Status: SLES-8 certification, OCFS, kernel (and who can use the update)

Hello SuSE-Oracle users,

There have been a few questions on suse-oracle regarding the SLES-8 
update kernel we recently pre-announced here. To answer them, and to use 
the opportunity to inform you about the status of the certification is 
the objective of this email.


1. Status certification
-----------------------

Certification of United Linux 1.0 (SLES-8) is almost complete, we expect 
to have it all done by the end of this month. It consists of these parts:
- installation tests
- stress testing
- non-RAC functional tests
- RAC functional tests

The first three are done or nearly so, and RAC testing is in progress. 
Our hardware partner for RAC testing is HP, by the way.

Please note that this "Unbreakable Linux" style testing is done with 
9iR2, other Oracle databases like 8i will be certified using the old 
tests which don't include stress testing, among other things.


2. OCFS
-------

During certification testing we have determined that OCFS still needs 
further testing and that at this point we can not recommend it. We have 
decided to use raw I/O on LVM logical volumes for our own RAC 
certification.


3. Update kernel for Oracle
---------------------------

CCISS DRIVER ISSUE

We have discovered that the Compaq(HP) cciss driver in this update 
kernel is *broken*. We will replace this driver with a newer version 
(just released by HP because of the problem) in the official release of 
this update kernel.


WHO CAN USE THIS UPDATE KERNEL

* SLES-8/UL-1.0:   This kernel will be released as an official update 
for United Linux 1.0 (SLES-8).

* SLES-7:   SuSE will also recommend and support this update for SLES-7 
customers running Oracle databases.

* Other:   Everyone else is invited to use this so-far best Oracle Linux 
kernel ever (in terms of scalability and stability, and yes we can back 
that statement up with Oracle's stress test results) on their Linux 
systems, like SuSE Linux 8.1, even though this combination will of 
course be officially unsupported by SuSE and by Oracle. Also, on 
non-United Linux 1.0 platforms (where the appropriate user space 
libraries are missing) async I/O will be unavailable!


Best regards,

Michael Hasenstein
http://www.suse.com/~mha/

SuSE Inc.
318 Harrison St., Suite 301
Oakland, CA 94607
USA