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Re: Oracle stop development on itanium

 
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James R. Ferguson
Acclaimed Contributor

Re: Oracle stop development on itanium

Hi (again):

> Pradep: I hate linux, whether RHEL or Oracle Linux. Its too immature/unstable OS to handle Mission critical apps. Linux is a rubbish OS suitable just for playing and learning for kids only.

I invite you to drop the emotion and tell us *exactly* why you have concluded what you have. *THAT* would make an interesting dialog.

Regards!

...JRF...
Torsten.
Acclaimed Contributor

Re: Oracle stop development on itanium

>> *THAT* would make an interesting dialog.


I'm looking forward for this kind of posts ...

Hope this helps!
Regards
Torsten.

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Re: Oracle stop development on itanium

having a bad day - 3rd time lucky:

JRF, I'll take up that challenge... I'm no Linux "expert", but if I were to list my main gripes with Linux as a platform for mission critical apps I would say:

- Lack of solid support for "online add/replace/delete" of hardware components (CPU/Memory/IO)
- HW error handling not tightly integrated to OS (here's one Sun could certainly have done a lot about with Solaris/x86, but to my knowledge didn't)
- proven significant high IO throughput (no argument with straight CPU-type performance)
- immature storage stack (doing MPIO is a headache on Linux compared to HP-UX)
- too many updates, too often
- too short support lifetimes for the OS (to be fair RedHat are getting better at this) and for the hardware
- complex support configurations when introducing third party infrastructure software (such as the Vx stack)
- Inconsistent manaement "paradigms" - hate to use that term, but it's the best I can come up with - what I mean is, every Linux admin seems to do tasks in a different way to every other
- Too many constraints on "Mainstream" kernel hardware support (e.g. last time I looked RHEL5 only supported 512GB memory/28 IO cards - no doubt it's higher now)
- Obviously Linux has excellent OS-level virtualisation capabilities thanks to VMware/KVM etc, but the in-OS virtualisation capabilities (equivalent to HP-UX SRP, or Solaris Zones) has always struck me as weak/not commonly implemented, and I'm not aware of any "workload management" tools similar to HP gWLM.
- Immature clustering technology (you should have heard the howls of protest from our customers when we discontinued the Linux version of Serviceguard and they were forced to use RedHat clustering - unfortunately it's hard to compete against something that comes free with the OS, and bean counters make too many of these decisions)

HTH

Duncan

I am an HPE Employee
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Kenan Erdey
Honored Contributor

Re: Oracle stop development on itanium

Hi duncan,

a lot things is written in the document(COMPARING HP-UX 11i V3 AND LINUX FOR HOSTING CRITICAL WORKLOADS) that i posted above somewhere. i think it's more about RAS features. unix is supported by a vendor. hw handling is done becauuse of OS knows HW. because unix more likely used in enterprise. vendors have cross compatibility between them. a lot things are ok in linux but you should work more to accomplish a task. also commercial unix is more likely to adopt new regulations. and linux is less likely to adress.IMHO :)
Computers have lots of memory but no imagination
James R. Ferguson
Acclaimed Contributor

Re: Oracle stop development on itanium

Hi (again):

@ Duncan, as always, you have added great value to the discussion. Your comments are exactly the type of dialog we need, or at least, I wanted to hear. Thanks.

Regards!

...JRF...
Alzhy
Honored Contributor

Re: Oracle stop development on itanium

Since this thread is morphing into lambasting what to me is the single biggest cause of HP-UX impending demise - I will stand in defence of the OS symbolised by the flightless Penguin ;^))

I have been amazed by the continued claim of lack of or inferior RAS as the single biggest FUD for X86/Linux platforms - well let me tell ya, I would agree if this was 3 years ago. Hello? Have you HP-UX centric admins ever actually seen or read or better yet experienced X86 systems from HP, IBM and Dell the last 3 years??

Then there's the issue of no HotPlug for CPU and Memory, "weak partitioning continuum and resource management" as well as anemic clustering and high availability -- whilst some of the RISC features like CPU hot plug are maturing, and WLM-like resource management staring to appear -- these features are not really THAT necessary as Vortualization and Private Clouds in lieue of clustering are what's making Linux increasingly doing Mission Critical tasks.

Some of the world's biggest financial markets are these days powered by Linux as a testament to its enterprise readiness.

It's unavoidable -- Linux will simply become increasingly better over the years. Coupled with advances in X86 architecture with RAS pedigree from vendors like IBM and HP -- the gap is closed between RISC/UNIX systems and Linux/X86 -- heck even Windows/X86...

And if HP Proliants and Blades still lord over the X86 market -- then HP is the de-facto Linux King.
Hakuna Matata.

Re: Oracle stop development on itanium

Alzhy,

I deliberately didn't call out "inferior RAS" in my list above as I know that is a nebulous concept often thown around as FUD.

OK, so in the interest of learning more about Linux, help me to understand how I would accomplish moving say an Oracle database from say a pair of 32c vPars in a Serviceguard cluster to Linux...

-I want to keep the ability to virtualize as I might want to add/remove CPU/memory to the database online
-I don't want any virtual IO penalty
-I need to keep High Availability
-I want to manage the CPU/memory resources assigned to this service and to other ones across my whole estate
- The HW/SW has to stay supported and "upgrade-able" for 5 years

I'm not trying to have an argument here - I'm genuinely interested in the opinion of someone who has gone through this - every time I look at this I see issues for my customers, but as I'm happy to restate, "I'm no Linux expert", so I guess I could be missing a trick.

Duncan

I am an HPE Employee
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Kenan Erdey
Honored Contributor

Re: Oracle stop development on itanium

> I deliberately didn't call out "inferior RAS" in my list above as I know that is a nebulous concept often thown around as FUD.

it's more meaning full, athough a processor is broken and OS and HW will overcome this error without downtime in work hours, in payment or CRM system etc.

by the way you can say i will form a active/active cluster farm with x86, keep the availability without paying more for RAS.

this is the intel's ras features explains xeon,itanium etc..

http://www.intel.com/assets/pdf/whitepaper/ras.pdf
Computers have lots of memory but no imagination
Alzhy
Honored Contributor

Re: Oracle stop development on itanium

Kenan... there really outh to be no need to even consider clustering to provide HA and that mythical "RAS" to say Duncan's current Active/Passive (and expensive) 32-core/XXXGB RAM/ nnxFC Database environment. Although HA solutions abound - like ServiceGuard clone RHCS which most SG afficionados will feel at home fairly quickly and of course the venerable Fortune 50 standard -- Veritas CLuster Server.

Why? Virtualization and Cloud practically negates the need for clustering.

But in case of Duncan's predicament - it is still possible to have 2 Virtual Linux Servers clustered -- for uber high availability (I actually do this too --- 2 Clouds/Virtualisation Clusters with Virtual Servers clustered accross).

Duncan - I come from a somewhat similar HP-UX database environment. Large vPARS on SuperDomes (PARISC 8800/8900). Although our DBs were not SG'd as we employ poor man's clustering. Our DB vPar servers are 12 to 64 cpu vPars and average ~ 160GB of RAM and 8x2Gbit FC Channels. Each we've successfully moved to older generation Dunnington Systems (Xeon 7400s -- 6 core pre-Nehalem X86 Servers). On the average 32 core HP_UX/PARISC environment -- we were averaging ~80% CPU Utilisation. On a 24-core, 4 socket X86-64 Dunnington Physical Linux Server - we are averaging just ~30% CPU Utilisation - that we think moving these environments to either an vSPhere or KVM hypervisored HA Virtualisation CLuster will wikely be possible.

Everyone's likely question will be -- for such HUGE DBs on a virtualized Linux Server - hwo do you ensure there will be no Virtualization OverHead specially I/O?

Well -- for both vMWARE and KVM -- direct SAN or HBA access has been possible. On Vmware environments -- even RDM (raw device map) is already sufficient. What makes this possible? NPIV technology .

As to the CPU and Memory HotPlugging -- there is virtually no need for these features as vSPhere/KVM hypervisors support over commitmment of CPUs and Memory so there is never really any wastage of these reources. But I believe support is there and quickly maturing if ever.

BTW, we used VxVM/VxFS 5.X's CDS features to move the Oracle TTS data over to Linux and used RMAN to do the migrations. Your DBA should be familiar with the process - if not, there should be available Oracle documentation on the process. We were at ASM storage when we did out migration so it involved some conversion on teh DBAs part and fscdsconvert over a floatable VxVM diskgroup to float over and endian convert the data.

Painless - relatively. Only major issue we had was when we moved to 11GR2 from 10GR2 and we were caught unaware by the lack of HugeMem pages as wel as tweaks to swappiness and vm.dirty tweaks which I posted in the Linux threads.

Hakuna Matata.

Re: Oracle stop development on itanium

Alzhy,

OK... so 2 comments/questions:

- VMware and KVM - both have "issues" with Oracle from a support perspective
- Oracle licensing - if I get round my lack of online add/delete of CPU/memory by having "extra" cores free in my system which my VM can call on - I have to pay the Oracle licensing for them, even if I never use them... do you have any way round that?

Cheers,

Duncan

I am an HPE Employee
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