210 Mbps? a single 4 year old SCSI-3 (U2W) drive can
beat that.

Caution: TLAs abound.

GigE - Gigabit Ethernet
FC - Fibrechannel
FC HBA - FibreChannel Host Bus Adapter
SAN - Storage Area Network
DAS - Direct Attached Storage
NAS - Network Attached Storage

GigE = 1 Gigabit per second
FC = 1 Gigabit per second (also available in 2 Gbps)

Trunking across multiple ports is used to increase
throughput and/or increase availability.

when it comes to moving bits across a network, its
Mbps or Gbps, whether that data is moving over GigE or
FC.

when it comes to moving blocks of data around a SAN or
over DAS (direct attached storage) the unit of
measurement is MBps.

Big 'B' little 'b', b B bee.

The order of magnitude difference between bits 'b' and
bytes 'B' is non-trivial. Oracle measures all storage
amounts, e.g. db_block_size, in Bytes. Bytes are what
matters to a DBA. Bits are for Network Admins.

Typical SCSI Drives purchased 2-3 years ago were
capable of 40 MB/sec sustained throughput per drive
(as JBOD) (I can make a copy of a benchmark of mine
available from a reference Dell PE 2650 system).

Typical SCSI drives these days are rated for Ultra
320, meaning 320 MB/sec *interface* speed (read
theoretical throughput for the channel).
Typical SCSI drives these are days are capable of
50-60 MB/sec sustained max throughput per physical
drive.
The 160 MB/sec interface was a bottleneck when using
more than 4 drives in a RAID configuration connected
by a single RAID controller channel, hence
manufacturers moved quickly to Ultra 320.

SCSI interfaces 
SCSI-2   40 MB/sec aka UW
SCSI-3   80 MB/sec aka U2W
SCSI-3  160 MB/sec aka Ultra 160/m
SCSI-3  320 MB/sec aka Ultra 320/m

SCSI-2 was a 50 pin interface.
SCSI-3 is available in either 68 pin LVD or 80 pin hot
swap interface.

Similarly, FC HBA manufacturers (SAN) are quickly
moving from 1 Gbps FC HBA to 2 Gbps FC HBA to try to
stay competitive with good old direct attached storage
(DAS) over SCSI RAID and network attached storage
(NAS) over GigE. I don't think that we'll be seeing
anyone mounting oracle datafiles over iSCSI anytime
soon, but it will be nice to store near-line backup
sets on another server via iSCSI soon.

Ask anyone that has done battle with mounting oracle
datafiles on a NetApp filer if they would consider
mounting live oracle datafiles on a third-party system
that has no working relationship with Oracle (meaning
apple). no way.

To me, direct attached storage is still king. SANs are
great for high availability and clustering, but if you
can get away with direct attached storage for use with
Oracle database files, go for it. You don't need
visualization tools, you don't introduce the
complexity of the SAN fabric. If you're lucky, you can
even tell the SysAdmin how you want the RAID volumes
and filesystems laid out. 

In my non-representatively large enough sample size of
system quotes, A small SAN is still 3 times more
expensive than DAS in the 1 terabyte (gross) range.

As far as apple, no production grade code release of
9i Release 2 Database Server was ever made public. The
oracle server product was simply for developers to
load on their shiny iBooks (no offense intended to
those on the list).

The RAIDserve looks like a great solution for storing
files for your iPod.

Paul

--- Mladen Gogala <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> But then again, the DBA can get a free iPod, which
> is a good thing indeed.
> 
> On 01/07/2004 10:59:50 AM, "Jesse, Rich" wrote:
> > So a co-worker sends me an e-mail about Apple's
> just-announced Xserve RAID
> > with 3+TB for US $11K.  After looking at Apple's
> page, I poo-poo it because
> > it's 7.2K spin ATA/100 drives, which I figure
> would lead to all sorts of
> > problems.  I see today in Computerworld that it's
> being touted as "blazing"
> > with a max thruput of 210MBps.  Hmmmm...I know the
> mid-range FAStT SAN we're
> > looking at is rated at about 800MBps theoretical
> max.
> > 
> > Just looking for confirmation/rebuttal that I
> don't think it would be wise
> > to load up an Xserve RAID with Oracle DBs -- even
> if the BAARF's nemesis is
> > avoided.
> > 
> > http://www.apple.com/xserve/raid
> > 
> > TIA,
> > Rich
> > 
> > Rich Jesse                          
> System/Database Administrator
> > [EMAIL PROTECTED]                  Quad/Tech
> Inc, Sussex, WI USA
> > -- 
> > Please see the official ORACLE-L FAQ:
> http://www.orafaq.net
> > -- 
> > Author: Jesse, Rich
> >   INET: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> > 
> > Fat City Network Services    -- 858-538-5051
> http://www.fatcity.com
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> >
>
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