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I want to know the best choices for OS to run Oracle 11g on my sand box. Also, I would like to know good combination for Dev environments in 50-100 user environments.

Any other information about related tools will also be appreciated. Thanks.

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    Hi. Welcome to server fault. The current wording of your question is subjective but it need not be. Try rewording with very specific questions. A good place to start would be requesting any benchmarking studies that show a particular advantage in certain scenarios between OS's. But it really depends upon your needs. Your current question wording will leave you with few comments, and those that come in may not be very helpful. If someone insists on Windows is it because they are unfamiliar with Unix CLI? Or a Unix proponent who detests GUI?
    – Shawn Anderson
    Jun 28, 2009 at 3:41

10 Answers 10

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7
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Sun Solaris, because:

  • the system is rock solid and itself one of best

  • it's been Oracle's primary and reference platform for a long time (and still is patched very early and well tested)

  • it scales from a $200 PC to massive multiprocessor machines (think development, test and production each cost effective in almost the same environment)

  • has best diagnostic tools, fastest TCP/IP stack, very good documentation,

  • it doesn't lose compatibility when new version is out so you can plan upgrades at your leisure

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  • +1 for the upgrade point. I love Solaris for that very reason. Or, well, we've released a "service pack" but you can get the same thing by installing this enormous list of patches. But really you only need to patch the stuff that makes the most sense for your server, and we're cool with that.
    – Milner
    Jul 2, 2009 at 15:25
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I don't think there's such a thing as the "best" OS for the purposes you're using Oracle for here. A sandbox and the number of users you have is relatively small scale stuff; this ain't a huge Fortune 500 deployment. I also get the feeling that "unbreakable" security - while always good to have - isn't as crucial a factor in this case as it would be in other circumstances.

I'd go for the OS you're personally most familiar with. Reason why is that you'll need to do a certain amount of work at OS level too, and getting that work right is a key part of the bigger picture. So why struggle with an OS you don't know, and run the risk of making mistakes, just because it might be better for huge Oracle deployments than one you do know?

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I'd go by Oracle's recomendations, and since Oracle really want's its own box then using Oracle Unbreakable Linux makes the most sense.

If you need to scale above what a single AMD64 machine can handle then, and only then, would I consider some of the midrange Sun SPARC hardware.

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Oracle Enterprise Linux (OEL):

  • It's currently Oracle's primary developement platform and supports all the latest features.

  • OEL/RHEL has a good record of stability and performance for Oracle databases.

  • Oracle directly supports the OS, giving you a single point of contact for any issues and much less chance of playing the blame game.

  • Oracle maintains OEL, meaning OS patches can be made by Oracle as needed. RHEL will usually get the patches upstream, but OEL will typically get them first.

  • Linux appears to get a lot more attention from SUN/Oracle than Solaris in the recent years.

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RHEL5, because of broad hardware vendor support, very good performance (only maybe surpassed by Solaris for Oracle), good enough scalability for most things, good vendor support and stabilty.

RHEL5 has a pretty good all-round score chart, it is not too hard to find RHCE-level engineers and has first grade Oracle support. What more do you want?

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Assuming you are requiring performance based results here is a book titled Database Benchmarking that may help you.

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RHEL 5.X or Sun Solaris on Sun H/W

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Yeah I would go for Sun Solaris!

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Hugely subjective of course, but I've had some experience with Oracle running under most operating systems. Please bear in mind that the differences between Linux distributions are pretty small and that some tuning by a System Administrator and DBA will be required anyhow. They're all running the Linux kernel, after all!

Whether to look at Solaris is an interesting dilemma now that Oracle have snaffled up that business, certainly the database folks over there have invested a lot of time making MySQL work quickly on their own hardware... not sure the same can be said for Oracle.. yet ;-)

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    Actually Sun Solaris, SPARC platform, for many years was Oracle's primary development platform. This changed a bit once Sun bought MySQL. But to this day Solaris still makes up a majority of the Oracle installation base. And almost all large Oracle installations are done on Solaris. X86 just doesn't scale up that much compared to enterprise iron. I don't see that changing any time soon...especially given the more recent developments between Sun and Oracle. So to suggest that Oracle hasn't been spent time making Oracle run well on Solaris/SPARC hardware is not true.
    – 3dinfluence
    Jun 28, 2009 at 14:25
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Old post, new angle. Given Oracle's recent attempt to purchase SUN, I think Oracle is making a clear statement that the SUN platform is the one they want under their umbrella.

I prefer the debian distro's. But I know how to tune them to get the best performance. RHEL and CENTOS are close 2nd and 3rd.

That said, if I had experience with SUN OS I would lean that way for Oracle. Its what the Oracle dev's tend to use so will most likely be best supported. If you don't have that experience, chose the distro you know how to manage and tune.