Here's my situation:
Damagement wants us to move 4 small production DBs to one server to save on licensing costs. Server is a Sun E4500, 4 CPUs, 8 GB RAM. There is a pair of internal disks that are mirrored with enough room for Solaris, swap, and 1 Oracle Home. There are 3 A1000 disk arrays (12 x 18 GB drives each), all set to RAID 1+0 using the S.A.M.E. approach.
Questions:
1. Should I use a separate Oracle Home for each DB?
Pros: --Allows upgrade/patching of 1 DB at a time without affecting others (some are home-grown, some are 3rd party).
Cons: --Takes up more space, but space is not a major concern.
--I'll have to put some Oracle Homes on the A1000s with the data files (i.e., concerns about disk contention).
--Requires applying multiple upgrades/patches
2. Should I put 1 DB per A1000? (Actually, 1 A1000 would hold 2 of the least active DBs.)
Pros: --Easier to determine performance problems b/c each DB is isolated on 1 A1000.
--If one controller dies, it only affects 1 DB.
Cons: --Only get throughput of 1 controller; could use 3 controllers if data files spread across 3 A1000s.
Anyone with experience doing this, please share your tips, tricks, and gotchas!
Best regards,
David B. Wagoner
Database Administrator
