Home > Workload Solutions > Oracle > White Papers > Consolidate Mixed Database Workloads on Dell EMC VxBlock System 1000 > Summary
Businesses that are pursuing digital transformation strategies need a modern data center infrastructure that is multipronged. It must support the creation of next-generation applications as well as modern versions of existing mission-critical applications such as Oracle 19c and SQL Server 2019 databases. Increasingly, organizations are deploying CI to facilitate this transformation. IDC studied organizations that have deployed Dell EMC VxBlock System to determine the impact on IT operations and the business. As described in The Business Value of Modernizing Mission-Critical Applications with Dell EMC VxBlock Systems, IDC’s research found that organizations that deployed VxBlock System achieved significant benefits, including reduced operational and infrastructure costs and increased additional revenue.
The mixed database/mixed workload reference architecture described in this white paper is a powerful and cost-effective solution based on the VxBlock System 1000. The integrated PowerMax 8000 storage array supports vSphere Native Multipathing Plug-In (NMP) technology. Multipathing increases the efficiency of sending data over redundant hardware paths that connect UCS servers to PowerMax storage. Benefits include alternating I/O using round-robin to optimize use of the hardware paths and more evenly distribute the data. Another benefit is that if any component along the storage path fails, then NMP resets the connection and passes I/O through an alternate path.
In this mixed workload solution, we used vSphere to virtualize both the SQL Server and Oracle databases to drive greater consolidation, simplify management, and assign optimal CPU and memory resources. vSphere virtualization simplifies resource management, making it the best choice for assigning compute cores and memory. Virtualization helps to pool compute and storage resources to drive greater hardware efficiencies. The PowerMax 8000 array’s support for NVMe flash drives enable large-scale block storage to deliver enhanced performance.
While testing this mixed database platform, we created a mixed database environment using Oracle and SQL Server databases and a mixed workload environment including OLTP, OLAP, and snapshot OLTP workloads. This combination of different databases and workloads simulates what a customer might encounter during a database consolidation effort. VxBlock 1000 delivered more than 116,000 IOPS with response time under 1 millisecond. Both SQL Server and Oracle databases showed stable or improved throughput and IOPS as the workload increased and became more complex.