Oracle and Storage Area Networks (SAN)...I need insight

Hi Guys,

We have a SunFire V480 that we are going to be connecting to our SAN. We all agree that putting these huge data files on the SAN is the way to go.

But we're stumped on decided what to do with the binaries. Should we put it also on the SAN. We heard of others doing it.

1.) I'd like to get a better picture of how this works. You guys can validate some of the preconception I will include in this thread.

2.) I'd like to find out more of some of the benefits, and perhaps caveats, of doing this. (for now, lets say money is not an issue).

I am fairly new to SAN and getting rusty on SUN.

Here's my (simplistic) idea of how this works. If the SUN box was conencted to the SAN, we would simply mount the file systems on the SAN that's been allocated to the box (just as any file system...right?) So if the binaries are also on the SAN, we would simply be mounting those file systems as well and be able to boot Oracle from the SUN box. (Please confirm)

But if we have the binaries on the SAN, can other SUN boxes use the same binaries to host Oracle?

If so, then I could see that when it comes time to upgrading/patching...things are centralized! This would seen to be a great benefit.

Could you guys who have experience in this or INSIGHT tell me things I need to consider before moving forward to implementing this.

THank you.

I think (not sure) that you have to use some shared file system, so that binaries can be used by several servers, and raw devices for the tablespaces (if you want clustered database).

Installing your binaries on the SAN is no problem. Your filesystem will be mounted and you can use it just like a local disk. The advantage of placing your binaries on the SAN is that if your V880 goes away, you can throw another one in, mount your filesystems, and start Oracle.

However, you will not be able to mount that filesystem to multiple boxes. Alternately, you can NFS mount a partition that has Oracle installed on, but I don't recommend it for a couple of reasons:
1. If your NFS server goes away, your database hangs.
2. Although you do upgrades only once, you must upgrade all your databases at once.

I think installing your binaries on the Array is the best option.

So in order to have a file system (on the SAN) that can be shared by multiple boxes, I would need a NFS server??

(I apologize...I'm not very versed in the SA lingo as I am in the DBA lingo)

and Oracle doesnt recommend NFS links because the performance can be abysmal (and we have them in our office and the SUCK).

By the way an NFS server isn't another piece of hardware if thats wht you were thinking, its software which you use on you machine, you run the nfs server program from the machine you want to export and nfs client program on the machine you want to see the directories on.

You may get stuck weith permissions problems as well as unless you are careful