Oracle on 64bit UX vs 32bit Windows

[Tim Killinger]

Hello,

Can anyone out there describe the advantages/disadvantages of running Oracle on 64bit UX vs 32bit win2000(In either general or detailed terms)???

i.e. SGA limitations on 32bit windows or advantages of threaded vs process architecture on windows?

Or perhaps you know of whitepapers or discussions of this comparison?

We're trying to make a decision on moving a database off win2000 to UX and I need some views, be they objective or subjective...

Thank you!

[Vincent Fleming]

Hi;

Well... you should get a lot of answers to this question...

In general, the disk I/O of HP-UX is superior to that of Windows. Also, CPU speed and memory capacity are significant factors in DB performance - and you can get a faster CPU and more memory in UX systems than you can get in Windows.

I think that by far, most people use UX or other unixes because it's more stable and provides better error recovery than Windows.

There are several other things you can point out that may or may not be limiting your performance on your Win2K, including backplane speed, bandwidth to memory, thread mechanisms (Windows does have threads), kernel performance, filesystem performance, memory management techniques, etc..

There's lots of things we can pick on in Windows. ;-}


I hope this helps!

Vince

[Jeff Schussele]

Hi Tim,

I'll give you the best advantage of all....

UPTIME !!!!!

You could keep an HP-UX / Oracle system up all year if you didn't have to patch it.
We only patch twice a year & in our clustered systems, we can still EASILY get >99.9% uptime - planned or unplanned outages combined.

You'll have a VERY hard time doing that with a Micro$oft OS.

Why anyone would put mission-critical apps on a M$ system is beyond me.

I won't even touch performance, security, etc.......

Rgds,
Jeff

[Julio Yamawaki]

Hi,

Besides the advantage of uptime in HP-UX box, you have the economic advantage because normally a Windows 2000 box use more CPU than UNIX box. Oracle database is licensed in a per CPU basis, so, in Windows 2000 you will have a more expensive cost.

[Khalid A. Al-Tayaran]

Hi,

You'll gain a lot with UNIX:

- stability
- better memory management (efficient)
- long uptime
- availability
- scalability

and more.

[Tim Killinger]

Does anyone know the largest Oracle SGA possible on a 32bit windows? I'm hoping to find a few facts to support the assertions of stability, scalability, etc..

Thanks!!

[Julio Yamawaki]

Hi,

A win32 process can address up to 2 GB, so you can have process+SGA=2 GB.

[Wodisch]

Hi,

even though there is a version of Windows permitting up to 3GB of RAM dedicated/usable for one process (Enterprise Server or so), with UNIX and 64bit you can use as much RAM as you can pay for - like dozens of GB of RAM!
Then on Windows a single process can occupy the CPU for y long, long time, but the UNIX process scheduler is much "fairer" there - and you can have many more CPUs on UNIXs.
Then there are still problems with M$'s implementation of TCP/IP (how did your clients connect to the instance?), you can have a local firewall by running "IPFilter/9000", much better than what M$ delivers on W2K (W2003 Server is not here, yet, is it?).
Then the whole I/O subsystem on UNIX systems is much more optimized, the filesystems (like Online-VxFS) are more stable (and fast), the logical volumes and file-systems can be resized on-line.
Think about online backup, then RMAN on seems to be in favour of UNIX, too.

Enough for today?

FWIW,
Wodisch

[Steven E. Protter]

Unix is a much more reliable OS. HP-UX specifically runs on a RISC proceesor Reduced Instruction Set that gets a whole lot more throughput than an Intel C(omplex)ISC CPU.

All of the recent Oracle transaction records were on HP Superdome computers.

Here are some things to think about with regards to moving a 32 bit database to a 64 bit environment.

http://forums.itrc.hp.com/cm/QuestionAnswer/1,,0xa1285bd3782dd711abdc0090277a778c,00.html

http://forums.itrc.hp.com/cm/QuestionAnswer/1,,0x5e76ef70e827d711abdc0090277a778c,00.html

Good Luck.

P

[Alexander M. Ermes]

Hi there.
The answers pro UNIX don't need another posting.
About thge memory on a 32-bit system :
The SGA limit is 1.75 GB for all instances togehther, so if you run several databases on the same system, the sum of SGA sizes must not exceed 1.75 GB ( No matter UNIX or whatsoever ). We have upgraded or even replaced some ouf oru machines for that reason.
Rgds
Alexander M. Ermes