Home > Workload Solutions > Oracle > Guides > Implementation Guide—Oracle Database 19c Best Practices on PowerStore > Solution introduction
Notice: Dell Technologies announced the availability of new PowerStore models in July 2022. The new PowerStore models offer greater performance, more features, and capacity compared to previous storage arrays. In this paper, we optimize Oracle database on the PowerStore 1000T. All the recommendations and best practices in this paper also apply to the new PowerStore arrays.
Dell understands the importance of delivering successful outcomes for our customers. Database management best practices tend to be product specific, making it difficult for customers to understand how to be successful. The primary goal of this design guide is to drive greater success for our customers by moving best practices from product silos to easy-to-use recommendations. The recommendations for our best practices apply across various products.
This program groups best practices based on the layers in the database management stack: storage, servers, VMware vSphere, operating system, and database configuration. We implemented these groups of best practices, monitored the system, and evaluated the test findings by running OLTP workloads to mimic business application systems.
This guide describes design and configuration best practices of a VMware-based virtualized Oracle database solution that uses PowerEdge servers and PowerStore storage. The guide provides an overview of the architecture design and deployment best practices of the entire stack, including the compute, network, and storage design. It highlights the best practices that are based on the layers in the database management stack: storage, servers, network, VMware vSphere, operating system, and database configuration.
This guide is intended for infrastructure architects, storage administrators, virtualization administrators, system administrators, IT managers, and other personnel who evaluate, acquire, manage, maintain, or operate Oracle database environments.
The goal of the Oracle best practices program is to improve customer outcomes using Dell infrastructure. It can be challenging for customers to determine how an Oracle database should be optimally designed, as research can be time intensive and confusing. This Oracle best practice program centralizes and validates recommendations that will help customers successfully run an Oracle database on our infrastructure.
We began validating best practices by gathering recommendations from multiple sources and categorizing the guidelines into different layers of the database infrastructure. For example, in the case of the optimal PowerEdge configuration for databases the team used best practices from current manuals and held meetings to discuss the findings with PowerEdge specialists. We actively worked with experts and engineers responsible for each part of the Oracle infrastructure. Below is a list of each infrastructure layer that was validated for best practices, in the order tested:
Before starting the validation work, the Engineering team conducted internal load testing to determine the workload profile. HammerDB was used to generate an Online Transaction Processing Workload (OLTP) that simulates enterprise applications. The goal of generating a significant load on the Oracle infrastructure was to ensure that the system was sufficiently taxed to show how best practices optimized performance. The Hammer DB workload configuration is shown in the following table:
Setting name | Value |
Total transactions per user | 1,000,000 |
Number of warehouses | 5,000 |
Minutes of ramp up time | 10 |
Minutes of test duration | 50 |
Use all warehouses | Yes |
User delay (ms) | 500 |
Repeat delay (ms) | 500 |
Iterations | 1 |
With this HammerDB configuration, each best practice was validated in an hour-long workload test: 10 minutes ramp up time plus 50 minutes test duration. This approach of running a workload for one hour to validate each best practice was used to ensure the database system reached a consistent state of execution. Reaching a consistent run state has the benefit of validating whether the configuration is stable and if the best practice shows value over time.
The HammerDB parameter “Use all warehouses” forces the use of all 5,000 warehouses. This causes the workload to generate more I/O on the storage array. The first set of best practices compares baseline database performance without an optimal storage configuration to a database configuration with an optimal storage configuration.
New Order per Minute (NOPM) and Transaction per Minute (TPM) provide metrics to interpret the HammerDB results. These metrics are from the TPC-C benchmark and indicate the result of a test. During our best practice validation, we compare those metrics against the baseline to ensure that there is an increase in performance.
Within each layer of the infrastructure, the team sequentially tested each component and documented the results. For example, within the storage layer, the goal was to show how optimizing the number of volumes for DATA, REDO, and FRA disk groups improve performance of an Oracle database.
With each additional test configuration, the working theory was that we would observe a gain in performance. Thus, with the last test in changing the server CPU parameters, an overall optimal Oracle database solution would be achieved.
To enhance the value of best practices, we have identified which configuration changes produced the greatest results. This should enable anyone reviewing the best practices to easily identify the recommendations that will have the most value. Best practices were categorized as follows:
Day 1 through 3: Most enterprises implement configuration changes based on the delivery cycle:
Highly, moderately, and fine-tuning recommendations: Customers want to understand the impact of the best practices and these terms are used to indicate the value of each best practice.
When reviewing the best practices, the day and value of the recommendations are combined. Here are some examples:
With this way of ranking best practices, the hope is that customers can very quickly decide which recommendations will provide the best value. For example, one or two best practices from the section on Linux optimization might provide most of the value depending on the customer’s needs. Investing time in implementing these best practices provides the greatest return. This approach can be taken for each layer of the database system until all Day 1, highly recommended best practices are completed. This differentiates how we present best practices and provides a pathway for customers to have the best return on investment.
Best practices are broad recommendations designed to apply to most Oracle databases using Dell infrastructure. Every database workload and system is different, meaning the value of these best practices will vary from system to system. As with any configuration or change to a database system, the best approach is to test and validate the change prior to implementing the best practice on a production system. We recommend testing all best practices before implementing the changes in production.