Exadata question regarding dev/test/qa etc dbs

[Chris Taylor]

For you guys running Exadata, are you also running your non-prod
environments also on the same Exadata machine, or do you run them on
secondary commodity servers?

Our primary Prod DBs are VLDB and I don't *think* we're going to want to
stick our non-prod environments on the same Exadata machines.

But that means licensing a pretty big secondary commodity server and
potentially Actifio in the middle to handle the clones of the non-prod
environments.

Chris

[Steve Harville]

We have a second Exadata machine that runs non-production.

It's identical to the production machine but it should really be bigger
because we have multiple non-prod environments for each production
environment.

We had the same setup at my previous company.

On Mon, Oct 29, 2018 at 4:08 PM Chris Taylor <

Post by Chris Taylor
For you guys running Exadata, are you also running your non-prod
environments also on the same Exadata machine, or do you run them on
secondary commodity servers?
Our primary Prod DBs are VLDB and I don't *think* we're going to want to
stick our non-prod environments on the same Exadata machines.
But that means licensing a pretty big secondary commodity server and
potentially Actifio in the middle to handle the clones of the non-prod
environments.
Chris

[Ls Cheng]

Hi

I have a customer has commodity servers for non-prod environments. He has
been running with this setup in the last two years OK.

BR

On Mon, Oct 29, 2018 at 9:08 PM Chris Taylor <

Post by Chris Taylor
For you guys running Exadata, are you also running your non-prod
environments also on the same Exadata machine, or do you run them on
secondary commodity servers?
Our primary Prod DBs are VLDB and I don't *think* we're going to want to
stick our non-prod environments on the same Exadata machines.
But that means licensing a pretty big secondary commodity server and
potentially Actifio in the middle to handle the clones of the non-prod
environments.
Chris

[Tim Gorman]

This brings up the question of /functional/ testing versus /performance/
testing.  As long as the two types of testing are separated, then there
will likely be no complaints from developers and testers about using
non-Exadata Oracle database for non-prod environments.

/Functional/ testing is inexpensively and easily supported using
commodity or cloud servers, and for workload that is not offloaded to
cells there is no appreciable difference in performance.  However, there
is no configuration of non-Exadata which can compete with Exadata for
workloads offloaded to Exadata cell storage, so /performance/ testing
must be on Exadata to avoid complaints from testers and developers.

Particularly tricky is when the database is "optimized" for Exadata cell
offload by the removal of indexes, making functional testing difficult
or impossible on non-Exadata.  Since no COTS applications are assumed to
reside on Exadata, this form of optimization is always a local decision.

Post by Ls Cheng
Hi
I have a customer has commodity servers for non-prod environments. He
has been running with this setup in the last two years OK.
BR
On Mon, Oct 29, 2018 at 9:08 PM Chris Taylor
For you guys running Exadata, are you also running your non-prod
environments also on the same Exadata machine, or do you run them
on secondary commodity servers?
Our primary Prod DBs are VLDB and I don't *think* we're going to
want to stick our non-prod environments on the same Exadata machines.
But that means licensing a pretty big secondary commodity server
and potentially Actifio in the middle to handle the clones of the
non-prod environments.
Chris

[Thomas Roach]

To pile on - you probably do want a second one. Perhaps you have one with
prod and a second with all non-prod and DR. You really want a non-prod to
test all your patches on etc and be able to do proper testing. Obviously
you would have to have the budget for it.

This brings up the question of *functional* testing versus *performance*
testing. As long as the two types of testing are separated, then there
will likely be no complaints from developers and testers about using
non-Exadata Oracle database for non-prod environments.
*Functional* testing is inexpensively and easily supported using
commodity or cloud servers, and for workload that is not offloaded to cells
there is no appreciable difference in performance. However, there is no
configuration of non-Exadata which can compete with Exadata for workloads
offloaded to Exadata cell storage, so *performance* testing must be on
Exadata to avoid complaints from testers and developers.
Particularly tricky is when the database is "optimized" for Exadata cell
offload by the removal of indexes, making functional testing difficult or
impossible on non-Exadata. Since no COTS applications are assumed to
reside on Exadata, this form of optimization is always a local decision.
Hi
I have a customer has commodity servers for non-prod environments. He has
been running with this setup in the last two years OK.
BR
On Mon, Oct 29, 2018 at 9:08 PM Chris Taylor <

Post by Chris Taylor
For you guys running Exadata, are you also running your non-prod
environments also on the same Exadata machine, or do you run them on
secondary commodity servers?
Our primary Prod DBs are VLDB and I don't *think* we're going to want to
stick our non-prod environments on the same Exadata machines.
But that means licensing a pretty big secondary commodity server and
potentially Actifio in the middle to handle the clones of the non-prod
environments.
Chris

[Dave Herring]

Chris, sorry for being a little late to the game on this one, but for both
our X-4 and X-6 environments we have stage and prod on separate 1/2 racks
and stage and prod are running RAC (4-node clusters). We also have a
matching standby cluster for production.

Dave

On Mon, Oct 29, 2018 at 3:08 PM Chris Taylor <

Post by Chris Taylor
For you guys running Exadata, are you also running your non-prod
environments also on the same Exadata machine, or do you run them on
secondary commodity servers?
Our primary Prod DBs are VLDB and I don't *think* we're going to want to
stick our non-prod environments on the same Exadata machines.
But that means licensing a pretty big secondary commodity server and
potentially Actifio in the middle to handle the clones of the non-prod
environments.
Chris