Good luck convincing anyone that you NEED two mirrored fast local drives, but maybe this will help: //www.freelists.org/post/oracle-l/Write-cache-for-a-SAN,7 If you manage to purchase the local drives, do NOT let them be partitioned and do NOT let them be used for ANYTHING other than controlfiles. Yes, there will be a big gaping 140+GB mirrored empty on that drive -- IT'S SUPPOSED TO BE THAT WAY. It's cheap insurance. Rich > 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