To ODA or Not?
- From: Jeff Chirco <backseatdba@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: "oracle-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxx" <oracle-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>, MARK BRINSMEAD <mark.brinsmead@xxxxxxxxx>, Seth Miller <sethmiller.sm@xxxxxxxxx>, jack.applewhite@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Fri, 27 Mar 2015 13:39:29 -0700
I had another thread started about the ODA but I wanted to separate it out.
I am currently up for a hardware refresh and tossing around the idea of
Oracle Database Appliance. But in my environment I am not sure if it just
that easy.
To start, everything currently runs on Windows 2008 R2 64bit. So that is
our first big change, going to Linux.
*We have 4 servers:*
- Production 1: Runs 5 EE 11.2.0.4 database's but really 4 of those are
mostly idle with one acting as our main system. This a 4 CPU box so with a
.5 multiplier we are licensed for 2 CPU. And currently we are not even
utilizing half of the CPU and about half of the memory which is 96gb.
- Test 1: Same server and license as above it just runs all test and dev
databases
- Production 2: Runs 3 SE1 11.2.0.4 database for third party
applications but the communication to Prod 1 for some data. CPU is also
lightly used on here.
- Test 2: 1 SE 11.2.0.4 database on here but this server is not that
important.
- 5th server acts as our Data Guard server for just 1 of the database
running on Prod 1. This is a single CPU server. Meant as a last resort.
*Current Storage*: NetApp SAN, 27tb. The NetApp SAN is nice with ability
to quickly take a database snapshot/backup (1-2minutes) and then make a
database clone from that in less than 5 minutes for our 400gb database.
Plus it has the ability to Snap Mirror all the snapshots to our off site
location.
If we were to get an ODA since we don't run or have a current need for RAC,
1. One solution would be to have one of the servers for Production and
other for Test/Dev. I would combine all of our databases into this one
machine. Then they would all be EE and probably go to 12c and plug able if
I can get the budget approval for it. But there is another added expense.
2. The solution I am thinking makes most sense is turning VM on kind of
mimicking our current environment so I can keep our third party systems
separate and on a separate database version if need be. But still all on
Linux. Then I can create another VM for Enterprise Manager which I
currently have running on Windows.
But what do I do about our existing snapshot technology with NetApp and the
mirroring. I believe there is not data mirroring technology with the ODA
storage. Then are we relying on Data Guard everything or moving backups
some other way? I heard the ODA has the snap clone technology so we could
still create dev clones quickly right? Is this an extra cost?
Speaking of Data Guard, since we probably wont be buying two ODA's, we will
have to stand up our own stand alone Oracle Linux server and support that
and buy support for it.
Speaking of buying only 1. I dont't think I can get approval for that
unless they give it to us dirt cheap. This means we have no way to test out
ODA patches and updates. This sounds scary to me.
Ok so that was a long email. Thank you in advanced for anybody that got
through it and chimes in and I'm aware that this probably requires a deeper
discussion.
Jeff
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