Oracle 10g listener standard

Question

Hi all,
I am trying to define Oracle 10g listener standard in my organization.
We have 60 Oracle 9i databases in an AIX node. We are planning to upgrade these database to 10g. During upgrade we want to configure the listeners according to our standard.
Now we are not using dynamic registration for Oracle 9i databases. So there are 60 seperate listeners that always try to establish connections to the database even if the database is not up. This leads to server performance problems when the applications overload the server with connection attempts when there are hundreds of processes waiting to connect.
After upgrade, we want to make all databases register with a listener for performance problems. But one listener per node can be too risky, maybe we can register a database with more than one listener.
Also, there are some reasons for shutting the listener down:
1. Cold backup
2. Apply patches
If we use only one listener per node, for cold backup we would shut down the listener and then no clients would connect to the databases.
After these explanation, I am wondering if we can mix both reducing the number of the listeners for each node and using load balance for all databases.
Do you hane any ideas, suggestions?
Thanks,
Fatma

Answer 1

With Oracle 10g and RMAN there is no longer any reason to be doing cold backups.
I'd run one listener per node. If this is too risky than a single database instance is also too risky and you should be investigating other high-availabilty solutions. RAC isn't always the answer.
Connection manager might also be useful in your environment.
Cheers,
Colin