Oracle in Linux Environment

[Donn Shumway]

I am currently running Oracle v8.1.6 on Mandrake 7.1 on a PC under my desk
(for the purpose of development and training). If you have a moderately
large amount of users (50+), and you want to run the Apps too, I would stay
with Sun/Solaris. I work on Oracle Apps in an HP environment with ~250 users
and the horsepower of the HP servers is still tested at times. For a
production environment using Oracle, nothing beats Sun (HP is a close
second). Oracle uses Sun as their foundation platform. All products are
released first on Sun, then on NT and HP. The Linux ports are currently
third priority.

The Oracle development platform is indeed RedHat, but Suse has done some
extensive work with Oracle and some of the best technical papers and
troubleshooting information come from Suse. They are a good alternative. One
word of warning on Redhat, version 7 has caused some significant troubles
due to the library versions they have included (and some they did not).
There is a lot of discussion in the forums about problems getting Oracle
database installed on v7. YMMV

Regarding processing capabilities, this requires significant analysis
including the number of users present and projected, Internet access load
requirements for their Customer Service apps, data warehousing requirements,
the number of instances required, and on and on....
There is significant improvement of late in the scalability area due to the
new version 9i and the 9iAS (Application Server) with their configurable
Cache. You supposedly can scale to multiple servers as load increases by
splitting database objects logically and re-configuring the Cache. There is
a Very detailed Video presentation on http://technet.oracle.com regarding
the architecture, load balancing and distribution capabilities that are
possible with the latest versions of the database and iAS. (ALL, I might add
are available and certified on Linux as well as Sun, NT and HP.)

My bottom line opinion is to stick with Sun. But if your user count is
moderate, and you have adequate support from your management, using Oracle
Apps on Linux would be very exciting. Look at the technical overviews for an
idea on potential configurations and keep us up to date on what you decide.

Best of Luck,
Donn Shumway
dlshumway@earthlink.net


----- Original Message -----
From: "Vishwa Hassan" <Vishwa.Hassan@CyberCilium.com>
To: <plug-discuss@lists.PLUG.phoenix.az.us>
Sent: Wednesday, January 10, 2001 11:31 AM
Subject: Oracle in Linux Environment


> We are currently considering moving to Intel based platforms (from
> SUN/Solaris) running one of the distributions of Linix.  This email is to
> solicit suggestions on the kind of platform and the distribution.
>
> We would like to run Oracle Apps and Oracle database on two separate
> platforms.  I understand the recommended distribution is the RedHat.  I
> would like to hear comments on the platform required in terms of
processing
> power and memory and the recommended distribution to run Oracle.
>
> Further, if a single machine is not sufficient enough in terms of
processing
> capabilities which performance Linux based clustering software can be used
?
>
> Would appreciate your feedback particularly from those who have setup
> similar environment.
>
> Vishwa
>
>
> ________________________________________________
> See http://PLUG.phoenix.az.us/navigator-mail.shtml if your mail doesn't
post to the list quickly and you use Netscape to write mail.
>
> Plug-discuss mailing list  -  Plug-discuss@lists.PLUG.phoenix.az.us
> http://lists.PLUG.phoenix.az.us/mailman/listinfo/plug-discuss
>