Yes. That is my experience. Oracle likes to claim rac is an easy way to scale
systems. The simple fact is many loads do not scale in RAC. And the same load
that does fine in a 2 node rac may go completely south when a third node is
added. Scaling up rarely has similar problems.
Sent from my iPhone
On Jan 22, 2016, at 12:29 PM, Sherrie Kubis
<Sherrie.Kubis@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
When we used RAC it was for High Availability, as well as to be able to scale
vertically and horizontally. RAC is no longer in play, our requirements and
environment has changed. RAC imposes an overhead, but as a whole, it served
our requirements at the time. No, we are as bare bones as we can be and
still provide a good level of service. There needs to be more cost reduction,
causing management to look into the direction of dropping support, changing
database platforms, etc. It must all be done thoughtfully and through
feasibility studies. No decisions are made, I am in the questioning phase of
“could we live without Oracle support and all its benefits?” They are
offering a third-party support if it would be cost effective.
My task in the near future is to research and document what this means to the
level of support that our databases can provide.
Oracle licensing costs are based on servers and use type, or which we have
whittled away to the bone. I was hoping this last downsizing was enough to
allow us to continue status quo, the same servers, uses, and Oracle support.
The uses are not changing, servers are new and will not change, so another
direction has to be considered.
*********************************************************
Sherrie Kubis
Sr. Oracle DBA
Information Technology Bureau
Southwest Florida Water Management District
2379 Broad Street
Brooksville, FL 34604-6899
352.796.7211 x4033
sherrie.kubis@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
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From: Kenny Payton [mailto:k3nnyp@xxxxxxxxx] ;
Sent: Friday, January 22, 2016 10:46 AM
To: Sherrie Kubis <Sherrie.Kubis@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Cc: oracle-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: RE: oracle-l Digest V13 #15
RAC is nice for HA and business continuity but I have seen very few systems
that required it for performance reasons. They are out there but most
running RAC would get better performance from a single instance with less
costs.
Are you maxing out your cpus? In the past I've been able to disable cores in
the BIOS and maintained performance. You'll have to verify with your
licensing specialists as to whether that is within compliance with your
contract.
These have been Intel bases systems running Linux.
On Jan 22, 2016 10:38 AM, "Sherrie Kubis" <Sherrie.Kubis@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:
I should have noted this ahead.
The first step of budget cutting was to downsize from RAC to standalone
servers onto newer and more powerful hardware, and at this first
maintenance time we renegotiated our costs. However, it really didn't pay
off as much as they'd hoped. In each environment I've been able to drop
from 5-node RAC to single nodes running Oracle 12.1.
*********************************************************
Sherrie Kubis
Sr. Oracle DBA
Information Technology Bureau
Southwest Florida Water Management District
2379 Broad Street
Brooksville, FL 34604-6899
352.796.7211 x4033
sherrie.kubis@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
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IMPORTANT NOTICE
E-mails made or received in conjunction with the official business of the
District are public records. All e-mails sent to and from this address are
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Florida public records laws, please visit www.myflorida.com.
-----Original Message-----
From: Kenny Payton [mailto:k3nnyp@xxxxxxxxx]
Sent: Friday, January 22, 2016 10:33 AM
To: Sherrie Kubis <Sherrie.Kubis@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Cc: oracle-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: Re: oracle-l Digest V13 #15
A related side note. How efficiently are your database systems? Many
places I have been at are grossly oversized for what they need and
sometimes don’t even realize it. Are you running on ancient hardware that
could be upgraded to fewer much faster cores, potentially on a different
and more cost effective platform? Shrinking your footprint, while
improving performance, can dramatically shrink your TCO and reduce the
number of licenses you need to maintain. I’m currently looking at a system
that has over a 30 servers that could easily be consolidated to 3 or 4
while getting a considerable reliability and performance boost while
reducing TCO.
Sometimes tackling the problem from a different direction is more rewarding
and beneficial than tacking it head on.
Best of Luck
On Jan 22, 2016, at 9:30 AM, Sherrie Kubis
<Sherrie.Kubis@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Hello all. I've been on this listserver for years and have learned much
from the expertise here. I'm a quiet member, mostly reading and
learning. Today I have a question that I'm merely gathering information
on for my management.
For budget reasons they are considering dropping Oracle Maintenance at
renewal time. As this means also dropping Oracle Support, I'm directed to
investigate third-party Oracle Support providers, such as Rimini Street.
This comes with the realization that MOS, patches, security updates ...
all those things are no longer accessible. I'm still not sure how the
third-party support value works into what I'll need, but in the end I can
provide the facts and this is a business decision. I have many reasons
to maintain MOS and its benefits, but the overriding (and overwhelming)
factor of budget is the driving force.
Does anyone have experience with third-party support vendors, or
additional information on what will no longer be accessible without
maintenance?
*********************************************************
Sherrie Kubis
Sr. Oracle DBA
Information Technology Bureau
Southwest Florida Water Management District
2379 Broad Street
Brooksville, FL 34604-6899
352.796.7211 x4033
sherrie.kubis@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Please take a moment to answer a few questions and let us how we’re doing.
IMPORTANT NOTICE
E-mails made or received in conjunction with the official business of the
District are public records. All e-mails sent to and from this address
are automatically archived. For more information regarding the State of
Florida public records laws, please visit www.myflorida.com.
