Dennis,
> 1. Are any of you using the Oracle Names?
Of course! Used Names in 7.3 (since '97 or so? Was buggy at that time, but
the 8i Names is quite Ok). Used to manage about 4000 static desktops (7.3)
and now have about 2000+ Laptops and 100-odd NT/UNIX servers being served
off an 8i Names service.
> 2. Is it as easy to configure as Oracle makes it sound, or is
> it difficult?
The setup is quite easy, but make sure that you have a primary and secondary
ONS servers. The notes on ML about ONAMES is sparse (to say the least), and
not many people have set it up (that really surprises me). You _should_ use
a Repository (a small DB schema) if you use a primary and secondary,
although the notes imply that you don't need to. The 8i version allows you
to load the repository via a TNSNAMES.ORA file (using LOAD_TNSNAMES) and
generate a new TNSNAMES.ORA via DUMP_TNSNAMES - Cool! (I had to do this by
hand for 7.3). Also make sure that you have standardized on the
DEFAULT_DOMAIN - if you have multiple values for this across the
organization, you may have some challenges... Oracle makes it sound
difficult, as the doco tries to explain the details of root and sub-domains
similar to an extrenal DNS. Just treat this as something within the
organization, and it becomes failrly simple. If your users have had their
own quirks in their local TNSNAMES.ORA (such as MYDB pointing to PROD and
XYZ pointing to ABC), you will have problems. In other words, the difficult
part is the *data* part, not the setup. We used SMS to get a cross-section
of TNSNAMES.ORA files from laptops and used Perl (thanks Jared!) to massage
them and consolidate the entries, and still missed a few.
> 3. Is Names reasonably robust? I can see this as yet another
> single point of failure.
It is as much a single point of failure as a central SAN (and I am not
talking the [EMAIL PROTECTED] here :) or a Data centre.
You can have multiple ONS servers (not sure if you can go above four or five
- I have two and it seems adequate) It is *very* crucial that you use DNS
aliases to point to the primary and secondary, rather than the actual
hostnames. This way, you can quickly setup another server and changes the
aliases on the DNS servers if one of them goes down, or has an extended
downtime. It is also very helpful for maintenance... As for reliability, our
Primary Name server has been continually up since Nov 16 and has collected
664 CPU minutes, which works out to an average of about 4 CPU minutes per
day, about the same as that of the DNS Daemon.
$ ps -ef | grep name
oracle 4625 1 0 Nov 16 ? 664:28
/oracle/onames_home/bin/names names.ctlstart=yes
root 4667 1 1 Apr 19 ? 121:51 /usr/local/sbin/named
At this time, the number of Name server 'Requests received' (and serviced)
was 18,920,223.
The repository does NOT need to be highly available. The Names servers cache
required information and will load off these if restarted during the
repository outage. The secondaries can be setup to resync from Primary every
'x' minutes as well.
> 4. Oracle hinted that Oracle Names is going away in favor of
> LDAP. Is this
> imminent, or just a scare tactic? I had held off using Names
> because of
> this, but the company has made a commitment to MS Active
> Directory, which I
> gather from the list postings isn't very compatible with
> Oracle's LDAP.
I wouldn't worry about it - Names is available in 9i, and OiD is flaky from
what I have heard so far.
In summary: GO for it!
Hth,
John Kanagaraj
Oracle Applications DBA
DBSoft Inc
(W): 408-970-7002
Grace - Getting something we don't deserve; Mercy - NOT getting something we
deserve
Click on 'http://www.needhim.org' for Grace and Mercy that is freely
available!
** The opinions and statements above are entirely my own and not those of my
employer or clients **
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