There's a new background process is 11g called PING; in v$bgprocess it has the description "interconnect latency measurement". I'm setting up a sandbox RAC system in vmware on a very CPU-starved box and noticed this process high on my "top" output... just wondering, does anyone know how to disable it? STATISTICS_LEVEL? I'd imagine there's some hidden param that can disable this and nothing else... anyone know what it might be? -Jeremy -- Jeremy Schneider Chicago, IL http://www.ardentperf.com/category/technical