Re: Oracle8/NT and disk config for Compaq server??

From: Loopback Detected <dest_unreachable_at_yahoo.com>
Date: Sun, 18 Mar 2001 00:25:05 GMT
Message-ID: <3AB40053.E4EB9D6A@yahoo.com>

Hi Henry.

Resources:
Kevin Loney's (and Marlene Theriault) Oracle8i DBA Handbook has an excellent discussion of this topic in Chapter 4. OFA - Technet - http://technet.oracle.com - Oracle8i Administrator's Reference - Optimal Flexible Architecture

I installed 8.1.7 on the same system 2 weeks ago (W2K). This could easily be a 4 hour conversation - but here's the abbreviated version.

First, a few design parameters:

How much RAM is in the system - I hope at least 1024 MB? Do you need to optimize for OLTP or DSS - or - Do you want to optimize for a few batch processes, or a large number of user processes?

	(few batch processes, big block size, big stripes)
	(large # of user processes, lots of volumes, smaller block size)

Do you need to maintain a hot spare drive on each channel - or are cold spares sufficient?

(I'll assume no hot sparing - and that you have cold spares onsite) Do you need to duplex your online redo logs?

(I'll assume no - and they'll be stored on a mirrored volume) Archivelog or noarchivelog?

if archivelog, duplex the archived redo logs? Do you need to maintain a backup set on local storage? (I highly recommend this as one means of reducing Mean-Time-To-Recovery (MTTR)) Edition - Standard or Enterprise?
parallel query option, partitioning? These could have impact as to how you design the drive layout.

Okay - so here goes - 2 methods: SAME and OFA (oversimplified)

SAME - create 2 RAID vols, 1 on each channel, of 6 drives each. OFA - create 6 RAID 1 mirrors, 3 on each channel, of 2 drives each.

First pass - simple approach - SAME - Stripe and Mirror Everything.

Channel		  A                          B
       -------------------------  -------------------------
       |   |   |   |   |   |   |  |   |   |   |   |   |   |  
drive# | 0 | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 |  | 0 | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 
       |   |   |   |   |   |   |  |   |   |   |   |   |   |  
array  | A | A | A | A | A | A |  | B | B | B | B | B | S |  
       |   |   |   |   |   |   |  |   |   |   |   |   |   | 
       -------------------------  -------------------------

array 	RAID  # drives  net
  A     0+1      6       51 GB
  B      5       5       85 GB
  S      -       1       hot spare

Put write-heavy files on RAID 0+1, read-heavy files on RAID 5 volume. OS, swap, online redo, RBS, TEMP go on array A Indexes, Data, archived redo logs go on array B

Don't you wish that you had an external (storageworks) enclosure and 2 more I/O channels?

second pass - OFA - Optimal Flexible Architecture

Channel		  A                          B
       -------------------------  -------------------------
       |   |   |   |   |   |   |  |   |   |   |   |   |   |  
drive# | 0 | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 |  | 0 | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 
       |   |   |   |   |   |   |  |   |   |   |   |   |   |  
array  | A | A | B | B | C | C |  | D | D | E | E | E | E |  
       |   |   |   |   |   |   |  |   |   |   |   |   |   | 
       -------------------------  -------------------------

This is only one possible solution out of many:

array 	RAID  # drives  net
  A      1       2       17 GB	(C: [OS] 4 GB, D: 4 GB [swap], E: 9 GB
[OraHome]) Operating System, Swap, Oracle Binaries
  B      1       2       17 GB  (D: [System]  System, Online Redo logs,
export_dir
  D      1       2       17 GB  (F: [Indexes] Indexes, hot_backup_dest
  C      1       2       17 GB  (E: [RBS]     Rollback Segs,  Archived
redo logs
  E      5       4       51 GB  (G: [Data] )  Data

Online redo logs and archived redo logs should be on different channels. Indexes and data should be on different channels. You'll notice that I did not specify TEMP. Put lots of RAM in the box, hike your sort_area_size up above 1048576 (1 MB) and you shouldn't have sorts going to TEMP. (this is a generalization - hike the sort_area_size and sort_area_retained_size up as needed).

You might want to split array E into 2 RAID 1 vols - as always, it depends.
I optimized for fast read rate of the datafiles with the 4 drive RAID 5 volume.

Kevin Loney's (and Marlene Theriault) Oracle8i DBA Handbook (Osborne - Oracle Press) has an excellent discussion of this topic in Chapter 4.

hth,

Paul

Paul Drake
kinda-sorta-DBA/SysAdmin

PS - All your ORACLE_BASE belong to us

Henry Psenicka wrote:
>
> Can anyone offer recommendations, or perhaps direct me to a resource
> that will explain optimal hardware/disk configuration for Oracle8?
>
> We are staging a Compaq Proliant ML570 server with a dual-channel
> Ultra3 array controller, and 6@ 18Gb Ultra3 15KRPM SCSI drives
> connected to each channel.
>
> Thanks,
>
> Henry
Received on Sat Mar 17 2001 - 18:25:05 CST