From: Big George on

Ok, it's a dummy question, but we have some doubts about an
outsourcing service.

We need in our office to implement Oracle 10gR2 RAC, two nodes in W2k3
Server 64 bits. Our two servers are in a HP Bladesystem c3000. Each
one has 32 GB RAM and processor Intel Xeon E5540.

We use Oracle database from 5 years ago. We have some experience, but
we are not masters.

We decided to take an outsourcing service for RAC implementation and
for some external reasons it's not so easy not to hire them.

This outsourcing service has estimated about 120 hours to implement
Oracle RAC. I think it's excessive. Maybe I'm wrong about it.

I know that time will depend on what we need to be done, so this is
basically what we need:
(this is a translation to English, sorry for mistakes)
Note: When we talk about "migration", it means passing one instance in
Oracle to Oracle RAC

a. Planning
Collect or gather information
Strategy and Planification for implementation and migration

b. RAC installation for production environment
Review and evaluation for configuring W2k3 Server in 64-bits
Installing and configuring Clusterware
Installing and configuring ASM
Installing and creating database in RAC of 2 nodes
Configuring TAF (Transparent Application Failover)
Tuning RAC

c. Data Migration and release to production
Upgrade and consolidate 8 databases or Oracle instances to RAC
(100Gb)
Tuning database
Testing, including conecction from .NET 1.1 or 3.5 applications
using ODP.NET to database in 64-bits O/S.
Release to production

If I distribute 120 hours for a RAC implementation, it means more or
less 6 hour per day, from Monday to Friday, for 4 weeks!

So, one month for implementing Oracle RAC? Really? If I had that
amount of time, I could do it by myself.
From: joel garry on
On Apr 21, 12:04 pm, Big George <jbet...(a)gmail.com> wrote:
> Ok, it's a dummy question, but we have some doubts about an
> outsourcing service.
>
> We need in our office to implement Oracle 10gR2 RAC, two nodes in W2k3
> Server 64 bits. Our two servers are in a HP Bladesystem c3000. Each
> one has 32 GB RAM and processor Intel Xeon E5540.
>
> We use Oracle database from 5 years ago. We have some experience, but
> we are not masters.
>
> We decided to take an outsourcing service for RAC implementation and
> for some external reasons it's not so easy not to hire them.
>
> This outsourcing service has estimated about 120 hours to implement
> Oracle RAC. I think it's excessive. Maybe I'm wrong about it.
>
> I know that time will depend on what we need to be done, so this is
> basically what we need:
> (this is a translation to English, sorry for mistakes)
> Note: When we talk about "migration", it means passing one instance in
> Oracle to Oracle RAC
>
> a. Planning
>       Collect or gather information
>       Strategy and Planification for implementation and migration
>
> b. RAC installation for production environment
>       Review and evaluation for configuring W2k3 Server in 64-bits
>       Installing and configuring Clusterware
>       Installing and configuring ASM
>       Installing and creating database in RAC of 2 nodes
>       Configuring TAF (Transparent Application Failover)
>       Tuning RAC
>
> c. Data Migration and release to production
>       Upgrade and consolidate 8 databases or Oracle instances to RAC
> (100Gb)
>       Tuning database
>       Testing, including conecction from .NET 1.1 or 3.5 applications
> using ODP.NET to database in 64-bits O/S.
>       Release to production
>
> If I distribute 120 hours for a RAC implementation, it means more or
> less 6 hour per day, from Monday to Friday, for 4 weeks!
>
> So, one month for implementing Oracle RAC? Really? If I had that
> amount of time, I could do it by myself.

The testing and tuning is impossible to predict. One little thing can
stick you for days. If any part of an app wasn't designed correctly,
RAC may make it worse. You have to allow a lot of slop time here in
project estimation.

From the information given, can't really make any guess as to whether
it is accurate or a ripoff. Do you have references for the
outsourcers previous track record? Is it a group that does a lot of
conference presentations? Can you make separate contracts for a, b
and c and/or pay based on milestone targets?

Just remember, there's a big difference between installing software
and importing data, versus implementing a running production system.
You may indeed be able to do it faster yourself if you are more
familiar with your system than strangers. Or you may discover what a
"learning experience" is. There may be a lot of unspoken
institutional wisdom, and a lot can be lost in communication, as so
many failed outsourcing projects have found.

jg
--
@home.com is bogus.
http://blogs.ajc.com/political-insider-jim-galloway/2010/04/19/delusions-the-legislature-and-an-implanted-microchip/