[rescue] SPARCcluster 1?

[Joshua D Boyd]

On Sun, Dec 02, 2001 at 09:51:07AM -0500, Kurt Huhn wrote:
> AFAIK, Oracle only approve the use of NFS with Solaris/Sparc and a Network
> Appliance Filer.  All you really have to do is mount with some flags, tell
> the Filer that you're using it as a database repository, and NetApp suggests
> that you use dedicated NICs and a crossover cable between the Oracle server
> and the NetApp.

What sort of things do the flags tell the NetApp to do.
 
> It can be done - we're doing it now in fact.  It's a low budget way
> (relatively speaking) to get serious database capacity without dumping huge
> amounts into SAN or direct attach disk shelves.  And - it's supported by
> both NetApp and Oracle.

Well, according to the press releases, Auspex is now supported also.

Well, the reason that makes me wonder about this is I have a fairly large NFS
server (not Auspex or NetApp large, but still it has numerous gigs, and is 
reasonably stable).  However, any time I try to place additional services on it
other than just serving files (say, httpd, smtp, postgres), something always
breaks when it gets rebooted (poor power supply around here means that it 
happens on average once a month).  So, I've been thinking about just getting
seperate machines.  Say use one IPX as an intranet server, one as a squid 
server, one SS10 as a Postgres.  And then having all of these machines get 
their data from the NFS server.  But, in the case of the Postgres machine, I
always worry about whether I would get worthwhile performance (since I try to
stash rather large amounts of data into postgres in attempts to learn more
about the object oriented features).  

Of course, the ideal would be a home SAN, but I'm not going to be able to 
afford one of those for a long, long time.

-- 
Joshua D. Boyd