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Oracle Performance Tuning and Optimization
(Publisher: Macmillan Computer Publishing)
Author(s): Edward Whalen
ISBN: 067230886x
Publication Date: 04/01/96
Chapter 12 Operating System-Specific Tuning
This chapter looks at the tunable parameters in specific operating systems. In this chapter, you see how to tune the operating system parameters discussed in the last chapter (there is an overview of the parameters and areas in the OS you can modify).
Many factors should lead you to choose a particular operating system to run in your installation. I have no intention of influencing that decision. Usually, your choice of operating system depends on how it fits into your installation in terms of connectivity and the administrative expertise you already have.
Each operating system has advantages and disadvantages, both in terms of ease of use and configurability. Sometimes, there is a tradeoff between the two. In this chapter, I try to represent the advantages and disadvantages of each operating system along with the tuning methodologies.
NOTE: Several popular operating systems are described in alphabetical order in this chapter. I have tried to pick the OSes that are typically used in the client/server market. I apologize if your particular OS is not included here. The chapter looks at NetWare first, then at Windows NT and OS/2, and finishes up with the UNIX operating system.
The goals of this chapter are to provide you with a basic understanding of what is available in the server operating system arena. Each operating system is unique, both in how the system operates and in the level of configuration available. By understanding something about the architecture of the OS, you may gain some insight into how you can best configure your system for Oracle.
NetWare
NetWare is the most popular file and print server operating system on the market. NetWare has grown in popularity over the last few years and is now seen as both a file-and-print server as well as a stable and robust application server. Recently, Novell has release an SMP version of NetWare. NetWare itself has always had very good performance as a single-processor operating system, but with the introduction of NetWare SMP, you can take advantage of scaleable performance increases by adding additional CPUs.
NetWare operates in a client/server configuration only. There is no facility within NetWare to provide login functionality from terminals. From the very beginning, NetWare was designed to support clients through network connections. NetWare is designed to be a lean-running operating system; the overhead associated with it is very small.
Architectural Overview
NetWare runs on Intel PC servers and provides file and print services to clients over network connections. The Novell network protocol of choice is SPX/IPX, but TCP/IP is also supported (the choice of network protocol usually depends on the protocol used by the PC clients).
Unlike the other operating systems described in this chapter, NetWare is not a virtual memory operating system. With NetWare, all the memory needed by Oracle and the server processes must fit into physical memory. The obvious disadvantage is that you must be careful not to exceed the bounds of the memory available. The advantage is that the system is guaranteed not to page and that all the overhead necessary to manage virtual memory is eliminated.
With NetWare SMP, the basic server functionality of the NetWare services is still done on the primary CPU. Certain applications, such as Oracle, have to be modified to take advantage of the additional CPUs. NetWare SMP operates in a master/slave mode.
The term master/slave refers to the way in which the multiprocessing architecture works. The base processor is the master and is responsible for dispatching work to the other CPUs, which operate as slave processors. The slave processors do not have the same software functionality as the master because the slaves do not run all the same processes as the master does.
The result of having a master/slave architecture is that the additional CPUs are not burdened by the overhead processing such as network connections and hardware interrupts that must be done by the master. The slave processors devote all their time to Oracle processing.
The slave processors run the Oracle background processes as well as the Oracle server processes. In this manner, an additional CPU is very scaleable. By adding a second CPU to your server, you may come close to doubling the performance of your system (if there is available I/O bandwidth).
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