Re: Resources for estimating hardware requirements

BigBoote66_at_hotmail.com wrote:

<snipped>
> I'm not looking for a pat answer, but instead somewhere I can go to
> expand my existing DBA knowledge to answer these kinds of questions.

Steve, I would go for a RAC (25 named user licenses per CPU for Oracle Enterprise, with RAC and Partitioning).

Maybe 3 node for starters (low-end Sun/HP/Dell/etc blade servers). Given the processing volumes you mention, a single low-end server should be able to handle the trabsaction rate comfortably.. but 3 RAC-type nodes should be far below $US 10K. This costs will be insignificant against the cost for the storage h/w (e.g. EMC SAN or similar). The Oracle software should be less than US $100K (assuming 3 dual CPU nodes). With a big corporate account, a lot lower with the discounts.

Then play it by the ear/numbers as the system grows. With RAC the growth path is much cheaper and many times easier than having to deal with server h/w upgrades and replacements.

I will not risk locking myself into a fixed and rigid h/w or s/w solution when dealing with such a grey area.. where you only have a basic idea of what the transaction rates and query volumes are.

--
Billy