Re: with all this talk about RAC...

I'm talking about the "big momma boxes" - the 6800s, e12ks, e15ks, etc.. Those systems make perfectly reasonable sense if you really need a single OS image running on 50 processors (though you pay a freakish premium)- they make absolutely zero sense if you're just going to carve them up into a bunch of 4-6 processor domains. At that point you're paying like a 5x premium over buying a rackmountable 4-6 processor server.

The silver bullet for those type of database instances is InfiniBand and RDMA-over-Ethernet. With 10gb/sec. throughput at <7 microsecond latency between nodes and direct host-to-host memory access, most of the traditional scalability limitations go away. At that point, it does become practical to cluster 10-20 4-way systems to get extremely high throughput and performance.

Well, VMS clustering is still the envy of the western world, but its got a lot of things going against it. One, the number of people who know how to administer a VMS system is decreasing. Two, HP has effectively killed the line - while they are continuing to update the OS, they are not making the dec processor line anymore, forcing customers that want to upgrade to jump to the Itanium 2, which is hideously expensive. Third, third-party vendor support is dodgy - for example, Oracle 10g for VMS is ranked in the same tier of support as Oracle 10g for OS X - a low priority. Fourth, HP just isn't bothering to sell it hard anymore - they're moving everyone onto windows or Linux.

Thanks,
Matt

--
Matthew Zito
GridApp Systems
Email: mzito_at_gridapp.com
Cell: 646-220-3551
Phone: 212-358-8211 x 359
http://www.gridapp.com


On May 25, 2004, at 12:36 PM, Jesse, Rich wrote:



> Matt, on which Sun hardware are you referring?  E15K or V120 (V100 and 

> =

> B100 are probably out of the question) or somewhere in between or all 

> of =

> the above?  Just curious.

>

> Also, I still have yet to hear about a completed RAC implementation on 

> =

> VMS.  Clustering is a no-brainer, relative to other platforms, but as =

> elsewhere has additional license cost.  And while VMS allows "mildly" =

> different OS versions in a cluster (aka "heterogeneous"), I don't 

> think =

> RAC allows the same for Oracle versions.


----------------------------------------------------------------
Please see the official ORACLE-L FAQ: http://www.orafaq.com
----------------------------------------------------------------
To unsubscribe send email to:  oracle-l-request_at_freelists.org
put 'unsubscribe' in the subject line.
--
Archives are at http://www.freelists.org/archives/oracle-l/
FAQ is at http://www.freelists.org/help/fom-serve/cache/1.html
-----------------------------------------------------------------