filesystem type for Oracle 9i RAC

[Tonatiuh]

I have Oracle 9i and HP Storage Works Virtual Array 7410, and NO Switch for the SAN. The VA7410 have 4 ports (until 4 servers).

I am evaluating two scenarios:

1) Using HP-UX 11.23 in servers.
2) Using Red Hat Linux Advanced Server 2.1/3.0

What are the complete list of filesystems type (ext2, ext3, ocfs, etc) that I can use with each one?

Is the VxFS filesystem type compatible with RAC?

Thanks ins advance for your comments!

[Hein van den Heuvel]

So.. what about those servers?
IPF systems I suppose?

Anyway, Oracle RAC does NOT work with any standard file systems as it requires shared access.

Most folks (highly subjective observation!) use RAW storage to readily support this.

Or they use OCFS (just for DB files!) or 3rd party products like Legato.

Over time (HPUX v3 11.33?) the Tru64 Cluster Files System should become available, but I wouldn't start holding my breath for that.
Allthough... if/when it comes it will definitly be the best thing around as current Tru64 customers can testify.

Files systems offer very little incremental value for Oracle (RAC) solutions. And as of Oracle 10g Oracle will even more aggresively just want your raw storage.

hth,
Hein.

[Steven E. Protter]

Filesystems do offer one advantage. The ability to do cold backups when the database is down. With vxfs and OnlineJFS it could be possible get cold snapshots with minimal downtime.

vxfs with hpux is a more robust filesystem solution than Red Hat with ext3. On a performance basis vxfs is still a better fileystem than ext2 or ext3.

SEP

[Sandeep Kapare]

Oracle RAC is right now supported only on RAW partitions & not on file systems like VxFS or ext3.
Since file system maintenance in case of RAW partitions is very difficult, what legato does is it provides additional software component that gives a file system view for a RAW partition.
As far as the performance is concerned in RAW partitions & file system, RAW partitions are far better that the file systems, as there is absolutely no over-head of the conversion.
VxFS is better option that ext3, as it supports jurneling for the file system, which comes very handy in case of server crash.