>> The $ cost of RAC is so high ||Those two words are not miscible. Free with Oracle SE. >> I have not seen a clear-case for using it More Reasons for RAC; 1.) Logical User and Application Partitioning. 2.) (I always) Run Backups on a passive RAC instance. 3.) (Rolling) OS/Hardware/Firmware/Driver upgrades. These individually are probably not reasons, but these together plus; 4.) HA and 5.) potential scalability benefits start to make a stronger case. I have used 4 of these 5...*scalability*, the biggest (marketing) push by Oracle is the one the seems not often achieved. And as write this email we have had one RAC node/server down all morning and it gets several badly needed Firmware & Driver upgrades. Once complete we will "roll" to that node and do the same to the other node...*or* if it all fails, stay on the node with old versions...a very real RAC benefit. And I do agree with many of the downsides of RAC listed in the many post. Seems the RAC fails into the same as many Oracle (computing world) options... ...the are not as glamorous when you look under the hood. Chris Marquez Oracle DBA -- //www.freelists.org/webpage/oracle-l