How Fast for £1,000 – Architecture

My previous post proposed the creation of “the fastest Oracle server for a grand”, or at least an investigation into what might be the fastest server. I’ve had some really good feedback {which I very much appreciate and am open to even more of}, so I think I’ll explore this further.

My initial ideas for the hardware configuration, written at the same time as the original post, were:

• A single-chip, quad core intel core i5 or i7 processor (I would like two chips but the cost of multi-chip motherboards seems too high for my budget)
• 8GB of memory as the best price point at present, but maybe push to 16GB
• Multiple small, fast internal disks for storage, maybe expand via eSATA
• backup to an external drive (cost not included in the budget).
• USB3 and use of memory sticks for temp and online redo.
• If budget will stretch, SSD disc for the core database components. like core tables, index tablespaces (who does that any more!).
  ASM or no ASM?
  If I run out of internal motherboard connections for storage, can I mix and match with USB3, external e-SATA or even GB ethernet?

As for the Oracle database considerations, I have a good few things I want to try out also. In the past (both distant and recent) I have had a lot of success in placing components of the database in specific locations. I refer to this as “Physical Implementation” {Physical Implementation, if I remember my old DB Design courses correctly, also includes things like partitioning, extent management, tablespace attributes – how you actually implement the tables, indexes and constraints that came from logical data design}.

Physically placing components like undo and redo logs on your fastest storage is old-hat but I think it gets overlooked a lot these days.
Placing of indexes and tables on different tablespaces on different storage is again an old and partially discredited practice, but I’d like to go back and have a new look at it. Again, I had some success with improved performance with this approach as little as 8 years ago but never got to rigorously test and document it. { As an aside, one benefit I have been (un)fortunate to gain from twice through putting tables and indexes in separate tablespaces is when a tablespace has been lost through file corruption – only for it to be an index tablespace, so I was able to just drop the tablespace and recreate the indexes.}

Then there is the use of clusters, IOTs, Bitmap indexes and Single Table Hash Clusters (are you reading this Piet?) which I want to explore again under 11.

I don’t think I am going to bother with mixed block sizes in one DB, I think you need very specialist needs to make it worth the overhead of managing the various caches and the fact that the CBO is not so great at accurately costing operations in non-standard block sizes {issues with the MBRC fudge factor being one}. But I think I will re-visit use of “keep” and “recycle” caches. For one thing, I want to show that they are just caches with a name and not special, by using the “Recycle” cache as the keep and the “keep” as a recycle cache.

Should I be using RAT for testing all of this? I said I was not going to use any special features beyond Enterprise edition but RAT could be jolly useful. But then I would need two servers. Is anyone willing to give me the other £1000 for it? I’d be ever so grateful! 🙂