October 7, 2010 at 6:51 am
Can we have anything like Oracle RAC available in SQL Server.
Thanks
October 7, 2010 at 7:12 am
saurabh.deshpande (10/7/2010)
Can we have anything like Oracle RAC available in SQL Server.
Currently SQL Server provides nothing comparable to Oracle RAC
_____________________________________
Pablo (Paul) Berzukov
Author of Understanding Database Administration available at Amazon and other bookstores.
Disclaimer: Advice is provided to the best of my knowledge but no implicit or explicit warranties are provided. Since the advisor explicitly encourages testing any and all suggestions on a test non-production environment advisor should not held liable or responsible for any actions taken based on the given advice.October 7, 2010 at 7:19 am
saurabh.deshpande (10/7/2010)
Can we have anything like Oracle RAC available in SQL Server.
Thanks
What is "Oracle RAC"?
--Jeff Moden
Change is inevitable... Change for the better is not.
October 7, 2010 at 7:23 am
Jeff Moden (10/7/2010)
saurabh.deshpande (10/7/2010)
Can we have anything like Oracle RAC available in SQL Server.
Thanks
What is "Oracle RAC"?
Oracle RAC stands for Real Application Cluster, that is an active-active clustering.
This is made possible by a very sophisticated storage engine, called ASM (Automatic Storage Management).
I have to admit that SQL Server is far behind in the "feature war" for what the storage engine/clustering is concerned.
-- Gianluca Sartori
October 7, 2010 at 7:25 am
and i thought it meant Royal Auto Club, as in they come and fix your car for you incase of a breakdown..
October 7, 2010 at 7:32 am
There's no grid clustering solution for SQL Server, a single instance can only be part of a fail-over cluster.
You would have to implement your own method of running your application on multiple instances and sharing data between them in order to scale out in this way.
Having said that, I've worked a lot with Oracle RAC and it's becoming less and less relevent as individual servers get more powerful. There are only very specific types of workloads that scale linearly with extra RAC nodes - it's not a get out of jail free card for when you exhaust an individual server's resources.
You should only look at grid clustering for relational databases when you have bought the most powerful server commercially available and it doesn't scale up enough for your needs.
October 7, 2010 at 7:35 am
Jeff Moden (10/7/2010)
saurabh.deshpande (10/7/2010)
Can we have anything like Oracle RAC available in SQL Server.
Thanks
What is "Oracle RAC"?
At high-level Oracle RAC is a technology that allows for two or more "Oracle instances" a.k.a. "nodes" to share a set of common datafiles.
Nodes talk to each other thru the "interconnect" (*) so to...
1- Keep a common buffer-cache
2- Keep a common locking strategy
3- Check if other members of the RAC are alive and well.
4- Transfer datablocks to each other when needed.
(*) High speed (dedicated or near-dedicated) subnetwork.
This allows for users to connect to any one of the nodes to process transactions while other nodes are processing whatever they are asked to process by the same or other users.
In case a node goes down other nodes will take care of the workload - only uncommited transaction on failed node fails.
Major advantages of Oracle RAC are...
1- No downtime maintenance windows.
if you have to do maintenance in a host you just stop it and do whatever you have to do there; Oracle RAC will distribute work load between remaining active nodes. When maintenance is complete you just start the nodewhich will join the RAC.
2- High Availability
If a node crashes users will probably not notice. Other nodes will take care of the workload.
3- Load balancing
RAC balances the workload in between nodes.
This is a high level description, there is more but that exceeds what can be discussed in a single thread.
Hope this helps.
_____________________________________
Pablo (Paul) Berzukov
Author of Understanding Database Administration available at Amazon and other bookstores.
Disclaimer: Advice is provided to the best of my knowledge but no implicit or explicit warranties are provided. Since the advisor explicitly encourages testing any and all suggestions on a test non-production environment advisor should not held liable or responsible for any actions taken based on the given advice.October 7, 2010 at 8:07 am
Hi Paul
Thanks for Short explanation about Oracle RAC.
I like to know the difference between Grid Computing like Oracle
10g/11g and Oracle RAC. As both talks about no downtime,
resource sharing.
Thanks
October 7, 2010 at 1:49 pm
saurabh.deshpande (10/7/2010)
Hi PaulThanks for Short explanation about Oracle RAC.
I like to know the difference between Grid Computing like Oracle
10g/11g and Oracle RAC. As both talks about no downtime,
resource sharing.
Let me give you my short version of it.
Grid computing is a "concept", "Oracle RAC" is a platform that physically delivers what the concept promises.
_____________________________________
Pablo (Paul) Berzukov
Author of Understanding Database Administration available at Amazon and other bookstores.
Disclaimer: Advice is provided to the best of my knowledge but no implicit or explicit warranties are provided. Since the advisor explicitly encourages testing any and all suggestions on a test non-production environment advisor should not held liable or responsible for any actions taken based on the given advice.October 8, 2010 at 1:19 am
PaulB-TheOneAndOnly (10/7/2010)
saurabh.deshpande (10/7/2010)
Hi PaulThanks for Short explanation about Oracle RAC.
I like to know the difference between Grid Computing like Oracle
10g/11g and Oracle RAC. As both talks about no downtime,
resource sharing.
Let me give you my short version of it.
Grid computing is a "concept", "Oracle RAC" is a platform that physically delivers what the concept promises.
Well, it's quite confusing, indeed.
Oracle 11gR2 (11.2) installs some "grid" components even when you're setting up a single instance. The services they file under "grid" are the ASM storage management, the HAS (High Availability Services, such as Oracle Restart) and some other stuff I just can't recall right away.
-- Gianluca Sartori
October 8, 2010 at 1:26 am
My confusion is Oracle RAC is available since Oracle 9i R1.
it means Oracle supports grid computing "Conecpt" from Oracle 9i.
right?
So, what they are giving new with Oracle 10g/11g.
This g is already available with Oracle 9i through RAC.
So, what's new?
October 8, 2010 at 1:41 am
October 8, 2010 at 3:04 am
Gianluca Sartori (10/7/2010)
Jeff Moden (10/7/2010)
saurabh.deshpande (10/7/2010)
Can we have anything like Oracle RAC available in SQL Server.
Thanks
What is "Oracle RAC"?
Oracle RAC stands for Real Application Cluster, that is an active-active clustering.
This is made possible by a very sophisticated storage engine, called ASM (Automatic Storage Management).
I have to admit that SQL Server is far behind in the "feature war" for what the storage engine/clustering is concerned.
I'm ignorant in this area so please forgive my ignorance. Why wouldn't "Federated Servers" in SQL Server do the same thing?
--Jeff Moden
Change is inevitable... Change for the better is not.
October 8, 2010 at 3:30 am
Jeff Moden (10/8/2010)
Gianluca Sartori (10/7/2010)
Jeff Moden (10/7/2010)
saurabh.deshpande (10/7/2010)
Can we have anything like Oracle RAC available in SQL Server.
Thanks
What is "Oracle RAC"?
Oracle RAC stands for Real Application Cluster, that is an active-active clustering.
This is made possible by a very sophisticated storage engine, called ASM (Automatic Storage Management).
I have to admit that SQL Server is far behind in the "feature war" for what the storage engine/clustering is concerned.
I'm ignorant in this area so please forgive my ignorance. Why wouldn't "Federated Servers" in SQL Server do the same thing?
As far as I was aware, this was just creating distributed partitioned views across multiple servers and physically storing the data across the servers.
This is quite different to Oracle RAC, which is a single logical database that shares the same storage, but is open read/write on all nodes in the cluster. Data blocks are transferred in memory over the interconnects and there are sophisticated shared locking mechanisms.
Taking a node down also does not affect availibility which it does in the case of distributed partitioned views. You also have to code your database specifically for it.
The same feature in SQL Server would be to be able to have a single instance on a SQL Server cluster with shared storage in which both nodes were open read/write at the same time, which obviously doesn't exist at this point.
October 8, 2010 at 4:09 am
The closest SQL has to RAC is scalable shared databases which is ONE set of data files that multiple instances can all read at the same time. However it's read-only (which RAC is not)
Gail Shaw
Microsoft Certified Master: SQL Server, MVP, M.Sc (Comp Sci)
SQL In The Wild: Discussions on DB performance with occasional diversions into recoverability
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