Chapter 4. Choosing a Platform

Oracle's database developers have focused, since the 1980s, on giving the Oracle database the flexibility to be deployed on any leading computer hardware platform at any given moment in time. Available platform choices change over time as some disappear and are replaced by newer and more cost-effective configurations. For example, massively parallel processing (MPP) computers, popular for data warehousing in the early 1990s and once available from many vendors, are no longer sold in the open systems market (for example, where the platforms support databases from multiple vendors). Today's platform choices are more straightforward since you likely will simply evaluate whether to deploy your data warehouse on a single symmetric multi-processing (SMP) system or to a cluster of similar systems utilizing Oracle's Real Applications Clusters (RAC).

Deciding which platform and deployment strategy to use should be driven by a combination of business and IT priorities in your organization. You will likely evaluate the scalability, manageability, and price of each of the platforms considered. You may have business-driven service-level agreements to meet that include performance and availability goals. This chapter should help you make a more informed decision as you consider each of these requirements.

When you pick a platform, you will need to size the configuration of the hardware. Sizing is a collaborative effort. You should start by working with your business ...

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