Oracle datafiles on a Network Share

Question

I have an Oracle 8.1.7 Server running on Windows 2000 Advanced Server in a Virtual Machine. We are currently using MS Virtual Server to host this. (The allocated hardware is powerful enough - we have 3.5GB RAM assigned, and a single 2GHz processor core, more than most servers in 1999)

One of the limitations of Virtual Server i sthe maximum size of Virtual Hard Disk (127GB) and the database I'm trying to import is 143GB.

To get round this problem, I'm trying to create the DB Datafiles on the physical HDD, which has sufficient space.

My problem is that I'm having difficulty creating a database instance on a network share.

Does anyone know how I can do this while retaining my youthful good looks (and hair!)?

Cheers, Brian

Answer 1

You need the account your Oracle service is started under to have access to the network share.

Can't say it's a good idea to create an Oracle datafile on a network share, but it's a viable solution if you don't mess much with you datafiles and share accessibility.

Answer 2

You say 'import'. If you are using exp/imp, one option may be to only import individual users or tables, and slim them down individually.

Also, the size of an IMP file doesn't correlate to the size of the database. A 140GB exp/imp file may result in a much smaller database (or conversely, it could be larger as the exp/imp file only has the index metadata). Even a database with datafiles totalling 140GB could be smaller if those datafiles contain a lot of unused space.