Home > Workload Solutions > Oracle > Guides > Design Guide—Oracle RAC Database on PowerStore T Storage > VM operating system data store and RDM devices design
To create database VMs, we created four Virtual machine File System (VMFS) data stores to host VM operating systems by using the storage volumes that are presented to the database server ESXi hosts. The following table shows the details:
Volume name |
Purpose |
Data store name |
Accessible by ESXi hosts |
PROD_VM_1 |
PROD VM1 OS |
Prod_VM1_OS_DS |
PROD Host1, PROD Host2 |
PROD_VM_2 |
PROD VM2 OS |
Prod_VM2_OS_DS |
|
DEV_VM_1 |
DEV VM1 OS |
DEV_VM1_OS_DS |
DEV Host1, DEV Host2 |
DEV_VM_2 |
DEV VM1 OS |
DEV_VM2_OS_DS |
Both ESXi hosts must have access to the VM OS data store volumes. For example, two PROD hosts (PROD Host1 and PROD Host2) share access to both the PROD VM OS data stores (Prod_VM1_OS_DS and Prod_VM1_OS_DS). Then, the two database VMs built on these data stores can be migrated between two PROD ESXi hosts (see Virtualized database high availability).
All Oracle-related disks that are presented to the ESXi host from the PowerStore storage array are mapped as raw devices (RDM) to the database VM. To optimize and balance the I/O for the different database disks, we also created multiple SCSI controllers, each of which is responsible for the I/O of a set of disks.
The following table shows the VM hard disk configuration with the corresponding SCSI controllers in both the PROD database VMs. Aside from hard disk 1, all the hard disks are RDM, with multi-writer sharing enabled on the two database VMs. Hard disk1 as a guest operating disk is also configured as Thick Provision Lazy Zeroed VMFS.
Hard disk |
Purpose |
Size (GB) |
SCSI controller |
Disk type |
Sharing |
Compatibility |
Harddisk1 |
Guest OS disk |
250 |
0 |
VMFS |
No sharing |
|
Harddisk2-4 |
Votingdisk/GIMR |
50 |
0 |
RDM |
Multi-writer |
Physical |
Hardisk5-8 |
DATA |
600 |
1 |
RDM |
Multi-writer |
Physical |
Harddisk9-12 |
REDO |
25 |
2 |
RDM |
Multi-writer |
Physical |
Harddisk13 |
FRA |
100 |
3 |
RDM |
Multi-writer |
Physical |
Harddisk14 |
TEMP |
500 |
3 |
RDM |
Multi-writer |
Physical |