What Operating System for Oracle?

What Operating System should I choose for my Oracle installation?

There is no convincing some people. They assume and believe that if you throw enough hardware at a problem all performance issues will be miraculously resolved. This means only buying the best iron and the most configurable operating system to get the most blazing performance ever seen on the planet.

This may be the case for the top 5 percent of companies where multi-processor machines, gigabytes of memory and terabytes of storage are just for the development machine (as if). Most companies can quite happily get by on a dual processor machine of adequate performance.

Then the arguments start. Which operating system should they use? The *nix diehards will choose their favourite Unix, lots will consider Linux and some will go with Windows. Now, I have worked with Oracle databases on all three (or should that be two) types of operating systems, and lately I have come to the conclusion that Windows is not the evil beast many consider it to be.

Before a flame war starts, consider this, many smaller companies may not have access to a Unix System Administrator / DBA / Developer. They are run on tight budgets and usually on systems where someone with a little knowledge is left in charge to get on with it. A scary situation but all too true in many circumstances.

This is where windows makes sense. Just about everyone can use windows. There are minimal configuration issues and the installation and maintenance of Oracle is relatively pain free. On Linux and Unix this is not always the case, there may be kernel parameters to change and rpms to install.

Surprisingly the performance differences are not all that great, and I anticipate more features and more control with the upcoming release of Oracle 11g. The limitations of the Windows operating system are well known, and for the majority of developers and users of Oracle technology the issue of what OS lies behind the database shouldn't even be a worry.

After all, Oracle on Windows behaves exactly like Oracle on Linux or Unix.