Re: Oracle's relationships with expert DBAs (and the rest of us mere mortals)
- From: Nuno Souto <dbvision@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: oracle-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Thu, 1 Jun 2006 14:03:30 +0800
Quoting MVE <mvetmp-ora@xxxxxxxxx>:
> I still don't see any value in going Linux even for a shop on a tight budget
> --
> this is just a trend. They shoot themselves in the foot by doing so and
> will
> be paying the price in the next 4 years.
I have to disagree with this view that Linux is expensive in the
long run. Mainly because I've been Linux only for the last
14 months (and mostly Linux for 3 years now) in our shop and
I see no evidence whatsoever of increased running costs.
Quite the opposite, in fact.
We used to be Solaris/Sun. In common with just about every other
proprietary solution, Sun kept changing their hardware/software
platform every year, at a cost: to us. These were physical architecture
changes, not just slight upgrades! That meant complete retest
of not only Solaris-to-app but app-to-everythingelse and
Solaris-to-everythingelse. Expensive!
We now use IBM or DELL blades whichever are cheapest when needed,
Apple raids or whatever else is cheap and reliable, RHEL3upd5 on
them - soon to be RHEL4 - and Oracle 9ir2 - soon to be (I hope...)
10gr2.
Hardware and system costs are a pittance compared to how much
it'd cost us to change the whole server and disk architecture
every time Sun said so. Or IBM AIX. Or M$/Intel, or any other
proprietary architecture for that matter.
The hardware, if and when IBM or Dell releases a new blade model
and we need one, is directly compatible to what we have and our
software (all of it, not just the OS!) will run with little - if
any - need for re-testing.
Maintenance once things are running is minimal if ever needed.
Monitoring is the same across the board and easy as pie,
using standard monitoring tools (Nagios and Sitescope as
well as a few custom scripts).
The only thing that costs us considerable money is the amount
of testing we have to do to make sure Oracle runs fine with
Linux when we get new releases of each. But that to me is
a problem of Oracle, not Linux! And it is manageable and
doesn't cost the earth - although it *IS* a cost.
The other big cost we have is in setting up and installing
new boxes: the number of patches and hoops we have to go through
is above average compared to others. But, that is an INITIAL
cost. Not a recurring maintenance cost!
And once again it's mostly because of our choice to use Oracle:
no matter how much they have bleated over the last 5 years or so
of how friendly they are to Linux, it's not true.
Then again: have you seen what happens when a new version of
Windows comes out? It has ALWAYS broken the current version of
Oracle.
So: 6 of one, half a dozen of the other.
And you folks want me to believe that the problem with Linux
is the long term running costs? What I'm seeing quite
frankly, is exactly the opposite!
--
Cheers
Nuno Souto
from sunny Sydney
--
//www.freelists.org/webpage/oracle-l
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