we've had SAN failures too ... bad firmware which writes to the wrong disk (?!!!) when a mountpoint is hot added or extended. And this is on brand-name enterprise hardware, with a dedicated storage team ... nothing rinky-dink about it! (well, except the firmware) So... I agree with the others - try and get the controlfiles on separate SAN disk groups, and local disk if you have it. regards, Jeff 2008/11/18 Claudia Zeiler <czeiler@xxxxxxxxxx>: > All, > > I have just been given a new server to put a database on. It is a SAN > server, but the apparent layout of drives to me is: > > /redo1 > > /redo2 > > /big everything_else_disk > > > > This means that I have just put control_file1, 2, and 3 all in the same > place – on /big. I thought that the whole point of multiple control files > was to avoid single points of failure, such as a single location. > > > > I am told that SAN layout is to handle mirroring, striping, & hot spots > behind the scene and I don't need to worry. If this is true, why do I need > duplicates of the control file? > > > > Something smells fishy to me. Does anyone else have an opinion? > > > > -Claudia -- //www.freelists.org/webpage/oracle-l