Partitioning vs. Disk striping

This is an old debate, but I thought I would resurrect it since I'm just getting back into Oracle admin.

An application we are working with is extremely insert intensive...few updates or reads in general. Currently, ALL data and indexes are on a single 6-disk array with interleaved. (EMC Clarion).

When running peak transactions, the disk performance metrics don't look particularly bad except for service times. The array with data and indexes show busy less than 50% of the time, but the average service time soars into the 100's. During normal opertion, the service times are in the 20-30 range. Accepted that it will increase with load, but this is non-linear. The CPU metrics during peak use are fine...50-60% used.

My question is, in 'general', is striping the data and indexes across a 6 disk array enough to prevent bottlenecks at the disk or is it better to use Oracle partitioning to address this? Is one solution better at mixed read/write vs. 'nearly' all writes? Received on Tue Apr 08 2003 - 15:46:41 CDT