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Posted by DA Morgan on 08/07/06 13:40
Erland Sommarskog wrote:
> DA Morgan (damorgan@psoug.org) writes:
>> Erland Sommarskog wrote:
>>> Correct. A binary collation comes with a price. So does raw partitions.
>> Would you please explain what you intend with this comment about block
>> devices. With any database, other apparently than Microsoft's, there is
>> an advantage that accrues to those who forgo file systems. Why is SQL
>> Server different?
>
> I referred previously in the thread to a fellow MVP who had found a 20%
> improvement with raw devices over the file system.
>
> The price I'm talking about is the more complex administration that raw
> devices buy you.
>
> As for why they are complex... Many years ago when I worked with Sybase,
> I had to travel to customer to perform a triple upgrade: upgrade HP-UX
> from 8.0 to 9.0, Sybase from 4.2 to 4.9 and our own application. The
> customer had adequate staff to run the OS upgrade themselves, but still
> they wanted us to it. The reason: in this OS upgrade HP-UX introduced
> logical volumes, having had only fixed partitions before, and the customer
> did not know how to handle Sybase, where all data was on raw partitions.
> Had the databases been on plain files, the OS upgrade would have been
> trivial for them. But in those days, Sybase strongly discouraged you from
> running production databases on file-system devices, and with a good reason,
> since buffering in the file system could cause problems.
Thanks. The "price" is well understood and there are a lot of good
solutions for simplifying block device administration: Just not with
SQL Server (for example AIX makes it very easy). Thanks.
--
Daniel A. Morgan
University of Washington
damorgan@x.washington.edu
(replace x with u to respond)
Puget Sound Oracle Users Group
www.psoug.org
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