Re: Oracle 9i on linux?

"harry" <spammemothers_at_yahoo.co.uk> wrote in message news:<Qo2hd.3057$up1.230_at_text.news.blueyonder.co.uk>...
> Sorry for being a bit thick but I'm a basically a complete newbie to Linux &
> need to get up & running pretty quickly.
>
> I been asked to setup a Linux box on a PC running Oracle 9i & Weblogic 8.1.
>
> The version of Linux I install is not that important as long as I can get
> the 2 app's above working - that's where I've hit a brick wall.
>
> I thought I'd find a Oracle & WL version say for FreeBSB or Redhat & go with
> that Linux version ah ha but -
>
> it looks like from Oracle's site I should download "Oracle9i Database
> Release 2 Enterprise/Standard Edition for Linux
> New (26-Mar-04)"
>
> but which version of linux is it for, freebsd, redhat etc...?
>
> Also from BEA's site -
> http://commerce.bea.com/showproduct.jsp?family=WLP&major=8.1&minor=3 in the
> drop down box, the only linux offering appears to be "Red Hat Enterprise
> Linux (2.1, 3.0, Pentium) - so do I have to have "Red Hat Enterprise Linux"?
>
> Any ideas?
>
> thanks in advance
>
> harry

If this is just a development box then go with something widely supported like Red Hat AS3. However, if this will be a production system that has high memory/cpu demands, SLES9 is the only Oracle certified Linux distro running the 2.6 kernel. Memory support for the 2.4 kernel is poor, with almost no benefit/gains going past 4gb on physical RAM. The 2.6 kernel has large improvements in memory management and a spiffy new enterprise quality scheduler. (which was severely holding back the 2.4 kernel under entperprise loads)

For the greatest flexibility and supportability, go with RHAS 3, for the best performance and enterprise quality, go with SLES9. We just spent several months benchmarking RHAS3, SLES 9, Fedora Core 2 and SLES 9.1 (latter two not certified by Oracle yet) and found SLES 9 was the best at large memory usage and highest transaction throughput. (We were testing using a CPU intensive Biotech specific Oracle cartridge called Daylight and a slew of other homegrown CPU intensive applications)

I was also just at an Oracle Tech Conference in San Diego and spoke with an Oracle developer who said, 'off the record, I prefer SuSE for enterpise use'. I also tend to agree since Oracle on SuSE has been much more stable than Red Hat from release to release dating back several years now (from my personal experience in several real-world empirical tests). It boils down to what your system load is. Most distros listed above will be absolutely fine from a personal workstation perspective, but running under a true enterprise load is a different story. We had Fedora Core 2 going absolutely pear-shaped under certain tests, but it was fine to a certain point. (this specific test coupled heavy cpu intensive tasks with heavy I/O intensive tasks along with as much network I/O as we could muster accross the trunked gigabit NIC's using a packet blaster designed to test routers)

We are drafting a document detailing our results, and exact configs of all the systems, and our exact testing harness (with the exception of our proprietary and confidential code). (these were stand-alone systems by the way, no RAC was involved)

Also, if you go the Red Hat route, here is a link to an excellent document for installation:
http://www.puschitz.com/InstallingOracle9i.html

Hope this helps.
rhugga Received on Sun Oct 31 2004 - 17:39:53 CST