Slashdot Mirror
Ask Slashdot: On Oracle and Linux
Dirk Elmendorf asks:
"A company I work with is looking at using
Oracle as the database backend for a number
of large scale intranet applications. They
would prefer to go with Oracle under Solaris.
I voted in favor of Oracle under Linux.
They think that it isn't stable. Can
anyone out there provide me proof
or testimonials that will help me choose
Linux?" How does the Linux version compare
with the NT and Solaris versions of Oracle?
Sun can handle this without any problem. Also, as a shop who runs a very large Oracle application on non-Sun hardware, I can tell you that it is no fun trying to Oracle to fix something on their non-favorite platform.
New patches, fixes and product introductions for Oracle server will always happen first on Sun and sometimes that can be a real buzzkill.
My $1.59 worth (if that).
--Aaron Newsome
OBstability: so far it hasn't crashed on its own volition in my installation, or in that of a friend of mine. I'm doing very small stuff. Sean, what about you?
OBSpeed: People doing informal speed tests on linux/oracle vs nt/oracle on the same hardware seem to show about a 3-5x speedup under linux.
Also solaris/x86's filesystem speed tends to be a lot slower then linux/x86 - same hardware. I expect that linux would be an ideal database server for many GB of data, as long as the SGA doesn't have to get over a GB or so (these are different things - one is disk space, the other memory. Both are dependant on the expeceted use profile of the database). This is an *estimate* from people I've spoken to - I'm not an oracle expert myself... I'm just learning how to program for it, etc.
Blow the extra money you'd have payed for a SPARC on a caching scsi controller and mirror all of your drives, and you'll have an increadibly reliable and fast server.
-Peter
== Just my opinion(s)
We use Oracle almost exclusively at my company. My thoughts about Oracle on Linux is that 3rd party apps are lacking (hot backup, etc). And that if your application gets big at all, you'll have real trouble making Linux work on 64 processor boxes (if you succeed at all).
;-)
Well, Spectra Logic gave me a demo of Alexandria (the backup product that claims the fastest network backup. In spec'ing it in the past it looks like a great product). That demo cd has the following printed on it:
Includeing... Hot Oracle Backup!
Look at spectra logic's home page if you want more inf.
(Disclaimer - I don't work with or for them - I just think their product is worth evaluating).
As for multi-processor - well sun is still behind SGI for that degree of scaleability. If you're intereseted in going to 64 CPU's then go SGI or wait until a big vendor adds patches to linux to make it do 64 processors well. Or gives davem or alan cox a 64+ cpu box to use. Don't hold your breath for the latter
also...
New patches, fixes and product introductions for Oracle server will always happen first on Sun and sometimes that can be a real buzzkill.
But not on solaris/x86. This is one of the lowest platforms to oracle (at least in my experience in trying to get oracle (tm) consultants to put financial software on it). It seems that linux-specific patches do come out quite quickly. And the oracle 8i pre-release server for linux and sparc/solaris should supposedly arrive at around the same time.
Sparc/solaris is definetely the unix development platform for oracle, but linux is hot right now.
-Peter
== Just my opinion(s)
I was in the same situation.. We started out with Oracle on Dec Unix... Since Dec got bought out by Compaq, we decided to move to a different platform..
The choices were solaris, and linux.... We choice linux because if we needed to upgrade, it was just a standard PC.... you can buy thoses a dime a dozen.... Solaris on the other hand.. gots lots of $$$ to upgrade..
DELL put us together a nice RedHat Certified PIII with a nice raid controller..... (rackmountable!)..
Email me if you need help in the process
ChiefArcher
If your firm had the $$, and most do then Solaris 2.x would be a superior choice for a LARGE system.
you will find a lot more people with solaris sysadmin experience with large solaris systems.
On the other hand if the database is a small one (1G) than a linux machine would be sufficent.
Just think why you choose linux instead of solaris in the first place. is it because linux is 'cool' and flavor of the month ? or is it for cost reasons ?
Try not to pick something just because it will be 'fun' and 'cool' to say you are working on it.
Another question you should ask is what other machines the site has expierence with, because you will probably costing them more on support than what you would save implementing on linux.
I am not saying that linux is bad, just make sure you choose it for the right reasons