the interest of bandwidth and brevity, I've been
way too brief here.  This should really be discussed over Guinness.

Thx!
Rich


Rich Jesse                        System/Database Administrator
[EMAIL PROTECTED]           Quad/Tech International, Sussex, WI USA
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