SUMMARY: RAID-5 for Oracle

From: Erwin Fritz (efritz@glja.com)
Date: Fri Jul 25 1997 - 15:14:17 CDT


My original question:

We have an E3000 running Solaris 2.5.1. I need to install Oracle on
it. I have five 9Gb disks reserved for Oracle's database files. All
five disks are on the same controller.

I'm undecided about putting these disks into a RAID-5 array or not.
If I don't, then my disks would be five filesystems, each containing
the database files. If I do, then (I suppose) I'd have a single,
large, filesystem, containing fewer (but larger) Oracle database files.

Does anyone have any experience with Oracle on RAID arrays? Is it
faster having a single, large filesystem with just one or two database
files? Or is it better having them split up, even though all disks are
on the same controller?

The summary:

I received eight responses. The vast majority indicated that RAID-5
is unsuitable for Oracle database use and suggested using either RAID-0
or RAID0+1 instead.

Cost prohibits me from using either of those options, so I'll just
stick with four separate filesystems. I'll use the fifth disk as a
hot spare. It's not perfect but it'll reduce my database outage time
from a disk crash to a minimum.

Thanks to Bhaba R. Misra, Bruce Cheng, Jason Marshall, John Malick,
Peter Asboeck, Mike Youngberg, Laust Frederiksen and Glenn Satchell
for the responses.

Erwin Fritz
UNIX/NT/LAN Guy
Gilbert Laustsen Jung Associates Ltd.
http://www.glja.com



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