[TriLUG] Question: Oracle on Linux?

[Ron Joffe]

On Thursday 03 July 2003 01:57 pm, RALPH GILL wrote:
>Hey gang, 
>
>I was wondering if people had any information on Oracle being served up on 
>Linux. I work for a company that is looking at switching from their present 
>systems to Linux. I would also like to know if anyone has any Pro's or Con's 
>about Oracle 9i systems on Linux? Is there a better version to use, has 
>anyone had experience with migration of older DB's to Oracle? 
>
>
>Whatever assistance or information can be offered please send a reply or a 
>direct email to rpgj at hotmail.com 
>
>
>Thanks 
>
>
>          Ralph Gill

Ralph,

I have been running Oracle on a number of Linux systems for over three years. 
To date we have been extremely successful with all of our systems. Over the 
last year we have been replacing Oracle systems running on Windows NT, 
Windows 2000, IBM AIX, DEC Tru64 with Linux systems running on Intel 
hardware.

We recently had a chance to compare two systems which were almost identical. 
One with Oracle 9ir2 on Win2000 Server, and another with Oracle 9ir2 on RHAS 
2.1. On identical databases (i.e. we had the same exact data schema on both 
machines) we saw a 50% performance improvement in the Linux Oracle instance. 
Now granted this was not a scientific test which looked at all of the oracle 
performance benchmarks, but rather one which focused on a particular 
application's performance. To date I have not found any component from oracle 
which does run on a windows platform but not on a Linux platform.

As far as operating systems are concerned, in my opinion the install from SuSE 
Enterprise 8 is much much smoother then an install using Red Hat Advanced 
Server 2.1. These are both "Certified" OS's which means you will get full 
support from the folks at Oracle for any OS/DB issues. There are three main 
reasons my choice of SuSE. First SuSE supplies an RPM which provides all of 
the oracle startup/shutdown/shared memory optimizations, etc which must be 
manually performed on a Red Hat system. Second SuSE provides a step by step 
guide for the installation of many oracle products (Database, Application 
Server, etc). Third, and perhaps most important Red Hat Advanced Server 2.1 
does NOT support LVM. LVM makes your life as a DBA/Sysadmin much easier when 
having to size/resize partitions for the database.

If you want any other information, I would be happy to supply you, or anyone 
in the group looking for Oracle on Linux with more information.

Ron