We explored the use of RAC for our major upgrade conducted over the
summer. Our conclusions at the time (May) were as follows:

1) We didn't have sufficient expertise in RAC and, even Oracle admitted
it's a very complicated beast
2) We had assumed RAC would be a cost-effective answer to future needs
to increase db power by allowing us to easily add additional, cheap
servers. When we sat down and did the figures this clearly wasn't the
case. At the time RAC wasn't something used widely amongst the Bb
community and Bb implied we would require Bb consultancy services to
install each RAC server so whilst the servers might not cost a great
deal they would come with additional implementation charges - this may
have changed now.
3) We've just completed a very useful Bb performance/tuning audit on our
new setup. I believe I'm correct in saying we're amongst the top ten
largest Bb users in the country yet our single db server (with hot
spare) and 3 applications servers have been shown to be easily capable
of taking more than 3 times our peak current usage without any
noticeable loss in performance so I'd now very much question whether we
would ever need RAC unless we grow considerable beyond our current user
figures.

Hope this helps,

Stan

-----Original Message-----
From: Blackboard/Courseinfo userslist
[mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Price R.L.
Sent: 09 January 2007 12:35
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Anyone trying/using Oracle RAC with Blackboard?

Hi
We have update Bb this summer and are using oracle RAC
What is the nature of your enquiry so I can direct you to the best
person/s

Thanks

Bob 


-----------------------
[log in to unmask]
Education Services Manager
Information Systems Services
University of Southampton 

-----Original Message-----
From: Blackboard/Courseinfo userslist
[mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Anthony
Leonard
Sent: 09 January 2007 11:50
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Anyone trying/using Oracle RAC with Blackboard?

Hi all,

Like a number of universities (I think) RAC is a major project for us 
this year and it would be great to hear from anyone working on, or 
already running Blackboard with databases using Oracle RAC technology - 
principally to get a sense of people's experiences with implementation, 
Blackboard consultancy, and the spread of deployment on different 
platforms out there.

Any feedback would be very gratefully received. Apologies if this 
question has been asked before. I couldn't find much on this topic
recently.

Best wishes,
Anthony Leonard.