HOW TO SETUP ORACLE ON A RAW PARTITION

NT: HOW TO SETUP ORACLE ON A RAW PARTITION

Document ID:        9744439.61
Title:              NT: HOW TO SETUP ORACLE ON A RAW PARTITION
Creation Date:      05 Jan 1996
Last Revision Date: 05 Jan 1996
Revision Number:     3
Product:            RDBMS
Product Version:    7.1
Platform:           DESKTOP
Information Type:   SOLUTION
Impact:             MEDIUM
Abstract:           This bulletin describes the steps in setting up the
                    Oracle7 database on a RAW Partition.
Keywords:           WINDOWS;NT;ORACLE7;RAW;PARTITION;DATAFILE;TABLESPACE
________________________________________________________________________

                    HOW TO SETUP ORACLE ON A RAW PARTITION

What is a Raw device and what is the advantage of having a Raw device?

A Raw device, or a Raw disk partition, is a hardware device that is
supported
by a character device driver.  Raw devices are not buffered by the kernel;
the data is transferred directly between the user's buffers and the device.
This direct transfer makes the I/O operation much faster when compared to
FAT
and NTFS file systems.  So, if you are I/O bound with your system, you may
want to locate your log and datafiles to RAW partitions to gain I/O
performance.

The trade-off of the raw partition choice is restricted configuration
options.  Each RAW partition equates to a single file and is represented by
a
single file which is then represented by a single drive letter.

How to create a RAW partition on Windows NT
............................................................................
.
After the installation of Oracle on FAT or NTFS file systems, but before
creating the tablespaces that belong to datafiles, or putting the Log files
on RAW devices, we have to create the RAW partitions on Windows NT. In order
to do that, follow this procedure:

  1) Go into the "Disk Administrator" in the Administrative Tools.  If you
     already have free space there.  Single click on it.

NOTE:  If you don't have free space, you have to delete one of the
partitions
that you don't need anymore.  To do so, select the drive that you don't want
anymore, then select "Delete", under the "Partition" menu.

  2) Go to "Partition" menu and select "Create" in "Create Primary
Partition"
     screen.  Create the partition equal to the size of the file plus 1M,
     then click on OK.

  3) Do the same thing to create the new unformatted partitions for the
other
     files.

  4) Go to "Partition" menu and click on "Commit Changes Now...", to save
     the changes.

  5) Each partition now is represented by a drive letter like 'e: ' or 'i:',
     and you can locate one file on each of them.

Since the Log files are an I/O intensive operation, you may want to put them
on RAW Partitions.  If you want to locate the Log files on RAW partitions,
you have to do it at the time of the creation of the database.  For example:

     CREATE DATABASE
     CONTROLFILE REUSE
     LOGFILE GROUP 1 ('//./e:') size 14M,
             GROUP 2 ('//./i:') size 14M;

This will create a database with the logfiles located on RAW partitions
'//./e:'
and '//./i:' of size 15 MB. Always leave 1M to avoid written data to
cylinder
0 of the disk.

In order to create data tablespaces mapped to datafiles, on RAW partitions.
Do like the following example:

     CREATE TABLESPACE DATA
     DATAFILE '//./f:' SIZE 49M;

This will create a 49 MB tablespace on RAW partition '//./f:', which
has a size of 50 MB. (Again 1M to avoid cylinder 0)
When creating a datafile that will use the RAW device, make sure that the
datafile is smaller than the size of the RAW device.
For example if you create a 100 MB RAW partition, do not allocate a datafile
of size 100M. Instead allocate a datafile of 99 MB. the usual rule of thumb
is to leave 1M, unused.  Following this rule ensures that you won't write
over cylinder 0 of the disk.

There is a potential problem involved with the use of the RAW
partitions:

   - The OS will not protect cylinder 0 of the disk, if it's part of the RAW
     partition.  To prevent this make sure the RAW partition used by Oracle
     does not start at cylinder 0.   If you try to create a tablespace on a
     RAW partition with a size equal to the size of the RAW partition, you
     will receive the following error messages:

          ORA-01119, 00000, "error in creating database file '//./k:'
          // *Cause:  Usually due to not having enough space on the device.
          ORA-09200: Sfccf: error creating file
          OSD-04008: Writefile() failure, unable to write to file(OS 87)