Windows 2000 Data Center Gurus - help?

[David]

Hi Guys, i know someone between you all is bound to have had experience using this so thought i'd ask here before i start opening up support calls :/

If anyone can, i'd like a bit of help on a problem i'm facing at work.

We have a program which only runs on Oracle 8i, which in turn only runs on Windows 2000. Up to this point, it has been run on Windows 2000Advanced Server.

However it turns out that the limitations of windows 2000 means that we have come to a stage whereby we need to move forward.

As far as i can tell i have three options 1) run two nodes in parallel 2) look into windows 2000 virtualistation on a beefy box using vmware or 3) windows 200o data centre (32gig of ram of wich i understand is done via pae as it's still only 32bit) and some hardware partitioning... which is where i'm getting confused.

Questions would be,
1) is hardware partitioning done within the OS? if so, is this some kind of virtualisation or is it done pre OS boot so to speak?
2) it says it must have at least 8 cpus, can these by logical or do they have to be physical?
3) is current hardware going to cause a problem with this type of os being that most cpus are dual core at least these days?


If anyone could help i'd really appreciate it, would be a great weight of my back!

 

[Mike_182]

1) Hardware partitioning? For what? It installs as you would any other Windows. It's just licenced by CPU instead of per installation.
2) What has to have at least 8 CPUs?
3) Yes. I think you'll get away with HP Generation 5 kit (get it whilst you still can!) but there's some stuff in Generation 6 which I don't think gets 2000 drivers.

 

[David]

thanks mate.

1) interetsting, so it's like an option at OS installation point, ok.
2) apparently the hardware does according to the windows 2000 datacentre document on MS site
3) gen 5? thought it might need 8 physical processors, but a dual quad would be much cheaper!

 

[Mike_182]

1) No - what way do you want to 'partition' the hardware? If you're buying a big fockoff box and using VMware or similar then that's your partition, other than that you can't?
2) Bugger. It does. That's a f**king problem for me. You need a minimum of a DL785 then, as a CPU is a physical processor in MS terms.
3) Yeah, DL785 G5.

 

[@Spoonie]

1) Hardware partition as related to Datacenter is chopping a big box up into partitions i.e. a 16way with 16GB RAM into 4 way with 2GB and then running the O/S on the 'partition'. 2000 only supported static in that you had to reboot to make changes. 2008 supports dynamic meaning you can move procs and RAM between partitions. God knows how this is done, is a vendor specific thing I think.

Are OEM's still offering 2000 Datacenter?

 

[Mike_182]

Ah, resource allocation - sorry. Figured I'd missed the point somewhere there! Yes, allows you to put your OS in a bit of memory and a couple of processors, and one app in a bit more, and another app in another.

 

[dk]

it doesn't require a minimum of 8 processors installed, just the ability to have 8 processors initially.

as far as a windows 2000 OS is concerned a core is a processor, its not aware of multicore so a 2 processor quad core server will do as it will see 8 processors, although if you have hyperthreading turned on it will see 16 so you will have to have that turned off or go for the 16 processor license or just have a single quad core processor.

Other problem you will have is finding hardware to support, none of the big manufacturers will support windows 2000 dc on their hardware i don't believe.

and the final problem is getting hold of the license, it was only available through oem's at the time (people like dell and HP), not like 2008 where it can be bought through resellers and per processor.

Need to speak to a MS LAR really, someone who knows what they are talking about, i would recommend Softcat and asking to speak to Ian Goodwin or jon foulkes as they both used ot work for MS and know more than anyone i know.

 

[David]

odd, i have a windows 200 advanced server on a quad core box and it only sees two processors, i thought this was an OS limitation, or did you mean it sees them at the hardware partitioning stage?

 

[Nickharding]

Why not just install Server 2003 Data center?

 

[David]

the program we're running is using oracle 8i....which doesn't work in 03 :/

 

[dk]

odd, i have a windows 200 advanced server on a quad core box and it only sees two processors, i thought this was an OS limitation, or did you mean it sees them at the hardware partitioning stage?

hmmm, i know it will see 2 with a dual core, just not used 2000 on a quad core processor machine.

In task manager performance it should have multiple graphs and i would expect to see 4 as the technology between dual core and quad core is essentially the same.

 

[dk]

just sent you a pm on windows 2000 support on servers, i have a feeling this may be a bit of a challenge though, what you want to do!

 

[David]

ok well it seems windows 2000 see's all 8 cores, v difficult to work out if it actually uses them, any ideas? is it oracle8i that would determine this? anyone got an idea?

it's seeing 4g of ram which is odd as i was sure the box has 10gig....sounds like i'm going to have to open it up.

it's definitely windows advanced server.

seems to be a lot of push on virtualisation, going to do some testing with that to see i can do with windows 2000 on esxi platform. i have a feeling it's going to be oracle thats going to give us the most grief.

if all goes as i now exepect it to it'll be gen5 hp dual quad core 16g of ram with say 4 virtual boxes running of it 2procs on each and 4gig of ram. sound slike the only way i can get round my issues right now....unless of course the testing doesn't go so well.

 

[dk]

to get more than 4gb on a 32 bit os such as win 2000 you need to set the /pae option in the boot.ini mate.