how many cpu's needed for running oracle 9i on L1000-440mhz

[Hanry Zhou]

I know this question is "depends on", what application, how heavy the activities will be, how big the db is...etc.

However, are there any general guidelines? or any experience on cofigurations? In terms of how many cpu's of L1000-440mhz(max. 2 I can have, I believe) I should have before I start to build up the system?

We have 1 cpu on the box now, and will be used for oracle 9i/remedy testing purpose.

[A. Clay Stephenson · Accepted solution]

As you said "It depends" is really the only answer. In general, (and this is another "It depends") database servers tend to be more I/O bound than CPU bound. You are correct in that an L1000 will support a maximum of 2 processors. The other limit (that is really of more concern) is that an L1000 will only handle 8GB of memory. Modern databases can easily use every dab of that so that you really need to be thinking is 8GB enough rather than will 2 440 PA-RISC processors be enough.

Surprisingly, I'm of the opinion that a test/development machine should be crippled (kinda/sorta) so that problems are much more apparant than they would be if you were developing/testing on a blazingly fast machine. Save those puppies for production. I want my development boxes to be intentionally kinda/sorta slow so that the developers are forced to make wise coding choices.

[Glen Trevino]

We have several boxes with Oracle and they are all different.

Our softest production app that runs Oracle is on an L2000 with 2 440Mhz processors and 2 GB of memory.

But our Test PeopleSoft box is also an L2000 with 8GB of memory. There isn't a lot of people hitting it for testing so it's sufficient for that purpose.

I do suggest at least 2 processors though for redundancy. We also try to plan for scalability and thus never had an L1000. Once you have 2 processors (which is our minimum standard, again for redundancy) on an L1000, you are done. You can have a max of 4 on a L2000/L3000 and more on N models.

For test, I'd reccommend at a minimum 2 processors and 2 GB of memory to start. The application vendor might also be able to give you a bare minimum spec for your purposes and them you can work off of that. Make sure you speak to a technical rep from the vendor, not a salesman ;)

Glen

[Hanry Zhou]

Thank you for the response.

Clay, we already have the decision to increase RAM to be 4Gb, and no questions on that part, only thing we are not sure is if we should add one more L1000 cpu or not.

anybody else?

[A. Clay Stephenson]

Well, if this were me (and your SQL is "typical" -- whatever that means), I would instead spend the money on another 4GB's of memory rather than a 2nd processor. I can tell you that Oracle 9i runs "reasonably" well on a single processor K460 with 8GB of memory -- and that's only a PA8000 180Mhz processor. I can also tell you that the developers hate that box because they have to work hard to make things fast on it -- which is exactly my intention. When the code runs well on an old dog, it will truly fly on a newer box. Surprisingly, the old K-box is quite fast enough for the ProC compiles so that's not a problem at all. However, when executing really dumb SQL, the old beast is very good at making stupid code look even more stupid. For these reasons, give them plenty of memory so that SGA's can be reasonably sized, buffer cache can be adequate, and the system will never swap BUT intentionally give them less CPU than they think they need --- they then have to code well.

Now for the real surprise: When the typical database application is coded well, the CPU (even a slow one) is not the bottleneck.

[Steven E. Protter]

It will run with one.

It will be hot with a pair.

Remember Oracle unlimited user license is per production cpu. $40,000 per CPU, so check the budget for licensing.

SEP

[Hanry Zhou]

Will Oracle require 2 CPU's?

[A. Clay Stephenson]

I'll try once more. If money is a constraint, first buy RAM to get you from 4GB to 8GB THEN go from one CPU to 2 CPU's. That is my best advice for a "typical" oracle development/test box. You seem to think that 4GB of memory is plenty but for 9i (even development/test) but that much RAM is probably the bare minimum and will cripple a 9i instance quicker than a single processor --- in most cases.


9i will certainly run on a single processor;it will, of course, run better on two but only significantly better on two CPU's when I/O and memory are no longer the more significant constraints.