If you want to help your Oracle box run better consider making sure your unix installation is tight.
- For example, when you install RedHat, there's a custom install option which lets you have as few running daemons as possible.
- If you can survive developing with console tools then get rid of X. X isn't always a hot but usually the programs you run in it is. (for example StarOffice, Netscape, GIMP)
- You should probably have CVS, vim/emacs, a caching DNS server, ppp/dhcp client (optional), AOLserver, Qmail, screen and Oracle and not much more. (would Don or Ben give us an idea of what their development boxes have? Thanks!)
- Make sure you learn to tune your Oracle installation so that it isn't running too many threads or processes.
- If you are writing your own website (that's not dependent on ACS), you will be responsible for tuning the SQL as well--which again helps you improve performance if not memory usage.
- Also use another box to do things graphical. Any 486DX66+ will run Netscape 3-4 capably, and that's all you need to really access your ACS server after all, so get a secondary development box from a garage sale or something.
- Also, avoid spending too much on multimedia for your ACS server, just that cost saving alone will help you pay for more ram hard storage subsystem. This is a problem if you initially bought your machine to do something else completely different (like to do your college papers and keep in touch with your friends with IP phone or burn MP3s or play Quake)
- If this is a production machine you might want to talk to a Oracle specialist friend to help you make your next Oracle box purchase capable enough for your ACS installation.
There are too many factors that could affect your Oracle installation and you'll learn to think about all the various issues. I think the same can be said for ACS for PostgreSQL in production use. Both database product have special needs. You just have to keep "tuning" and learn from past mistakes.
