Consider the following recommendations for the Oracle database running on PowerFlex:
- All ASM disks within an ASM disk group should be of equal size. ASM should be able to balance extents across uniform ASM disk sizes within a single ASM disk group.
- Using Linux disk partitions is optional for Oracle ASM, however, if it is used, it is preferable to create partition of the PowerFlex volumes with a 1 MB (2048 sector) offset. This partition can be done using parted or fdisk Linux utilities.
- Avoid placing the redo log files in the Oracle Cluster Registry (OCR) and voting disk groups and create separate disk groups for OCR and voting, redo log files, data files, and archive logs. This recommendation has the following benefits:
- By separating data, redo logs, and archive logs ASM disk groups, storage snapshots can be used for fast backup and recovery of the database.
- By Separating data and redo logs, performance monitoring and resolution of any bottlenecks is easier, as each disk group type has distinct volumes.
- By Separating the Grid Infrastructure (GI) ASM disk group, which contains the OCR and voting disks alone without user data, the database user data can be easily protected using snapshots or remote replication, without including the GI information, which is only relevant to the local RAC configuration. In this way, the replication target or snapshot volumes can be mounted to another preconfigured GI environment quickly.
- Redo logs are key to Oracle database resiliency and performance. Configure the redo logs size so that Oracle switches log files only a few times per hour. Ensure that there are enough log files so that the archiving processes never wait to complete a log switch. For high-performance Oracle databases using PowerFlex storage, 10 GB redo log files are often a minimum size that prevents excessive database log switching. Increase the size if needed.