[OT] HOWTO's of messing up Linux cluster?

Situation:

   Early stages of development project; same small database runs on    development PCs, early build is given to customer for "look and    feel" and training purposes.

Sad facts:

   "PC Vulgaris" (P4 @ 2.8 GHz with _one_ IDE drive running WinXP)    /w Oracle 9.2 db outperforms by factor of FIVE (meaning exact same    batch jobs run at least 5 TIMES FASTER!!!???) two node Oracle 9.2    cluster on Linux (RH AS3). Beats it by huge margin it every single    time.

   Hardware at customer's site is 6 month old (implying relatively    new hardware) 2 P4-Xeon CPUs server forming two node Oracle 9.2    cluster connected to dedicated (this cluster only, dedicated    to this project only) SAN (with unknown number of drives).

Question:

   If you were really incompetent SA/DBA what would be easy ways    to duplicate the above requirement? (achieve five times    worse performance using much "stronger" hardware)

>From whatever little I know of ways problematic database is set
up and configured, I'd say it is not the Oracle that is messed up, but the underlying OS.

Being at arms length from the problem (due to mountains of political bs. - "us" vs. "them"), and quite frankly due to my own shortcomings with Unix/Linux, I am in no position to help in any meaningful way. Still curiosity factor is strong - what could possibly be so wrong with this RAC?

Wild guesses - welcomed :-)

Branimir

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