Oracle newbie

Hi there...  

I have inhereted an oracle server that I need to ensure

     1 - runs
                 and
     2 - gets backed up.
 

I'm the NT network admin for my present employer and I basically know nothing about this beast called oracle. I have started to do a little informal research into it though as I have some concerns about our existing server. I downloaded a .pdf file that is titled "Oracle Win NT - Configuration Standards" that I obtained from {sigh.... can't locate the web site now...}, but the authors name is (looking at hard copy print out) Sean Oneill and he credits many of you in this list as being sources for it. :)  

... anyway. What I have here for a box is the following:  

A compaq proliant 5500 running nt 4.0 @sp4. It has dual pentium pro 200 mhz cpu's, 512 meg of ram and is running 3 9.1 gig drives in a raid 5 cfg. The array is cfg'd a one logical drive (18 gig usable) and then partitioned 3 ways: one for the compaq sys partition (30'ish meg) , one for nt os (2 gig) , and then one for oracle - this is hands down the largest of the three
(15'ish gig).
 

Thats the hardware, the s/w is as follows:  

Oracle 8 with Oracle Data Mart Suite for Win NT 2.6. (... thats all I know about it )  

I have to re-read the Config Standards paper again ( and probably once or twice after that ) to really get a handle on what it is recommending, but based on what I have seen, I'm concerned that we may not have an adequate cfg on this box. Again, I'll use the disclaimer that I don't know hardly anything about oracle, but I was at the local Borders bookstore over the weekend and I was perusing some oracle press books on the subject. Question: Is it typical for oracle propaganda to state that the s/w will run on next to nothing hardware, ala Microsoft? They claim 9x / NT will run on small footprint hardware, but everyone knows how that is.... ( yes, it will run, but barely) Does this hold true with minimum h/w spec's that I may read regarding oracle, especially coming from an oracle press publication?  

I will be mostly a lurker in this list, but I would like to engage in some conversation regarding hardware / performance tuning / setup, etc... mostly just to get some ideas as to how those of you in the real world are doing it. Also on the backup side - I have serious doubts about this thing of mine getting backed up properly. I'm going to request that our in house oracle person shutdown the dB(s) at night so that the backup software
(backup exec 7.3 multi-server) can at least get a good "cold backup" of the
files on that box while the oracle engine is shutdown. Received on Mon Nov 06 2000 - 12:01:52 CST