Tuning the UNIX Kernel

DBAs managing Oracle databases on UNIX servers must configure the UNIX kernel for their specific database requirements. This is covered in the Oracle Installation Guide for UNIX in Chapter 2 under the section titled “UNIX System Configuration.” This is a critical step for both installation success and acceptable database performance. But the installation guide merely provides some suggested values and equations for calculating others. The DBA must therefore manually perform these calculations and then configure the kernel, assuming that the DBA knows the steps for doing so (the Oracle guides do not provide kernel configuration instructions). So TOAD offers the UNIX Kernel Parms screen to somewhat automate these tasks. It is shown in Figure 6.69 and is accessible from the main menu at DBA|OS Utilities|UNIX Kernel Parms. You merely specify the UNIX variant, how many database instances, average number of users per database and average degree of parallelism, and then when you click the Calculate button, TOAD provides you both the steps to configure your UNIX kernel and the suggested parameter values for your needs.