RE: Oracle's relationships with expert DBAs (and the rest of us mere mortals)

• John Kanagaraj <john.kanagaraj_at_hds.com> wrote:
  > All,
  >
  > From another Apps-specific list I know of a recent trend where ORACLE
  > APPS customers are moving from "UNIX" to "Linux". Issues such as SAN
  > compatibility, Upgrade of Linux version (RHAS 2.1 to 3.0 in this case:
  > RH will support only a fresh install - ct wants a 2.1 to 3.0 upgrade and
  > the SAN vendor does not support RH 4)
  

One year ago we moved from Solaris 2.6 to 2.9 -- total PROD upgrade time 1 hour.

It was also a fresh install of the OS but we pre-build the /root disc ahead of time. From the ORACLE APPS side all that had to be done was relink of both APPL_TOPs/ORACLE_HOMEs.

Hardware cost is irrelevant in comparison to maintenance and upgrade costs.

> ... tussles between SysAdmins and
> DBAs over patches and versions, etc. are still an issue.

Exactly! When sh$t hit the fan at 3AM who do you call?

> Many are
> considering RAC with Oracle Apps where it makes sense (??) to "scale
> out" (using RAC) instead of "scale up" (using Big(ger) Iron). Not sure
> how this is going to pan out as we are just beginning to see this
> trend...

This RAC business is just ridiculous. Larry got upset with Sun over them going with Siebel and made up a "solution" to "scale out" using Linux.

I can't believe how many people jumped on this wagon! Putting up bunch of hardware pieces from different vendors slapped together with interconnects in front of ***ONE*** shared storage in place of ONE decent BOX from ONE os/hardware vendor is just insane! Don't they see that most of the contention is with IO not CPU?! This is just crazy.

> ... the human cost of maintenance (and
> associated downtime when something goes wrong) will far outweigh the
> cost savings for an OS / lesser hardware purchase in the long run....

Right on!

• Vitaliy -- http://www.freelists.org/webpage/oracle-l