The BIG picture - RE: Raw Devices v.s. File System

On Wed, 12 Jul 2000, Gaja Krishna Vaidyanatha wrote:

> Given that the performance difference between these advanced
> fileystems and Raw is not that much, it really begs the issue as
> to why one would want to give up the benefits of a filesystem.

I think this derives from whether one can paint with a big brush so to speak, or if one gets stuck in the details. Tuning large complex computing systems, like Unix systems running Oracle, often requires one to be able to look at things from a "birds eye" perspective, and see the big picture. When you do this you realize that every little ounce of performance isn't what you're after, but the orders-of-magnitude gains. You get these from:

o using advanced filesystems over traditional buffered filesystems o tuning bad SQL queries
o making sure I/O is distributed across enough disks o making sure you have enough memory that you're not swapping

To name just a few. There are often incremental gains you can get from doing a VERY LOT OF EXTRA work, which are not worth it cost-wise, and headache-wise.

Just my $0.02. Received on Wed Jul 12 2000 - 15:38:37 CDT