Oracle/Sun server advice

[lebb]

Please forgive a question from someone who's completely out of her element...

I'm an application developer with a very small amount of DBA experience with Oracle, from some years ago. Now I work for a firm that wants to purchase Oracle, and a Sun server to run it on. Being the only person here who has the slightest clue about Oracle, I have the joy of doing the research, but I'm just wondering if any of you have tips you could share as to what to look out for when shopping for a server. We have a small budget, so I really need to get this right the first time.

Here are the specs on one of the systems we're considering:
Sun 220R
1 450MHz CPU
1GB RAM
2 18GB HDs
Sun D1000 Array w/ 2 additional 18GB HDs (for mirroring)
Solaris 8

Does anyone have any experience with this? Am I on the right track?

Thanks for any advice.

[marist89]

This box is way underpowered to run even the smallest Oracle database.

The absolute minimum configuration I would use is:
Sun 280R w/2 processors (750Mhz is fine)
1G RAM
2 internal drives mirrored for the OS
D1000 Connected via 2 SCSI cards
8 Disks, 4 on each channel which would yield 4 mirrored filesystems.

Even with 4 filesystems, you will run into I/O contention problems. If you're buying the box, you might as well go with 12 disks (6 mirrored filesystems). This will be an OK box for < 50 users in an OLTP environment.

Oh, and how do you plan on backing this thing up? Better look at a DLT tape drive...

[lebb]

I have no doubt that you have more experience with this than I, but that system sounds like somewhat more than we need, and almost certainly more than we could afford.

Just to give you some background on the type of system we're looking at -- this will not be a high-usage system, and will likely never have more than 50-100 concurrent users (at least in the foreseeable future). It will be used for a fair bit of data importing, but that can be handled at night when there is no other system use -- the business is pretty much 8-5 M-F, not 24/7. And little to none of the processing done on the server will be particularly time-critical.

I did neglect to mention the backup system. The specs for the system I mentioned include a 40GB 4mm DDS-4 tape drive.

The Oracle system I worked with a couple of years ago had dual 400MHz processors, 1GB RAM, and 2 internal disks mirrored to yield only a single filesystem. That system performed extremely well running Oracle 8i for about 300 concurrent users with very heavy 24/7 traffic, which is why I thought we might be able to get by with the system I mentioned.

Am I crazy for considering this, given those needs? If I'm this far off, I wonder if we should consider a SQL Server solution instead, to stay within budget. Thanks so much for your input.

[gandolf989]

We have an Ultra Sparc 1 with 512 mb ram, 6 - 8gb drives using software mirroring yeiding 3 mountpoints. The server is running Oracle 8.1.7.3 and supports 50 users in an OLTP environment. It seems to run just fine. If you are really concerned about cost, have you considered running Oracle on a new Windows 2000 server. Then you won't need to worry about getting a sysadmin.

[marist89]

I agree, if you can't afford a lot of box, get a PC. If you don't think you can afford the 10K for a decent Sun, wait until you price Oracle licenses for 300 users!

You may want to investigate some freebie software like mySQL or MS Access.

[Edited by marist89 on 08-21-2002 at 05:47 AM]