Re: RAC

I agree with Scott's reply. Compaq may be able to claim the "only Tru RAC", but not the only true RAC"!

I skipped the keynote/marketing stuff at IOUG-A Live! 2002, but I've seen the "long version" of Compaq 's demo/propaganda on RAC and, to put it mildly, "they exaggerated - A LOT". I don't know what may have been said at any f their scheduled sessions at the conference, but...

The business about (paraphrased) "other vendors' RAC implementations being like an HA cluster" is pure unadulterated rubbish. There is no constraint on any certified RAC configuration that would limit it to a single active node. (This applies also to at least one extremely non-certified configuration - my personal sandbox). There were four technical people from Compaq at the OPS/RAC roundtable (and one from HP). None made any such preposterous statements. In fact, one of the Compaq representatives said they are currently running RAC on Linux (not Tru64) on Compaq hardware. They did, of course, push Tru64 and its cluster file system.

I can verify, from direct experience, that RAC on Linux CAN share a datafile on a raw device. I don't know what was actually said, but the statement attributed to Compaq about this is obviously nonsense. If RAC nodes can share a raw device, they can share a datafile on the raw device. (BTW: Didn't HP also do a "Keynote session" and demo on RAC?) Perhaps the Compaq representative was confused as to the distinction between an Oracle "datafile" and a filesystem "file".

I know that there are currently production RAC systems on NT, Sun, HP, and Compaq - at least. IBM may be on the list also. I know of one small site in the early stages of implementing RAC on a Dell RAC-certified configuration (Dell 6450 nodes running RedHat 7.1 SBE with an EMC FC4700 array). It will likely go into production within 2-3 months.

Don Granaman
[certifiable OraSaurus]

• Original Message ----- To: "Multiple recipients of list ORACLE-L" <ORACLE-L_at_fatcity.com> Sent: Thursday, April 18, 2002 7:38 AM

Jonathan,
 At the seminars I have attended it was pointed out that the :true RAC" is COMPAQ only. The seminar was hosted by Oracle/Compaq. Compaq RAC allows multiple CPU's to mount and use/share the same datafiles in a true RAC configuration. The drives including the os drive are on a SAN and shared by the CPU's so knowledge is shared. It was pointed out the new Linux RAC can only share a RAW device and not a datafile. I don't know if this is true as I have not tried it yet. The speaker at the seminar said that with other OS's a RAC is like a High Availability (HA) option, one CPU is doing nothing until the first one fails or you only run different applications and datafiles on one CPU and other applications and datafiles on the second CPU. if one fails you have to mount the datafiles and switch applications to the active CPU.   To use a true RAC you have to use Compaq and I think the market share of the OS's are not True64, so there are probably not a lot of users of RAC.
Ron
ROR mª¿ªm

>>> listmail_at_gennick.com 04/17/02 10:18PM >>>
I was talking w/someone today, and we realized that neither of us knows of anyone actually using RAC in production. So now I'm curious. Is anyone?

Jonathan Gennick --- Brighten the corner where you are mailto:jonathan_at_gennick.com
http://Gennick.com * http://MichiganWaterfalls.com * http://ValleySpur.com

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