Oracle over NFS is a very viable option. Now that there are scalable NFS solutoins based on cluster file systems (eg, Hewlett Packard EFS Cluster Gateway), you can scale out NFS performance in the exactly the same way that Oracle scales out RAC. Multiple nodes can access shared storage concurrently, and failover is completely transparent. So there's no reason, going forward, that Oracle over NFs can't be as fast or faster than block level protocols and even more fault tolerant.

Here's a list of the currently OSCP certified Oracle-over-NFS solution providers, including NetApps: http://www.oracle.com/technology/deploy/availability/htdocs/vendors.html

-----Original Message----- From: owner-toasters@mathworks.com [mailto:owner-toasters@mathworks.com] On Behalf Of Max Sent: Monday, January 30, 2006 4:59 PM To: genec00@comcast.net Cc: toasters@mathworks.com; 'Peter D. Gray'; Stewart, John Subject: Re: Replacing our NetApp

On Jan 30, 2006, at 3:28 PM, genO wrote:

great point...heard something about Oracle using Netapp over NFS in one of their hosting centers? not real sure if I got that right. we don't use oracle.

You can generally run Oracle No problem over NFS. However, generally you often do get higher performance with block level access, the trade off until recently has been management complexity and systems scalability (No Cluster File System.) There is no really good general rule to apply to the situation here.

These days customers should be able to chose a single box that supports whatever interconnect and data protocol they're used to using. IF the DBA's are crusty, old guys they'll probably insist on a block level transport.

And Netapp makes a *great* SAN/NAS combo. The only weaknesses for a consolidated Netapp might be more disk overhead for LUNs, RAID 4 or RAID DP only (no legacy raid levels... again something ancient, haggard and crusty DBA's insist on...)

In the event that the Netapp NAS/SAN doesn't work for you, you can Still use a Vfiler for your NAS needs... :) And if your salty DBA finally breaks down and begins to trust modern technology, you can migrate the databases to LUN that is being exported by the vfiler:)

Regards, Max

good question for your guys tomorrow...

good luck,

g -----Original Message----- From: Peter D. Gray [mailto:pdg@uow.edu.au] Sent: Monday, January 30, 2006 6:01 PM To: Stewart, John Cc: 'toasters@mathworks.com' Subject: Re: Replacing our NetApp

On Mon, Jan 30, 2006 at 02:22:20PM -0800, Max wrote:

...

...

This box is probably something that Sun put together after the Procom

...

buyout, and I've never been impressed by most of the Procom kit.

We had no end of problems with our procoms. We ended up replacing all of them with netapps. Never looked back.

...

Another NAS head option you may want to consider is a Netapp Vfiler.. that way you can have the best of both worlds.

What Model of Sun SAN are you looking at?

Why do SAN at all? If you have used NAS with netapp, why on earth would you move to a SAN? We run everything on our netapps and could not be happier.

Regards, pdg

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