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Oracle Database requires reliable, performant storage. As part of our research for this study, we found the Dell EMC™ PowerStore appliance to be a compelling option for providing scalable storage infrastructure. PowerStore supports NVMe solid-state drives (SSDs), NVMe NVRAM for system cache, storage-class memory (SCM), up to 32 Gb Fibre Channel (FC), and 25 Gb Ethernet. The appliance offers several features that would be of interest to Oracle Database IT administrators, including intelligent scale-up and scale-out capabilities for appliance clusters, automated management of resources, and simplified administration. PowerStore also supports thin provisioning, and it provides always-on data compression and deduplication to help lower costs and improve efficiency without compromising performance. PowerStore uses patented technology built from the ground up, called Dynamic Resiliency Engine (DRE), to help protect data and improve the reliability of the appliance. Because of this, Oracle ASM mirroring is not needed, which reduces storage usage and increases overall performance.
PowerStore comes in two different models, PowerStore T and PowerStore X. PowerStore T models serve block services, or both block and file services. PowerStore T models can also be grouped into a cluster of up to four appliances.
A PowerStore cluster enables scaling the storage and connectivity of the PowerStore solution, while managing multiple appliances from a single HTML5 interface. In addition, a cluster can migrate resources between appliances and intelligently load-balance new applications based on storage metrics.
PowerStore X models serve block services and include a VMware vSphere® hypervisor on the system, which allows applications to run directly on the appliance alongside the PowerStore operating system. This feature (called “AppsOn”) is intended for storage-heavy applications and for providing additional compute and high-performance storage to an existing environment. One of the benefits of AppsOn is that it helps IT organizations consolidate IT infrastructure and applications on PowerStore X models.
Both models offer data protection using the DRE, thin-provisioning volumes, snapshots, clones, always-on data reduction, replication, and deep integration with VMware vSphere.
For most workloads, including relational databases like Oracle Database, PowerStore is a good fit for providing scalable, efficient storage with data-protection features. In fact, Dell Technologies plays up the speed, simplicity, and space-efficiency of PowerStore snapshots for point-in-time database copies or for quickly spinning up full-size, non-production environments for testing. Because these capabilities would be highly beneficial to organizations running Oracle Database workloads, Prowess decided to put PowerStore to the test to gauge the performance of creating and using snapshots.
To perform this testing, Prowess engineers used a two-socket Dell EMC PowerEdge 740xd server and added a PowerStore 7000T appliance, configured in block-optimized mode, for database storage infrastructure. Our engineers ran HammerDB against a 750-warehouse database running 1 billion transactions for 433 users. After several runs, we took snapshots of the database, and then we ran the HammerDB tests again to determine if there was performance degradation from running the database on the same storage volume containing the large snapshot (see Figure 7). Performance was within 3 percent after taking the snapshots.
Figure 7. Oracle® Database performance on a Dell EMC™ PowerEdge™ R740xd two-socket system after taking a snapshot, relative to pre-snapshot performance
Finally, our engineers created cloned volumes from the snapshots, mapped the cloned volumes to a two-socket Dell EMC PowerEdge 740xd server, and then re-ran the HammerDB tests to compare performance between the original and snapshot volumes. As shown in Figure 8, performance of the cloned volume actually increased by 16 percent.
Figure 8. Oracle® Database performance on a Dell EMC™ PowerEdge™ R740xd two-socket system mapped to a cloned volume, relative to performance on the original volume
The Dell EMC PowerEdge R740xd 2U two-socket platform is ideal for advanced application environments where performance and reliability are key requirements. With support for up to 24 NVM Express® (NVMe®) drives, the flexible system architecture behind the PowerEdge R740xd offers an attractive balance between scalability and performance. In addition, administrators can mix any drive type to create the optimum configuration of NVMe drives, Serial-Attached SCSI (SAS)/Serial ATA (SATA) SSDs, and hard-disk drives (HDDs) for performance, capacity, or both. For more information on the Dell EMC PowerEdge R740xd, visit https://i.dell.com/sites/csdocuments/Shared-Content_data-Sheets_Documents/en/poweredge-r740xd-spec-sheet.pdf.
The Dell EMC PowerEdge R940 is designed to power mission-critical applications that provide data for real-time decisions. With four sockets and up to 12 NVMe drives, the scalable business architecture of the Dell EMC PowerEdge R940 can support demanding, critical workloads. This server also minimizes configuration time by providing automatic tuning for many workloads. With support for up to 15.36 TB of memory and 13 PCIe® Gen 3 slots, the Dell EMC PowerEdge R940 has significant resources to improve application performance and scale to meet future demands. For more information, visit: https://i.dell.com/sites/csdocuments/Shared-Content_data-Sheets_Documents/en/aa/poweredge-r940-spec-sheet.pdf.