dmw (7/29/2009)
You seem to be encouraged to have just one database instance and therefore one database per server.
Irrespective of the solutions being suggested, and with only occasional exposure to Oracle, I have never thought that one database per instance implies one database per server. You just create an instance for each database. It's one of the most visible conceptual differences between SQL Server and Oracle.
That said, I have a SQL Server comfortably hosting 130 databases. Under Windows that would require 130 Oracle service instances, which sounds as if it could be demanding of resources.