The Oracle 11g database provides a fundamental foundation upon which the basic mission-enabling application processes upon which any size enterprise (private or public), most notably online transaction processing (OLTP) systems, depend. The IBM Storwize V7000 Unified storage system, combined with powerful management software, such as Easy Tier for enhancing database performance and

1. Storage for Oracle 11g
IBM Storwize V7000 Unified
Provides Enterprise-Class Value
Introduction
The Oracle 11g database provides a Points to Remember
fundamental foundation upon which the • IBM and Oracle are strong partners with a
basic mission-enabling application long history
processes upon which any size • Storage is the single most important factor
enterprise (private or public), most in Oracle 11g.
notably online transaction processing
(OLTP) systems, depend. The IBM • IBM achieves excellent results in
Storwize V7000 Unified storage system, addressing key customer challenges for
combined with powerful management Oracle 11g.
software, such as Easy Tier for • The Storwize V7000 is an intelligent disk
enhancing database performance and storage system that works well together
remote mirroring capabilities (Metro with the Oracle 11g database
Mirroring and Global Mirroring) for management subsystem.
disaster recovery protection delivers a • All disk systems are not equal: Storwize
storage infrastructure designed to meet V7000 provides additional features and
the specific Oracle 11g needs. functions that benefit an Oracle 11g.
• The Storwize V7000 has become one of
This brief presents the customer the most versatile, scalable and highest
benefits of using Storwize V7000 performing storage solutions in the mid-
storage systems with an Oracle 11g range market
database. It discusses key customer
challenges and how they can easily be met with the combined IBM solution.
IBM and Oracle – A Long History
IBM has had a global partnership with Oracle for over 25 years. IBM is a Systems
Integrator Diamond Partner of Oracle with specializations in: Advanced Specialized
©2012 The Tod Point Group www.TheTodPointGroup.com Page 1

2. Oracle Database 11g and Oracle Database 11g Performance Tuning. All IBM System
Storage products, including the Storwize V7000, are certified by Oracle. IBM continues
to devote considerable resources to its technology and applications alliance with Oracle,
including six fully staffed Competency Centers in the Americas, Asia, and Europe.
Together IBM and Oracle serve more than 19,000 joint customers worldwide. Comment [NA1]: Question for IBM:
Any update on this number?
Storage – The Single Most Important Factor in Using Oracle 11g
Storage is the most important element in successful Oracle 11g projects. The
information that Oracle 11g manages provides the fuel for achieving success with the
mission-enabling processes and functions of any enterprise. That information depends
strongly upon the storage subsystem upon which it resides for the necessary application
performance and availability. Failure of storage to deliver the necessary performance
and availability can lead to severe consequences, such as lost productivity at the least,
revenue loss, loss of customer loyalty, and failure to meet compliance requirements.
Yet for storage to meet its responsibilities in conjunction with Oracle 11g is not easy. In
database environments, I/O wait events are responsible for a substantial portion of the
total database processing time. Yet managing performance, such as avoiding I/O
hotspots and managing buffer cache for I/O avoidance is not straight forward.
Availability is also critical so avoiding potential downtime events and minimizing the
effect of unavoidable downtime events is a necessity, but these require innovative
techniques, such as advanced copy management services.
With proper, well-planned underlying storage resources, Oracle 11g can deliver even
greater resource performance and availability, and cost savings while not only
transforming data centers, but also the businesses that those data centers fuel. And,
attaining these transformative results depends on enterprise-class storage to deliver the
performance, availability, and flexibility to keep up with the dynamic nature of database
environments.
Key Customer Challenges for Oracle 11g
We have identified four of the biggest challenges that customers face when considering
a database system that uses Oracle 11g:
Application Resiliency
In today’s always-on world, tier-1 applications must always be up, well
performing, able to respond to changing demand patterns and tolerate
infrastructure changes and disruptions.
Of course, highly-available applications require the typical high availability (HA)
storage features including fault tolerance, no single point(s) of failure, and non-
disruptive upgrades and data migration. But the industry is evolving towards
solutions that go beyond typical HA practices. Recovery times must be minutes
and not hours; recovery points must be exactly where an application ended
processing (application consistent). Moreover, ideally an HA solution should not
require extensive specialized care, specialized staffing or complex procedures.
Ultimately the evolution leads to continuously available applications and storage
systems that support application resiliency must provide true data resiliency.
Explosive Data Growth
©2012 The Tod Point Group www.TheTodPointGroup.com Page 2

3. According to Reuters, “In any two days mankind creates as much online
information as it created in the previous 30,000 years. By 2021, that same
amount of information will be generated in less than an hour”. Nobody denies it
anymore – coping with explosive data growth is a requisite for survival and
business advantage.
Storage system scalability is one key requirement for coping with explosive data
growth, but there are many dimensions to data growth including storage capacity,
performance, manageability, cost, asset life-cycle management and overall
storage efficiency. What’s more, this growth must usually be accommodated
without and increase in headcount and frequently budget.
Asset Optimization
After providing infrastructure that addresses these first two challenges, the name
of the game becomes asset optimization. The first objective is to drive asset
utilization up to the highest levels possible and, thus, provide the highest return
on assets.
Further optimization is possible by putting the right data in the right place at the
right time at the right price. Recent advances is automated storage tiering help
balance cost and performance.
What’s more, assets have finite lives and when they need to be retired there
must be a way to seamlessly transition from old to new assets.
In addition, discovering and tracking assets and their utilization promotes asset
optimization planning. Also, spotting trends, managing disk space, detecting over
utilized assets, etc., promotes application resilience.
Lastly, another way to optimize storage assets is to reduce the amount of data
stored or wasted and thereby avoid acquiring additional assets. Data reduction
techniques include intelligent backups, space-efficient snapshots, data de-
duplication, compression, archiving and policy-based file management.
Easy to Manage
The list of tasks that a DBA or storage administrator must accomplish is daunting.
Managing growth, solving performance issues, provisioning storage, ensuring
data is protected and restored all take time. As storage infrastructures become
increasingly complex, managing those infrastructures should not become more
complex. Most customers want a single pane of glass, a simple, helpful and
intuitive GUI.
Oracle 11g Certification and Partnership
As noted earlier, storage is the most important element in successful database projects.
Performance and application resiliency are vital to a well-functioning database system
and require not only a solid storage hardware architecture (such as no single point of
failure), but also the storage management services, such as copying and remote
mirroring capabilities, that work hand in glove with the underlying hardware components.
©2012 The Tod Point Group www.TheTodPointGroup.com Page 3

4. Despite being competitors in some aspects of their respective business models, both
IBM and Oracle have long (since 1986) realized the need for coopetition in the form of
very tightly-coupled collaboration. It should come as no surprise then to learn that
Oracle and IBM maintain a continuous collaboration process to ensure the Oracle
Certification of the most current releases IBM Software Group (SWG) and Systems and
Technology Group (STG) products with Oracle current product releases. The STG
products include all of its System Storage products, including the Storwize V7000.
IBM has achieved recognition as a Diamond status partner with Oracle. IBM provides
innumerable resources to ensure that customers that use a joint IBM-Oracle solution
can achieve the tight integration they require, including an IBM Oracle Center and a IBM
Oracle Virtual University.
The IBM Storwize V7000 Unified Solution – Enterprise-class Storage Solutions for
Oracle 11g in the Midrange Market
Specifically designed for the mid-sized datacenter, IBM’s Storwize V7000 comes with a
rich set of storage optimization features – including an IBM software stack.
Derived from other IBM storage solutions including the IBM SAN Volume Controller
(SVC) which has been virtualizing storage since the year 2003 and the IBM DS8000
storage system, the Storwize V7000 leverages their proven functionality to provide
enterprise-class functions for the mid-range market.
The V7000 also comes tightly integrated with two key IBM Tivoli management products,
IBM Tivoli Storage FlashCopy Manager (FCM) and IBM Tivoli Storage Productivity
Center (TPC) for Disk Select. Additional IBM Tivoli products such as Tivoli Storage
Manger for Virtual Environments (TSM VE) or TPC-for Replication are also available.
Robust Data Protection
FCM uses the copy services capabilities of Storwize V7000, FlashCopy, to create point-
in-time snapshot copies. These are application aware copies of production data. This
copy is then retained on disk as backup allowing for a fast restore operation (Flashback).
FCM also allows mounting the copy on an auxiliary server (backup server) as a logical
copy. This copy (instead of the original data on the production server) is made
accessible for further processing. This processing includes creating a tape backup or
performing backup verification functions (for example, a database verify utility).
Oracle Automatic Storage Management (ASM) is Oracle’s recommended volume
manager and file system for Oracle database files. ASM uses disk groups, which are a
collection of disks that ASM manages as a unit, to store data files. Each backup server
requires an instance of ASM, but a single ASM instance can be used for multiple
production systems. FCM works in conjunction with ASM to make a copy of the disk
groups that serve as the production volumes set with those of the backup volumes set.
The benefits of this feature for Oracle 11g are numerous. Hardware snapshots are fast
and efficient and require no resource consumption on the host. Moreover, to improve
storage efficiency, data can be moved to TSM for long term retention and disaster
recovery. Data can also be de-duplicated when sent to TSM. For the utmost in speed
and efficiency, FCM can also restore disk groups from the hardware snapshots.
©2012 The Tod Point Group www.TheTodPointGroup.com Page 4

5. In environments where FCM is used with TSM, automatic backups by TSM can be
scheduled. The backup can start immediately after the point-in-time copy is created, or
at another time when resources are available to complete the backup request. If a
backup to TSM fails, FCM can restart the backup after the cause of the failure is
corrected. In this case, data already committed to TSM is not re-sent. FCM can also use
this point-in-time copy to create a clone database with or without changing the name of
the cloned database.
Among the many benefits of this approach are: 1) near-elimination of the backup
window (which is a necessity in a world where applications run all the time), 2) offloads
processing of the copy operation to the storage controller and thus frees up CPU cycles
(in a world where physical CPU utilization is higher because of server virtualization this
can be quite important), and frees bandwidth on the SAN for actual workload I/O (which
helps avoid having the network as the work I/O bottleneck).
Remote Data Protection
On premises data protection using FCM, perhaps in conjunction with TSM is a
necessary first step, but precious database information needs to be protected in case of
a disaster. Naturally, that includes a long-time site outage, such as caused by a
earthquake, hurricane, or tornado, but could also be a more temporary total site outage,
such as a precautionary shutdown because of rising flood waters or an unexpected
emergency, such as a blown transformer.
Remote mirroring enables physical data protection between a local site and a
geographically separate site called a disaster recovery site. The disaster recovery site
enables applications with their associated data to be able to failover quickly (within
seconds to minutes) and resume normal functions. Note that 24x7 revenue producing
Oracle 11g OLTP applications dare not be tethered to only one site that may become
unavailable for any reason for even a short period of time.
Enter IBM’s Storwize V7000 remote mirroring capabilities: Metro Mirror and Global
Mirror. Metro Mirror enables real-time mirroring of logical volumes between two
Storwize V7000 storage subsystems that can be located up to 300 km apart. As a
synchronous copy solution, the write operations on both hosts (local and remote site)
must be completed on the logical volumes at each site before the writes are considered
to be complete. Global Mirror uses asynchronous technology to provide a long-distance
copy services. The distance between the two sites is limited only by network capabilities
and the channel extension technology used. The remote site has a consistent and
restartable data copy. Global Mirror does not force the local site to wait until a write is
committed at a remote site and that commitment returned to the local site, but any
asynchronous mirroring approach runs the risk of a small amount of data being lost
permanently (maybe mere seconds) that would not be lost using a synchronous
approach. However, a synchronous mirroring solution may not have sufficient distance
between two sites (so that the same earthquake or hurricane would not hit both sites) to
qualify for true disaster recovery purposes — in which case asynchronous mirroring is
preferred. Please note that mirroring needs to be set up easily and the graphical user
interface (GUI) that the Storwize V7000 uses make the process simple. Although all
GUIes purport to be easy to use, that is really not the case. The GUI that Storwize
V7000 has gotten very good customer testimonials for ease of use.
©2012 The Tod Point Group www.TheTodPointGroup.com Page 5

6. Automated Storage Tiering
The V7000 also ships with IBM’s Easy Tier automated sub-LUN storage tiering function.
This no-charge function can optimize the use of solid state disks (SSDs) and hard disk
drives (HDDs) by maximizing performance gains while minimizing costs. Relocating just
5% of data to SSDs with Easy Tier can reduce response time 78%. Small chunks of
data can automatically percolate up or down a tier depending on its heat index.
Easy Tier manages the proper placement of data between SSDs and HDDs on a
continuous basis. Its continuous workload monitoring capability dynamically determines
whether or not data chunks should be on an SSD or an HDD, and, as necessary,
automatically moves these chunks non-disruptively from one tier to the other.
All this is critically important when using an Oracle 11g database with ASM. Oracle ASM
spreads data evenly across all volumes in an ASM disk group, which leads to
maintaining every volume at the same capacity level. In the real world however, the I/O
activity on the volumes of an ASM disk group are different. That data access can be
quite skewed; 80% of the I/O to 20% of the data is by no means unreasonable as the
vast majority of data on disk is seldom if ever accessed after initial uses. The result is
that hot spots are created and optimizing performance for that 20% can yield the
substantial response time benefits earlier mentioned.
EasyTier removes those hot spots in an Oralce ASM disk group by automatically
migrating hot extents from an HDD to an SSD. Note that Oracle 11g has a lot of good
candidate data that can be in hot spots. That includes “read mostly” files with a high
random I/O access density (i.e., IOPS/GB), such as moderately sized control tables and
indexes. Write latency sensitive files — including online redo logs, control files, undo
tablespaces and temp tablespaces — are also good candidates. The net results are
higher transactions per minute and lower response time for Oracle 11g users.
Speaking of transactions per minute, IBM has done some research to determine
configurations and performance benefits for using Easy Tier on a Storwize V7000 for
Oracle 11g workloads, notably OLTP workloads. Two Oracle SysBench load generator
tools were used to generate a simulated OLTP workload. The first, Vdbench, generates
a wide variety of controlled storage I/O workload, which allows control over workload
parameters, such as I/O rate, volume skew, and read and write cache hit percentages.
The second tool used to derive configuration guidelines was Oracle I/O Calibration Tool
(ORION), which simulates various workload types at different load levels to determine
performance metrics, notably IOPS and latency (response time). Now IBM uses a
Storage Tier Advisor Tool, which provides a high-level summary or workload
characteristics and hot extents of the volumes that are monitored in conjunction with
Easy Tier. IBM’s research demonstrated that users are able to provision their SSDs
accurately for their Oracle 11g workloads, including demanding OLTP applications with
the combination of the Storage Tier Advisor Tool and Easy Tier.
Comprehensive Resource Management
TPC is a robust storage resource management tool that provides topology visualization
(SAN and disk), performance monitoring, capacity management, and comprehensive
disaster recovery assistance. TPC can provide near-real-time performance statistics or
analyze historical data. Combined with the Storwize V7000’s real-time reporting
performance troubleshooting is a wiz.
©2012 The Tod Point Group www.TheTodPointGroup.com Page 6

7. Scale Up or Scale Out or Both
IBM recently announced a clustering capability for Storwize V7000 that essentially
doubles the capacity and performance. So, customers can scale up by adding disks to a
single node or scale out by adding another node.
Truly Unified Block and File.
Also recently announced was the addition of file serving in addition to block serving – all
with a single unified interface. The value proposition of unified storage (multi protocol
and multi functionality) is the flexibility and ability to adapt to different usage scenarios
that enable a storage system to take on more personalities. What this means is that by
being able to support multiple interfaces and protocols along with different types of
media and functionality, a storage system becomes multifunctional. A multifunction
storage system may be configured for on-line primary storage with good availability and
performance and for lower-cost, high-capacity storage in addition to being used as
backup target. In other scenarios, a multifunction device may be configured to perform a
single function with the idea of later redeploying it to use a different personality or mode
of functionality.
In addition, most experts recommend a mix of file and block servers for VMware
environments. File storage is easier to manage, but has a little more overhead and
latency. Block storage is faster, but more complex. And, the Storwize V7000 Unified
scales up for file serving as it employs additional processing and does not interfere with
processing resources needed for block serving.
What’s more, for file workloads, customers can optionally use IBM’s Active Cloud
Engine, which lowers storage costs by moving files transparently to the most
appropriate tier of storage, helps control storage growth by moving older files to tape
and deleting unwanted or expired files, improves data protection by identifying
candidates for backup or disaster recovery and creates a more powerful and scalable
storage environment. In the future, it will provide automated file management and
enable ubiquitous access to files from across the globe, reduce network costs and help
improve application performance by distributing files closer to users,
Meeting Customer Challenges and More
Table 1 (below) illustrates how this system squarely addresses customers’ top
challenges. Almost every feature of Storwize V7000 addresses all these challenges.
Additionally, Storwize V7000’s unique architecture is particularly suited to Oracle 11g.
When provisioning storage for an Oracle 11g database, data can be striped across a
large number of disks. This is called wide-striping and it has a proven history of
providing high-performance in these demanding database environments. In addition, the
use of solid-state disks (SSD’s) with automated tiering software, IBM’s Easy Tier, more
than tripled the mixed I/O capacity of the V7000 and improved response time for these
workloads by as much as 43%. SSD’s can also be used effectively for Oracle 11g’’s
swap files which significantly benefits all workloads.
Moreover, a single, non-clustered Storwize V7000 has been independently tested in
mixed workload environments with VMware vSphere and has been shown to be able to
support E-mail, database, web serving and backup workloads simultaneously with
©2012 The Tod Point Group www.TheTodPointGroup.com Page 7

8. excellent performance and throughput. The paper discussing the testing can be found
here
Conclusion
The combination of a Oracle 11g database and IBM Storwize V7000 offers significant
advantages for customers consolidating servers and storage to reduce costs and
optimize IT assets. A database environment with Oracle 11g and Storwize V7000 can
significantly improve administrator productivity, reduce performance bottlenecks,
increase storage utilization and reduce the storage footprint.
With the addition of unified block and file serving, active file management and clustering,
Storwize V7000 has become one of the most versatile, scalable and highest performing
storage solutions in the mid-range market.
©2012 The Tod Point Group www.TheTodPointGroup.com Page 8

9. Table 1 – How Storwize V7000 Solution Meets Customer Challenges
Oracle 11g
Storwize Explosive Collaboration
Solution Application Data Asset Easy to and
Feature Provider Resiliency Growth Optimization Manage Certification
Unified block and Storwize
file storage V7000
RAID 0, 1, 5, 6, Storwize
and 10 V7000
Storage Storwize
virtualization for V7000
local disks
Storage Storwize
virtualization for V7000
external
heterogeneous
disks (via Fibre
Channel)
Thin provisioning Storwize
V7000
Local mirror Storwize
Copies V7000
Enterprise-class Storwize
remote replication V7000
– synchronous Metro
(Multisite) Mirror*
Enterprise-class Storwize
remote replication V7000
– asynchronous Global
(Multisite) Mirror*
Automated Sub- Storwize
LUN Storage V7000
Tiering Easy Tier
High performance Storwize
SAS disk V7000
interfaces
throughout)
Disk Form Factors Storwize
(3.5” & 2.5”, can V7000
be mixed)
High-performance Storwize
cluster V7000
interconnect
Snapshot Copies Storwize
(256 targets, V7000
cascaded, FlashCopy
incremental, or
space-efficient)
Centralized Tivoli
management of FlashCopy
application- Manager
consistent (FCM)
snapshot copies
Scales up Storwize
independently V7000
Expansion
Scales out Storwize
Independently (to V7000
©2012 The Tod Point Group www.TheTodPointGroup.com Page 9

10. Oracle 11g
Storwize Explosive Collaboration
Solution Application Data Asset Easy to and
Feature Provider Resiliency Growth Optimization Manage Certification
32 PB) Clustering
Tight Integration Storwize
with VMware V7000
vSphere
Unified Console Storwize
V7000
Simple GUI Storwize
V7000
Works with Oracle Storwize
Automatic Storage V7000, FCM
Management & TSM*
vCenter Plug-in Storwize
V7000
Non-disruptive Storwize
data migration V7000
Performance Storwize
monitoring V7000 &
TPC – Disk
Select
Capacity TPC – Disk
management Select
Storage Resource TPC – Disk
Management Select
including topology
visualization (SAN
and disk)
Comprehensive TPC –
Disaster Recovery Replication
Manager*
Performs well with Storwize
mixed workloads V7000
Performance TPC – Disk
Optimization Select
Intelligent Backup TSM*
and Restore
File Management Active Cloud
(placement, Engine*
caching, life-cycle)
Interfaces with Storwize
IBM SAN Volume V7000
Controller (SVC)
3 year, 24x7 All
support for the
entire solution –
HW & SW
Fixed price IBM Global
implementation Technology
services Services
Competitive IBM Global
financing rates Financing
with flexible terms
*Note: Optional features are pre-installed for ease of deployment and can be enabled
with the input of a license key
©2012 The Tod Point Group www.TheTodPointGroup.com Page 10

11. Nick Allen, Founder
May, 2012
Regarding the information in this report:
The Tod Point Group believes the information included in this report to be accurate. Data has been
received from a variety of sources, which we believe to be reliable, including manufacturers, distributors,
or users of the products discussed herein. The Tod Point Group cannot be held responsible for any
consequential damages resulting from the application of information or opinions contained in this report.
This document was developed with International Business Machines Corporation (IBM) funding. Although
the document may utilize publicly available material from various sources, including IBM, it does not
necessarily reflect the positions of such sources on the issues addressed in this document
©2012 The Tod Point Group www.TheTodPointGroup.com Page 11