[TriLUG] Need advise.

[Adrian Likins]

On Tue, Oct 23, 2001 at 08:43:51AM -0400, Vestal, Roy L. wrote:
> I will be setting up our first Linux server here at work. (YEAH!). It will
> be an Oracle server, and I need suggestions.
> 
> We are planning on going with a Dell PowerEdge server (preferred vendor, no
> bitching please).
> 
> Any suggestions on the basic setup of the server?  Any recommendations on
> white papers on Oracle and it's requirements?

	To echo everyone elses comments "bigger is better". With the 
cost of ram these days, you will hate your self if you dont stock
it to the brim with at least 2gb. 

	Some possibly useful sites:
		http://linuxperf.nl.linux.org/
		http://www.linux.com/enhance/newsitem.phtml?sid=93&aid=12536
		http://people.redhat.com/alikins/system_tuning.html

Of course, what your going to use the server for has the most impact
on your hardware. We run a pretty big oracle setup on a dell 6450
(4xpIII 550 xeons, 4gb, couple of adaptec 39160's, and a dell storageVault)
Our primary bottleneck is ram (each connection takes a big chunk...).

I'm a big fan of software raid for pretty much anything, oracle included. 
None of the Red Hat production servers use any hardware raid cards. They
are just not enough bang for the buck. 

Dont buy into the hype about direct disk i/o for oracle. It's not
worth it on linux according to any of the numbers I've seen.

A copy of "Oracle SQL: High Performance Tuning" and a good dba is
probabaly worth $100,000 or more in hardware. (I know squat about tuning
queries and the like, but the folks that do seem to swear by that
book...). Theres a O'reily Oracle tuning book as well...

Adrian