The I/O StormA Storage Performance Forum
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Kaminario to Demonstrate Oracle Database Acceleration and Applications Performance at OOW 2012Visit us at Booth 429 in Moscone South By Kaminario |
Please join Kaminario at Oracle OpenWorld (booth No. 49, Moscone South) later this month where we will be demonstrating the K2 and discussing how to achieve unsurpassed performance and responsiveness from your Oracle applications.
Get more details here or visit the Oracle OpenWorld Website. Hope to see you there.
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Don’t Forget Data Protection and High AvailabilityPERHAPS THE KAMINARIO K2 IS A CROSS BETWEEN A LAMBORGHINI AND A VOLVO By Gareth Taube, Vice President Marketing, Kaminario |
In Howard Marks’ Network Computing column yesterday, he makes the point that there are different performance tiers among SSD storage arrays. He uses a car metaphor to differentiate vendor offerings by speed. It is fun, creative and definitely flattering to be compared to a Lamborghini. However, as we usually do, we would like to make a few comments.
Speed is not enough to distinguish among SSD storage arrays
We started 2012 off by proclaiming it was the Year of the SSD. Since then, we have discussed frequently that while IOPs and latency are important to convince organizations to adopt SSD, speed is not enough. Data protection and high availability are particularly important to enterprise customers. Many customers we speak with say data protection is equally important to them as speed in determining whether to adopt SSD arrays in their data center. So it would be nice to extend Marks’ car metaphor to include data protection. In fact, if a Lamborghini could cross-breed with a Volvo, the offspring would be a lot closer metaphor for the Kaminario K2.
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Following Up on GridIron’s ResponseCONTINUING THE ORACLE PERFORMANCE DISCUSSION By Eyal Markovich |
Last week, a GridIron representative published a response to my original post about solving Oracle performance problems. The response includes some valid points but shows that the author is not familiar with the Kaminario K2’s full capabilities.
GridIron: There is no such thing as non-disruptive deployment of new storage arrays. In a production environment, halting a system to perform data migration, validate that migration and then restart the environment can be time and resource intensive. Converting existing scripts and operating procedures to use a new vendor’s snapshot features can be equally complicated and risky. With GridIron’s transparent network-based deployment, no changes are required to business processes or applications and there is no data migration involved – it is truly non-disruptive!
Kaminario Response: Yes, in many cases, customers will plan a downtime window for uploading data to Kaminario. In cases where such downtime is unavoidable, a customer can dynamically build a mirror (ASM or OS). When the mirror is completed, the customer can decide whether to drop the old storage or keep it. GridIron claims they are a truly non-disruptive solution, but I wonder what happens when their boxes fail. Based on a GridIron document, a failed unit can be bypassed through simple zoning changes in the Fibre Channel fabric. Applying Fibre Channel zoning in an active system may affect the entire fabric and it is not a recommended operation. To avoid this, customers will need some mirroring solution with two GridIron boxes (one acting as a mirror) and sophisticated configurations to make their solution truly HA. This seems very expensive, and I am not sure how feasible it is.
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Thoughts on Solving Oracle Performance ProblemsSOME DIFFERENCES BETWEEN FLASH CACHING APPLIANCES AND SSD SANS IN ORACLE APPLICATIONS By Eyal Markovich |
George Crump, of Storage Switzerland, published an interesting post recently titled Cost Effectively Solving Oracle Performance Problems. Crump explains the challenges of solving Oracle storage performance problems (including several Oracle instances) while keeping Oracle data in shared storage.
In his analysis, Crump details three solid-state storage solutions that address Oracle performance:
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Performance Management At a GlanceOPTIMIZING PERFORMANCE WILL BE JOB ONE IN 2012 By Eyal Markovich |
In his January 18 Information Week storage blog, Biggest Storage Trend of 2012, George Crump predicts that storage performance management will likely be the biggest concern of IT in 2012. Performance management includes directing applications to the right storage infrastructure, monitoring storage performance in real time, and making quick adjustments when necessary to ensure your mission critical business processes run smoothly and quickly.
The increasing importance of performance management comes not only from the proliferation of speed- and latency-sensitive business processes and database applications, but from the fast rise of SSD that can actually provide that performance at a reasonable price. Crump points to the need for tools that provide quick, valuable, real-time insight to ensure that performance requirements are met consistently with the best bang for the buck.
The recognition of that need is behind the streamlined and information-rich architecture and interface of Kaminario’s management and performance analysis software for the K2 product line.
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Free Buffer WaitBy Eyal Markovich |
So far in the series of Oracle storage wait events we have covered several common events such as “db file sequential read”, “db file scattered read” wait events, direct path read and Direct path Read/Write temp. In this post, I will describe another wait event that in many cases is caused by weak storage performance.
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Get the Most I/O Performance from Your SAP Oracle ApplicationsNEW ACCELERATING SAP PERFORMANCE AND SCALABILITY WHITEPAPER AVAILABLE NOW By Gareth Taube, Vice President Marketing, Kaminario |
We frequently speak with organizations that are considering consolidating their database applications to improve system management and flexibility as well as reduce costs. One popular area where consolidation is a hot topic is ERP applications. In a recent post, we talked about how the Israel Electric Company improved their SAP transaction speed by up to 25 times by using the Kaminario K2 all solid-state SAN storage solution. What this company and others like it found is that even if you put a lot of computing horsepower into your servers and databases, your application performance can suffer if your storage system can’t keep up. And, simply adding more disks doesn’t solve the problem. Read the rest of this entry »
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Storage Column Highlights I/O Performance IssuesTANEJA: HIGH TIME WE SOLVED THE I/O PROBLEM By Gareth Taube, Vice President Marketing, Kaminario |
Storage Magazine published a column recently by Arun Taneja, founder of the respected industry analyst firm Taneja Group, titled I/O performance in need of a fix.
The story discusses the I/O performance challenges that rapid data growth, advances in server technologies and compute-intense applications like ERP and transactional databases are causing in traditional storage. Taneja points out that solid-state technology is seen as the answer, yet controllers in traditional storage arrays aren’t designed to handle speedy SSDs.
We agree. Putting SSDs in traditional storage is like putting a jet engine in an automobile. You may have the power of a jet, but you’re only going to be able to go as fast as the rest of the car’s infrastructure will allow. Everything else is wasted and possibly destructive. Read the rest of this entry »
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Direct Path ReadBy Eyal Markovich |
In previous posts, “db file sequential read” and “db file scattered read” wait events, I explained two common wait events that are associated with I/O Wait. In this post I will describe another common wait event that in many cases is caused by a weak storage performance.
Direct path read is an access path in which multiple Oracle blocks are read directly to the Oracle process memory without being read into the buffer cache in the Shared Global Area (SGA). This event is usually caused by scanning an entire table, index, table partition, or index partition during Parallel Query execution (although 11g support “direct path read” on serial scans). The following SQL statement illustrates a parallel query scanning a table:
| Sample SQL Query:Select /*+ Parallel(emp 4) */ * from Employee emp;
Execution Plan: SELECT STATEMENT PX COORDINATOR PX RECEIVE PX SEND RANGE PX BLOCK ITERATOR TABLE ACCESS FULL EMPLOYEE |
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Databases DissectedGEORGE CRUMP TAKES ORACLE DATABASES APART AND TELLS YOU WHAT TO DO WITH EACH COMPONENT. By Gareth Taube, Vice President Marketing, Kaminario |
Few writers can dissect and illuminate a data storage issue better than George Crump, author of the well respected Storage Switzerlandblog. If you really want to understand the nuts and bolts of database performance and storage requirements, take a close look at his latest entry entitled Choice is Critical When Selecting Oracle SSD.
George takes the reader past the issue of which applications makes sense for DRAM and which make sense for Flash, a topic you have no doubt read about in many places. Instead he takes a fine scalpel to Oracle databases, dissecting them into their many components—the Oracle data file, Redo files, Undo tablespaces, and Temporary tables–and assembles a viable strategy for applying SSD types to each these components for maximum performance.
Submit your data to us and we’ll send you a complimentary analysis to help you identify I/O bottlenecks.
