PDMLink - Oracle vs MS SQL

[dgraham-4]

Does anyone have any thoughts on the pros/cons of Oracle vs MS SQL as it
pertains to PDMlink?

David Graham
CAx/PDM Administrator


Emhart Glass Manufacturing Inc.
123 Great Pond Drive | PO Box 220 | Windsor, CT 06095-0220 | USA
Telephone +1 (860) 298 7377 | Telefax +1 (860) 298 7397
Mobile +1 (203) 376-3144 |

[GaryMansell]

I would also be very interested in people's views on this, as Oracle pricing for Virtualised environments makes it extremely expensive compared to MS SQL. We are currently running Oracle but I want to virtualise my Windchill System and it is looking prohibitively expensive if I retain Oracle.

Does MS SQL perform OK?

Do the PTC Helpdesk staff know how to support MS SQL?

Are there many customers running it?

Rgds

Gary

[atwood]

Afew of things to consider:

1) With regard to performance, PTC has done a great deal of work on this during the past year in testing and development. Either 9.1M040 with the performance patches or 9.1M050 alone shouldhave similar performance to the Windchill/Oracle combination for most common operations. Some are actually faster in our tests.

2) With regard to support, bear in mind that PTC expects your administrative staff to have SQL Server knowledge and training. SQL Server may be easier to administer in some respects, but it still requires specialized knowledge to get the most out of it, so plan accordingly. At this point there is muchbroader knowledge of Oracle than SQL Server in Tech Support, as you would expect after years of supporting only Oracle. You may wait a bit longer for answers to complex issues.

3) SQL Server 2005 (or 2008 in windchill 10.0) is definitely enterprise-capable, both in terms of reliability and performance. Oracleis more ultimatelyscalable due to RAC at this point, but improvements in processing and disk I/O have made the threshold for transitioning from monolith to cluster on the database sidepretty high these days.

Tim Atwood

PTC Enterprise Deployment Center

[trwjimbo]

Depending on the number of databases you run and the number of users you have it may be worth looking at named user licenses from oracle. This is only an option if you require login to view the data, and the login is attached to a specific user, but it may be an option. I have not looked into oracle pricing for a long time so i could not give numbers on how much this would cost, but it makes any future app on new hardware cheeper as you do not have to license that box only the users that connect to it

Sent from my HTC Tilt? 2, a Windows® phone from AT&T

[STEVEG]

I have a bone to pick with the first sentence in #2.

"With regard to support, bear in mind that PTC expects your administrative staff to have SQL Server knowledge and training."

Are you serious!!?? This has been one of my pet peeves since we migrated to PDMLink.

How can PTC create a low maintenance system like Intralink 3.4 and prior versions, then expect people to switch to a system like PDMLink that requires a person, who might not have had the specialized training, get that training just like that? And that is only one part of PDMLink. There are many others areas that training would be of great help.

Leading up to our migration from Intralink 3.3 we were told, or read somewhere, that we could run our implementation ourselves and no specialized training was needed. So much for that...

Steve G

[sdrzewiczewski]

While I understand your concern, when I was in my previous job I saw many
customers make the assumption that they didn't need anybody to 'keep an eye'
on Intralink 3.x. This included nobody doing normal backups etc. Only to
find out later on that when they got a virus on their server, or a disk went
bad that they didn't have any fallback plan and they lost valuable data that
in some cases couldn't be recreated.



If you don't have the capabilities in house to maintain and backup your
databases, you can find many qualified companies to do your maintenance and
backups for you. Any business system that holds this much valuable data
should not be expected to run completely by itself. It's assumptions like
this that get IT personnel fired.



Would you run an ERP system without the proper staff to run it properly? Ask
yourself, how important is all of you engineering data that is in Ilink 3.x,
, Intralink 8.x+, or PDMLink?



Steve D.

[STEVEG]

Stephen, I agree with you about "keeping an eye on IL".

I guess I don't consider backups as part of the advanced degree and have been doing that since I started with Intralink. I believe it was 1.1. Now with PDMLink our IT staff takes care of the backup and virus issues as you mentioned. That is why I said low maintenance system. We also monitored the space requirements and so forth. Those tasks did not require advance programming skills.

We have an outside company that monitors our PDMLink system. They have done a great job. It just makes me upset that a newer version needs a lot more attention, and advanced programming skills that I do not have, to maintain it. I thought newer versions were supposed to make things easier. Isn't that what PTC is touting going from 9.1 to 10? Easier to install...easier to maintain...easier to this or that. Going from IL 3.3 to PDMLink 9.0 required more and not less.

Steve G

[Cosmo]

I could see both sides of this....on one hand, Steve G. went from a "self-contained" implementation of 3.x where you pretty much ran the install script and had Intralink up and running in less than a day without any I.T. experience to PDMLink which as we all know requires a bit more experience in software to admin and has an extra level of complexity. The administration of Windchill is greater than Intralink....no question....but, it's also much more powerful.
Both Intralink and PDMLink should always be backed up of course and THAT is an I.T. function....but I don't think you can always count on I.T. to admin the system from the front end....I.T. in my company only takes care of the hardware side of it and makes sure that it gets backed up. They do nothing else....no performance tuning, no knowledge of SQL, nothing...they do NOT touch Windchill. It is up to us in Engineering to admin everything from the front end of the application.....mainly because we did this when we had Intralink. There is a big disconnect in the middle.
Most companies that used Intralink would have to hire someone new to admin PDMLink.....because the complexity of it and the level/time required to do so is more and frankly not a lot of engineers have the background required.
One option is to go to cloud computing.....use NetIdeas to host your environment for you. It's not super cheap but it's a lot less headache. It'll let you focus on the front end stuff only. They make sure the servers are up and running and performance is great.
I'm actually a little surprised that PTC hasn't jumped all over this "cloud" hosting business. In this day and age, cloud computing seems to be a huge sell and having web-based solutions like Windchill.....this is a very distinct competitive advantage.
Mike -

[BenLoosli]

Having lived through a Intralink 3.x system upgrade to PDMlink7, I can say that the level of support required for the 2 systems is vastly different.
With Intralink, as long as you understood the basics of backup for the file server and database server, you were OK. With Windchill, the complexity of the relationships makes it harder to, but not impossible, to get your backups right.
However, the running of Intralink and the time required for administrative work was much less than Windchill requires. Oracle under Intralink was there and was usually tuned OOTB to give you decent performance. Oracle with Windchill requires tuning to make it work in an acceptable manner. Not all people have an in-depth knowledge of Oracle to do this. PTC does have some tools and scripts that can be run against Oracle that they will analyze and give you back some tuning recommendations. With PTCs admitted lack of SQLserver knowledge, the advanced tuning feedback will be harder to get from PTC.

With Intralink, PTC 'sold' you a complete package for managing your CAD data.
With Windchill, you are getting a kit that needs assembly.

Thank you,

Ben H. Loosli
USEC, INC.

[VivekPhadnis]

We are evaluating the option of using VMWARE as a platform for Windchill
production server. The redundancy and failover options are some of the
things we are looking for.

We have confirmed the support from PTC Tech Support

Can you please reply if you are using VMWARE or have any experience with
VMWARE as a platform for the Windchill Production Servers?

Thanks for the feedback



Vivek

[ShawnLothrop]

There was a thread back in November that discussed the performance of PDMLink on 9.1 at

[kjohns101]

Steve, I couldn't agree more, moving from 3.4 that was almost on autopilot to this PDMLink that requires user support and maintenance on a daily basis, 3.4 crashes since 2004 to 2010 equals @ one week of PDMLink crashes/browser freezing

[sscole1]

Getting back to the topic at hand and adding to Tim Atwood's response, MS SQL Server is a perfectly viable alternative to Oracle as of R9.1 M050 with comparable performance. SQL Serverperformance with Windchill has further improved with R10with furtheroptimization on the MSFT stack.

Anecdotally, in the field we are seeing more existingcustomers evaluate migration to SQL Server for lower TCO and alignment with other solution stacks in the corporate infrastructure such as Server 2008r2 and SharePoint. This is also particularlytrue of migrations from Pro/I 3.x to PDMLink, where Oracle licensing is droppedfrom thePTC packaging(note that Oracle licensingIS carried over on an equivalent user basis for Pro/INTRALINK 8+ migrations).

I have attached a datasheet that goes into more detail on support and scalability for R9.1 on SQL Server 2005. Note that R10 is supported with SQL Server 2008 (running on MS Server 2008r2). I have also attached a performance study based on SQL Server 2005 and R9.1 M050.

Steve

[ptc-94420]

Hi Vivek,

We have been using PTC's data management products in VMware environments for many years now (including 3.x). We use it internally during migrations and implementations and also encourage our customer to run the products in a VMware environment, budget permitting. There are many benefits, provided you implement VMware correctly. A full VSphere (formerly ESX) environment is highly recommended. You can convert an existing server into a VM image but given the opportunity we would suggest creating a clean image from scratch and re-hosting to it. Feel free to contact me directly with specific concerns. Hope this helped.

Regards,

[cid:image001.gif@01CBB3B2.4269C650]

[ShawnLothrop]

Mark,

I think your confusing ESX and VMware Infrastructure. VSphere is VMware's new management infrastructure for both ESX and ESXi. VSphere replaces VMware Infrastructure not ESX. ESX is a custom version of Red Hat Linux from VMware used to run the VMware hypervisor. ESXi is a new smaller footprint OS designed by VMware to only run the VMware hypervisor. ESX is being phased out in favour of ESXi. Here are a few links to help clarify the different products from VMware.

[ptc-94420]

Shawn,



No, I'm not confused. I was referring to the environment as a whole. Many years ago when we started reselling VMware people referred to it as an "ESX environment". VMware has rebranded how they present their products. I know that ESX still exists. We have it running our PDMLink environment in our facility. The point of my original response was that if a company is going to implement a enterprise solution, like Windchill PDMLink, in a virtualized environment, don't skimp. I wasn't trying to sell Vivek the software…



The following link is to vSphere Hypervisor:

VMware vSphere<">http://vmware.sharedvue.net/sharedvue/iframe/index.asp?sviresizer=www.visible-edge.com&svnoresize=1&svpage=product_vsphere4&sid=870a1d0c08890a54900bd5c29e9021b1> delivers resources, applications-even servers-when and where they're needed. VMware customers typically save 50-70% on overall IT costs by consolidating<">http://vmware.sharedvue.net/sharedvue/iframe/index.asp?sviresizer=www.visible-edge.com&svnoresize=1&svpage=solution_serverconsol&sid=870a1d0c08890a54900bd5c29e9021b1> their resource pools and delivering highly available machines with VMware vSphere.
· Reduce capital costs<">http://vmware.sharedvue.net/sharedvue/iframe/index.asp?sviresizer=www.visible-edge.com&svnoresize=1&svpage=solution_serverconsol&sid=870a1d0c08890a54900bd5c29e9021b1> by increasing energy efficiency and requiring less hardware and increasing your server to admin ratio
· Ensure your enterprise applications perform with the highest availability and performance
· Build up business continuity<">http://vmware.sharedvue.net/sharedvue/iframe/index.asp?sviresizer=www.visible-edge.com&svnoresize=1&svpage=solution_bizcont&sid=870a1d0c08890a54900bd5c29e9021b1> through improved disaster recovery<">http://vmware.sharedvue.net/sharedvue/iframe/index.asp?sviresizer=www.visible-edge.com&svnoresize=1&svpage=solution_disasterrec&sid=870a1d0c08890a54900bd5c29e9021b1> solutions and deliver high availability throughout the datacenter
· Improve enterprise desktop management & control<">http://vmware.sharedvue.net/sharedvue/iframe/index.asp?sviresizer=www.visible-edge.com&svnoresize=1&svpage=solution_desktop&sid=870a1d0c08890a54900bd5c29e9021b1> with faster deployment of desktops and fewer support calls due to application conflicts
Regards,

[cid:image001.gif@01CBB3F1.F4202A30]

[ShawnLothrop]

Mark,

I apologize if I misinterpreted your original post. To me your comment equating ESX with vSphere without an explanation could confuse new VMware users. Having sold VMware I'm sure your familiar with VMware's history, but I'll include a little history and why I believe saying vSphere was formally ESX is confusing.

ESX is a hypervisor while vSphere is a virtualization infrastructure platform. Your correct, back in the ESX 1.X and 2.X days all the VMware enterprise products were referred to under the ESX name. However, starting in 2006, with the release of VMware Infrastructure, the role of a hypervisor was separated from the management/infrastructure layer and ESX become a component of VMware Infrastructure. In 2009 VMware released vSphere as the replacement to VMware Infrastructure. I don't view vSphere as formally ESX because ESX still exists as a hypervisor for both VMware Infrastructure and vSphere. I've seen many new VMware users become confused by statements like "vSphere replaced ESX", as the statement doesn't explain how/why ESX still exists. VMware moved from selling hypervisors (ESX etc) to selling virtual machine management infrastructure (vSphere). Today everyone (VMware, Microsoft, Red Hat, Citrix, etc.) gives the hypervisor away and charges for the management infrastructure. There is a distinct difference between a hypervisor and the infrastructure platform used to manage the hypervisor(s). This difference could be lost if you equate ESX with vSphere.

I don't understand the point you were trying to make with the link you included. The link is for a free download of the VMware ESXi hypervisor, which was recently renamed to VMware vSphere Hypervisor. The new name isn't perfect, but it better describes the product being delivered. You get a standalone ESXi hypervisor and the vSphere desktop client to manage it. The reference to ESXi in the old name was huge point of confusion. Your really getting a single node vSphere infrastructure.

Here is an expert from the FAQ on the link you sent.
What is the difference between VMware ESXi and VMware vSphere Hypervisor?
VMware vSphere Hypervisor is the new name for what was formerly known as VMware ESXi Single Server or free ESXi (often abbreviated to simply “VMware ESXi”)...

-- Shawn

[ptc-94420]

Vivek,

To your original post. It works great when setup correctly. Let me know if you are interested in details.

Regards,

Mark Harwood
President
38 Technology Way
Millyard Technology Park
Nashua, NH 03060
Phone: (603) 595-1422 x228
Fax: (888) 545-9375
Toll Free: 1-888-VIS-EDGE
mharwood@visible-edge.com

[patrick.chin1]

I wish I could test against with the same hardware and Linux OS. But too bad, MS SQL only runs on Windows. Most cases OS hasa major factor in benchmarks.

For some tangents inbenchmarks:

One with SQL Server 5 and MySQL:

http://www.postgresonline.com/journal/archives/51-Cross-Compare-of-SQL-Server,-MySQL,-and-PostgreSQL.html

PostgreSQL versus MS SQL Server and PostgreSQL versus Oracle at the following sites:

http://www.redhat.com/pdf/rhel/bmsql-postgres-sqlsrvr-v1.0-1.pdf

http://diznix.com/dizwell/archives/category/postgres

VM and OS clustering is always best in Linux.

[patrick.chin1]

I believe both Windchill Production and ProE on VMware is possible only if you can allocate both cores and memory from the same CPU socket with it's corresponding DDR3 connecting channelsfor RAM.Mixingcores and memory accross physical sockets, boards, and servers is not an ideal performance condition. A lot of people would disagree, we've been working with RedHat and will commence testing Windows 2008 R2 Server 64bit with Hyper-V so you can VMs of 64 bit. RedHat you can force the VM to use cores with its respective DDR3 connecting RAM without going accross sockets, boards and servers ensuring the best performance.

Multple cores per socket is proving out to be the best performance than just dual cores sockets.

[ptc-2878357]

Hello,

Very Interesting topic, Last month I also was investigating on moving our
Windchill installation from Physical boxes to the Virtual, but seeing the
responses we decided to hold off and do more investigation and Performance
bench marking …

I, by this post, am not trying to discourage going to VM’s but have a look
at the discussion that went.

Link to the Post:-