Oracle 9i VMS v Linux

[Matt West]

Hi

We have a major application which runs on an Alpha GS320 under OpenVMS 7.3-1. This application is based on Oracle 8i and will soon move to 9i, however, there has been an awful lot of speculation about moving the database (300GB) to 9i RAC on Linux. What are the real benefits of this in terms of resilience, performance, security, TCO etc. Is this as good as everyone makes out or is it just new, interesting and cheap. The 9i is based on G2 blade technology.

[labadie_1]

Hello

have you noticed that Mysql is available on Vms ? see
http://h71000.www7.hp.com/opensource/opensource.html

You should have a look at
http://www.convert-in.com/ora2sql.htm

and

http://www.mysql.com/doc/en/LOAD_DATA.html

regards

Gerard

[Hein van den Heuvel]

re: MySQL... you've got to be kidding right?
Yes MySQL is available on VMS and that is a good thing. But it is years away to have the production quality required for a major application... if it ever gets there which i doubt. Let its name be your guide: MYsql. use it it practive SQL, store your CD collection, but don't bother to run a business on it. But hey, maybe I completely misjudged it. Maybe you can point me to TPC numbers, documented Reliability Availability and Supportability attributes, cluster awareness and so on.

re: RAC & Linux. It's a possibility. Personally I would not consider anything less then a 2P, but again I might not have followed the current proofpoints closely enough.

Why not test the RAC tolerance of your application with the 9i VMS implementation once you have it? Just cluster and go? Maybe you can partition your GS320 in 8+8 or 12+4 cpu's just for that experiment?
For some applications, notably those with somewhat partionable data, RAC has minimal overhead and maximum scaling. The power of RAC, compared to the old OPS, is that it will tolerate a high degree of contention, so partitioning is not as critical and often it can be 'slapped' on with no change for many apps. Still, testing with your app is a must.

Hein.

[Mike Naime]

Gee, the rumour that I heard was that RAC only really worked as advertised on VMS or TRU64 systems. It required something that can actually share the disk space. Not Fallover clustering.

At a recent conference demo, My co-worker saw a 1280 running TRU64 and 9I RAC. He spent quite some time with them since he does both ORACLE and VMS hardware.

I would think that moving from VMS and VMS security to LINUX would be a step backwards. As well as having muti-pathing ability be an added layer on top of your OS instead of built-in.

Do you have anyone that is GOOD on LINUX, or do you not have anyone left who does VMS?

Also, will your APP support LINUX? or will that require a re-write to satisfy some manager somewhere that decided he wanted something newer instead of something that isn;t broken and is still working. :-)

[Willem Grooters]

Tell him what the cost will be in transferring the data to Linux, in terms of:

* security (much less)
* availablity ((much?) less, no failover)
* migration cost (a BIG lot)

Advantages:
it looks like Unix.
"cheap" hardware
is (still) free.

Disadvantages:
is not secure (in the VMS way)
has no real clustering (the VMS way)
performance depends on hardware (as well as VMS does)
No single administration domain , so a lot of double work (and therefore error-prone)

IMHO Linux will not come close to VMS's standards in terms of security, availability and robustness. It _might_ be faster, but that remains to be seen. If your business RELIES of this database, I would leave it on VMS. All gain with switching your database to Linux can be lost in just a few minutes downtime - for whatever reason.

[Keith Parris]

It's just new, interesting, and cheap.

Note that RAC's clustering capabilities:
o Were derived from the TruCluster code, which in turn was a derivative based on VMS Cluster concepts; how long will it take this code base to become as stable and reliable as the original VMS Cluster code?
o Provide some of the VMS Cluster advantages, but only to an Oracle database. So everything not stored in the database is unprotected.