This webinar will address major bottlenecks in your Oracle database that can be solved by simply improving storage performance. The Pros and Cons of several different storage approaches will be addressed including caching, adding additional hard disk drives, and implementing solid state disk.

1. Beyond Tuning:
Getting the most out of your
Oracle application
Mike Ault, Oracle Guru, TMS Inc.
Texas Memory Systems, Inc. - The World's Fastest Storage®

2. Michael R. Ault
Oracle Guru
- Nuclear Navy 6 years
- Nuclear Chemist/Programmer 10 years
- Kennedy Western University Graduate
- Bachelors Degree Computer Science
- Certified in all Oracle Versions Since 6
- Oracle DBA, author, since 1990
Texas Memory Systems, Inc. - The World's Fastest Storage®

3. Books by Michael R. Ault
Texas Memory Systems, Inc. - The World's Fastest Storage®

4. Statspackanalyzer.com
Free Statspack/AWR Analysis
Sponsored by Texas Memory Systems
-Looks for IO bottlenecks and other
configuration issues.
-Straightforward tuning advice
Texas Memory Systems, Inc. - The World's Fastest Storage®

5. Introduction
Ok, You’ve Tuned:
• Indexes
• Partitioning
• Parallel Query
• Memory areas
• Sort and Hash areas
• OS
• Bandwidth
But…Performance is still not satisfactory!
Texas Memory Systems, Inc. - The World's Fastest Storage®

6. Introduction
• What now?
• Tune or replace IO subsystem?
Texas Memory Systems, Inc. - The World's Fastest Storage®

7. What Now?
• If you don’t have CPU or Memory Issues
• If you don’t have SQL tuning issues
– Or, can’t tune due to third party issues
– Or, can’t use automatic Oracle tuning
– Or, automatic tuning still results in IO stress
• Look at supplementing or replacing IO
subsystem.
Texas Memory Systems, Inc. - The World's Fastest Storage®

8. Basic IO Subsystems
• JBOD – Just a Bunch of Disks
• Basic SAN – Stripe and Mirror or RAID5
• Advanced SAN – Basic SAN plus cache, plus hot
blocking
• Advanced SAN + SSD – Tiered approach with hot
files on SSD or SSD as advanced caching
• Pure SSD – either DDR+Flash or Pure Flash
Texas Memory Systems, Inc. - The World's Fastest Storage®

9. Problems with Striping
• Most JBOD or SAN will be fronted by a
RAID controller or software such as ASM
• Stripe widths are limited to 64k in most
controllers
• ASM uses 1 megabyte
• Small stripe widths cause IO blocking
Texas Memory Systems, Inc. - The World's Fastest Storage®

10. IO Blocking
Texas Memory Systems, Inc. - The World's Fastest Storage®

11. Non-Blocking
Texas Memory Systems, Inc. - The World's Fastest Storage®

12. So….
• Maximize bandwidth
– More HBAs
– Infiniband
– Most SANs can’t utilize existing bandwidth due to disk limits
• Use luns to map hot/cold disk areas (11g ASM does this)
• Tune RAID set stripe depth to IO size
• Tune to max expected IO size
• Reduces blocking reads and writes
– Oracle says it doesn’t block reads
– This is internal to Oracle once block is in cache
– Blocking reads are due to physical issues with disk
Texas Memory Systems, Inc. - The World's Fastest Storage®

13. What causes blocking?
Rotational Latency Armature Motion
(positional) Latency
Texas Memory Systems, Inc. - The World's Fastest Storage®

14. Other IO Issues
• Redo log issues
– Solve by moving or isolating redo logs
• Archive issues
– Improve tuning of archive location
• Network or Storage Network
• Faster IO in archive location
• Temporary Issues
– Tune sorts, GTT, Bitmap, etc.
– Move temp areas to lower latency write IO
Texas Memory Systems, Inc. - The World's Fastest Storage®

15. How do I tell if
My System has Issues?
• OEM, AWR or Statspack
– Top waits are IO related (DB file, Log)
– Average latencies in Tablespoace IO area are
>5-10 ms
– Average latencies are 2-5 ms and IO waits
dominate wait profile
Texas Memory Systems, Inc. - The World's Fastest Storage®

16. How do SANs Overcome These
Forms of Latency?
• More disks – May not help latency
• Caching into Flash or DDR – Good until
cache is flooded
• Selective files (hot) moved to Flash
• Hot blocks moved to faster portions of
disk – still limited to 2-5 ms
Texas Memory Systems, Inc. - The World's Fastest Storage®

17. What are the Pros and Cons?
• JBOD
– Pros
• Easy to implement
• Easy to add capacity
– Cons
• Difficult to manage
• Requires third party or OS tools
• Doesn’t handle hot blocks/files
• Latency issues
• Bandwidth issues
Texas Memory Systems, Inc. - The World's Fastest Storage®

18. What are the Pros and Cons?
• Simple SAN
– Pros
• Easy to manage
• Easy to expand
– Cons
• Requires licenses for management software
• Doesn’t address hot blocks/files
• Still has latency issues
• Bandwidth issues
Texas Memory Systems, Inc. - The World's Fastest Storage®

19. What are the Pros and Cons?
• Advanced SAN
– Pros
• Relatively easy to manage
• Handles hot blocks/files
– Cons
• Expensive
• Expensive to expand
• Licensing of software and support costs
• Still has latency issues
• Still has bandwidth issues
Texas Memory Systems, Inc. - The World's Fastest Storage®

20. What are the Pros and Cons?
• Advanced SAN with Caching
– Pros
• Easy to manage
• Handles hot blocking/files
• Provides some relief from latency issues
– Cons
• Once cache is flooded has latency issues
• Expensive to implement and expand
• Licensing of software
• May have bandwidth issues
Texas Memory Systems, Inc. - The World's Fastest Storage®

21. What are the Pros and Cons?
• Advanced San with SSD
– Pros
• Easy to manage
• Solves most latency issues up to a point
• Solves hot blocking issues
– Cons
• Expensive to implement and expand
• License of software costs
• Usually shoehorns SSDs into existing architecture
• Bandwidth issues
Texas Memory Systems, Inc. - The World's Fastest Storage®

22. What are the Pros and Cons?
• Mixed DDR and Flash
– Pros
• Tier solution for hot blocks
• Usually has outstanding latency
• Usually has great bandwidth
• Usually Automatically managed
– Cons
• Expensive due to DDR
• DDR requires battery backup if used as a storage
tier
• License costs
Texas Memory Systems, Inc. - The World's Fastest Storage®

23. What are the Pros and Cons?
• Pure Flash
– Pros
• Usually doesn’t require tiering
• Great Latency
• Using eMLC – Lower costs than SLC or DDR
• Easily managed
• Easily expanded
– Cons
• More expensive than JBOD, less expensive than
Advanced SAN
• Needs management software such as ASM
Texas Memory Systems, Inc. - The World's Fastest Storage®

24. How About some Numbers?
IOPS Comparison for Various SANs
(Source: www.storageperformance.org)
Texas Memory Systems, Inc. - The World's Fastest Storage®

25. Looking Forward
• You have tuned
• You have tuned the existing IO subsystem
• Performance is still borderline
• How do you determine what system
should be next?
Texas Memory Systems, Inc. - The World's Fastest Storage®

26. Object Intensity
•Combines both throughput and capacity
requirements
•IOPS/GB
•At a high enough IOPS/GB SSD is the cheapest
solution
•At a low enough IOPS/GB Capacity oriented disk
drives meet the performance requirement
•In between is performance optimized drives (15K
RPM)
Texas Memory Systems, Inc. - The World's Fastest Storage®

27. Based on performance AND price
per GB
SSD
Territory
Fast HDD
Territory
Capacity Oriented
HDD Territory
With eMLC the ratio is now around 1 IOPS/GB or less!
Texas Memory Systems, Inc. - The World's Fastest Storage®

28. The Adjusted Storage Value Index
• Takes into account:
– Cost (USD)
– Warrantee (years)
– Capacity (Terabytes)
– Performance (IOPS)
– Latency (ms) (not in original SVI)
• The higher the number, the better the
value
Texas Memory Systems, Inc. - The World's Fastest Storage®

29. Calculation of ASVI
Adjusted Storage Value Index =
(TUC*IOPS*WY)/(cost*L)
Where:
TUC = Total usable capacity in Terabytes
IOPS = Validated IOs per second (SPC-1 results for
example)
WY= Warranty years (or years of paid maintenance if added
to cost)
Cost = Cost of validated system
L = Latency at measured IOPS level
Texas Memory Systems, Inc. - The World's Fastest Storage®

30. Comparison of Storage Values
Adjusted Storage Value Index
20.0000
18.0000
16.0000
14.0000
12.0000
ASVI
10.0000
8.0000
6.0000
4.0000
2.0000
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All data taken from published SPC-1 Results
Texas Memory Systems, Inc. - The World's Fastest Storage®

31. Summary
• Once all other tuning is done, tune IO
• Low latency high bandwidth architectures
give the best performance
• Almost all advancements in SAN
technology are to overcome rotating disk
limitations
• Pure SSD solutions (at least at the main
level) are the future
Texas Memory Systems, Inc. - The World's Fastest Storage®