[SunHELP] [Q] Need your suggestion to upgrade SUn server?

[Les]

It has been my (limited) experience with Solaris & AIX & even HPUX
that the processor speed has less to do with performance using Oracle
than does I/O. 
The fastest box I've ever worked with was crippled because the
vendor used RAID 5 for heavy read/write tablespaces. Dramatic
improvement occurred when we went to straight mirroring.

Unless the 280R (which I have seen only on the SUN site) 
is dramatically different from the 420R (of which we run 2),
I think you're limited to only 4 PCI slots. Add a NIC, down
to 3 available. 
There are 2 PCI busses at different speeds, so you want the 
FC/AL cards in the fast one, thus 2 FC/AL connections and 
2 processors. If you use one of the 5000 series of arrays you
will probably want to connect 4 ways. Unless SUN has a new
PCI FC/AL card with 2 GBICs, you can't. Our FC/AL PCI cards
only have one GBIC each (and they're not replaceable in operation
- have to replace entire card)
A super fast processor sitting idle while I/O bound does not do
much for performance. If you intend to make heavy use of the
internal drives (limited to 2, I think) the FC/AL interface for internal
drives helps, but the 450 allows many more internal drives - 
thus more spindles. The DBA standing next to me is saying
"tell him more spindles, not bigger drives AND MORE RAM)
I think Oracle would tell you (and our DBAs certainly do)
that more, but slower, processors and more disk controllers
and spindles (to slice up I/O loads) would give you
greater flexibility and performance. The E450 is a great box.
Sorry to rattle on, I'll shut up now!

NOTE: To Cover My A**
OBVIOUSLY this is ONLY my OPINION, not a recommendation.

Les

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "L" <leed at chele.cais.net>
To: <sunhelp at sunhelp.org>; <sunmanagers at sunmanagers.org>
Sent: Thursday, March 15, 2001 7:41 AM
Subject: [SunHELP] [Q] Need your suggestion to upgrade SUn server?


> We plan to purchase a new SUN server to replace our old SUN 1000E server.
> This server is dedicate work as ORACLE database server.  The possible
> configuration are:
> 
>   .  3 ORACLE instances
>   .  each Database 15Gb (2 productions, one testing (few users))
>   .  total 150 current users
>   .  can be access from Internet web pages.
>   .  OLTP environment need transaction finish ASAP
> 
> 
> The possible server we will choose:
> 
> 
>  . SUN E450 4 X 480 Mhz                     . SUN 280R 2 X 750 Mhz
>  . 5 X 10000RPM 18.2 GB HD internal         . 2 X 10000RPM 18.2 GB HD
>      (ultra SCSI)                               (FC-AL)
>  . SUn T3 tabletop array                    . SUN T3 tabletop array
>  . This server will end life cycle soon     . starting server life cycle
> 
> 
> The Benchmark info.
> 
> 
>                       E450                                280R
>                     --------------                     --------------
> SPECfp2000              291                              418
>   (one CPU)
> 
> 
> SPECint2000             234                              391
>   (one cpu)
> 
> 
> SPECint_rate2000       10.9 (4 cpu)                     8.97 (2 cpu)
> 
> SPECft_rate2000        11.1 (4 cpu)                     9.4  (2 cpu)
> 
> 
> 
> can anyone give me some suggestions:
> 
> 
>   1. which one shoule I choose?
> 
>   2. which benchmark Specft2000 ot SPECint2000 more important for ORACLE
> DB, especially on OLTP?
> 
>   3. any other suggestion?
> 
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