Re: Oracle RAC for scalability or High Availability only

On Tue, 14 Feb 2006 16:47:56 -0800, DA Morgan wrote:

> But more importantly. You only have one box and zero failover. So double
> the cost on your side, make that 2x10CPU boxes and be sure you have the
> EE licenses for them. Then add DataGuard for failover.

Why? I work for a marketing company that doesn't have critical data. We can and we occasionally have shut down the database for the whole weekend. There will be no critical impact if the database is out for an hour or two. I'm doing regular backups using RMAN and NetBackup. The database is primarily of the DW type, used for calculating trends and successes of mailing and/or phone campaigns. Our most important tool is SAS. Why would I need a standby or an additional node? Company's money would be better spent on few more CPU resources that can be used for star joins or hash joins. In that situation, I find both RAC and DG completely useless. Morals of the story that everything depends on the type business that the database supports.
I believe that eBay, Amazon or Chase Manhattan cannot afford to shut down their production database for a weekend, without consequences. They might be more inclined to use RAC and/or DataGuard. RAC is not universal answer. The number 42 is.

-- 
http://www.mgogala.com