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Performance of Oracle on NAS devices depends in part on network performance between the NFS client and server. Therefore, consider whether to use a dedicated interface for NFS control and NFS data traffic.
If NFS and network redundancy is a concern, consider creating a bonded interface for NFS control traffic on the NFS client (database server). This bonded interface could be a bonded public network, a bonded interface for the RAC interconnect in a RAC environment, or some other bonded interface.
Using a bonded interface for NFS control traffic and an interface for NFS data traffic might not always be possible because of a limited number of available NICs. In such cases, using a single unbonded interface for both NFS control and data traffic may be the only possible option. However, that configuration might cause network performance issues under heavy loads because the server will not perform network load balancing. There will also be no redundancy for NFS control traffic.
When using dNFS, using multiple network paths is recommended. Oracle supports one to five network paths between a NAS server and NFS client—one path for NFS control traffic and up to four paths for NFS data traffic. Each of these paths should also be configured on a separate dedicated subnet. This includes not using the subnet of the public network for NFS. Using different and dedicated subnets provides:
If there are not enough subnets available, it is possible to configure dNFS paths to share subnets. However, this is not optimal and it requires extra configuration in the operating system and in Oracle. For the operating system, ingress filtering must be relaxed for multihomed networks, and static routes must be defined. For Oracle, file oranfstab must be created to direct dNFS data traffic to flow across paired endpoint IP addresses in the same shared subnet. This extra configuration prevents the operating system from using the default route and allows multiple NIC interfaces in a server to use the same subnet.
If a subnet is shared between NICs and the appropriate configuration does not exist in the operating system and in Oracle, the operating system chooses the dynamic route. When it does, the operating system will invariably use the first best-matched route possible from the operating system routing table. Usually, that route will be incorrect and will impact the environment negatively. Some negative impacts are:
When sharing a subnet, all paired end-point IP addresses of the different network paths for dNFS data traffic must be defined in the Oracle file oranfstab.
For additional information, see sections Single network path for dNFS, Multiple client interfaces for dNFS, Configuring LACP – NAS client, and Oracle dNFS configuration file oranfstab.