The best of all worlds: Dell EMC Ready Solution for Oracle (Part III)
Fri, 09 Dec 2022 20:07:51 -0000
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The best of all worlds: Dell EMC Ready Solution for Oracle (Part III)
In the last two blogs viz. Part I and Part II, I was talking about the oracle solution that was running on the DELLEMC VMAX storage along with many other components. In this blog, I will talk about one more oracle solution that is running on the top of the XtremIO X2 storage, though there are some variations in the use cases here. Before we delve into the details of the solution architecture, I would like to emphasize here that the taxonomy got changed this time from “Ready Bundle” to “Ready Solution”. Now, let’s look into architecture diagram as depicted in Figure 1.
Figure 1: Ready Solutions for Oracle with XtremIO X2 and Data Protection
In this solution, the Oracle databases operated in three different mode. The first is the bare metal 2-node RAC database running on two PowerEdge R940 servers and the second consists of two standalone snapshot databases running on R740 standalone server created from the first category via XtremIO XVC (XtremIO Virtual Copies) while the third one is comprised of two standalone virtualized databases of 11g and 12c versions. The whole architecture depicted in Figure 1 is supported by 2 X-Bricks XtremIO X2 cluster array and backed up by the Data Domain 6300 appliance. The DELLEMC engineers have run a rigorous and diversified testing over this oracle solution (as shown in Figure 1) and generated good results. We will discuss about the results in this blog along with the details of different use cases performed in four tests as depicted in Figure 2. In the first test the objective is to create a simple, standalone 2-node RAC database on a bare metal infrastructure with 2 X-Bricks. This architecture is then enhanced to accommodate 2 snapshot databases (created via XVC from Test 1) and finally two different standalone virtualized databases are created one of 11g Rel 2 version & the other database is of 12c . The complete details of the test case 1, 2, 3 and 4 are depicted in Figure 2.
Figure 2: The details of the test case 1, 2, 3 and 4
Following the best practices of running oracle database on XtremIO platform, DELLEMC engineers generated good performance numbers which are depicted in Figure 3.
Figure 3: The performance numbers for Test 1,3,4
From Figure 3, we have observed that as we increase the workload in terms of OLTP and OLAP and in terms of different virtualized environments of 11g and 12c databases, the databases achieved higher IOPS and transactions per second (TPS) with sub-.85 milliseconds latencies. This is a spectacular performance keeping in view we used only 36 SSDs .
Summary
The Dell EMC Ready Solution for Oracle is an awesome solution with greater agility, operational efficiencies and resiliency in a single solution. Ready solutions for Oracle features like scalability, performance, consolidation, automation, centralized management and protection. So far as technical virtues of this solution is concerned, it has been internally tested which delivers fantastic results in terms of higher IOPS, transactions per second (TPS), bandwidth, scalability, consolidation along with consistent sub-millisecond (less than .85 milliseconds) latencies even after adding enhanced OLTP and OLAP workloads in a bare metal and virtualized environments. It helps companies to reduce typical company’s financial costs like its CAPEX and OPEX . Additionally, the Dell EMC R740/R940 Servers can sustain multiple and larger workloads with less CPU and memory utilization. When we talk of Dell EMC XtremIO X2 storage we observed that it has generated 131K+ IOPS (in-house) along with higher throughput and less than .85 millisecond latencies for mixed workloads. Repurposing copies generated by the XtremIO Virtual Copies(XVC) helps in 1.8X storage space savings due to the inline deduplication and compression features of XtremIO X2 arrays. In summary, the Dell EMC Ready solution for Oracle is a winning, integrated, validated, flexible and configurable solution in all aspects as it combines the best of all the worlds of a typical data center. In the next blog, we will continue discussing the good features of this solution which involves the mixed workload options using both Oracle and Sql Server databases.
Related Blog Posts
The best of all worlds: Dell EMC Ready Bundle for Oracle (Part II)
Fri, 09 Dec 2022 20:07:51 -0000
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The best of all worlds: Dell EMC Ready Bundle for Oracle (Part II)
In my last blog I talked about the small and medium configurations. In this blog, I am going to talk about the large configuration of Ready Bundle for Oracle (RBO) .Part III of this blog series will talk about the different backup options available in this product. To back up the small configuration of RBO (called commercial backups), we use Data Domain 6300 while Data Domain 9300 (DD9300) is used for backing up large configuration (called enterprise backups). Let’s talk about the large configurations in this blog here. It is very exciting to talk about the large configuration which mainly caters to the enterprise world which wants to use the oracle environment in a bigger scale with higher IOPS and bandwidth along with lesser CPU utilization and latency. The large configuration of Ready Bundle for Oracle hosts 50 mixed-workload databases on a vSphere cluster with two ESXi 6 hosts on PowerEdge R940 servers. A VMAX 250F array with two V-Brick blocks, 2 x 1 TB mirrored cache and 105 TBe SSDs is used as the storage array for the VM OS and Oracle RAC databases. Figure 1 depicts the large-configuration architecture.
Fig. 1: Architecture of large configuration
The large configuration uses PowerEdge R940 servers, which are designed for larger workloads, to maximize enterprise application performance. The PowerEdge R940 servers are configured with 112 cores—88 more physical cores than the PowerEdge R740 servers in the small configuration and 40 more physical cores than the PowerEdge R940 servers in the medium configuration. The PowerEdge R940 server is configured with 3,072 GB—2,688 GB more than the R740 server in the small configuration and 1,920 GB more than the R940 server in the medium configuration. In Figure 2 we have performed a comparative analysis of the configurations for the small, medium (discussed in my previous blog) and large configurations of RBO.
Fig. 2: Comparative Analysis of small, medium and large configurations of Ready Bundle for Oracle
The comparative analysis will help the customers to select the appropriate configuration based on their requirements. There is also a tool available called VMAX sizer (available with the local support rep) which helps the customers to ascertain the appropriate configuration for their database/data center infrastructure. Now, I would like to discuss about the spectacular performances that were achieved during the stress-testing of large configuration for RBO. Let me provide some background for in-house database stress-testing which was performed by DellEMC engineers. The engineers ran 10 OLTP production RAC databases, 30 OLTP development RAC databases, and 10 OLAP RAC databases in parallel for a total mixed workload of 50 RAC databases. SLOB was used to create a 60/40 read/write OLTP workload. Swingbench Sales History benchmark was used for the OLAP workload generation. By adding the OLAP databases, they tested the VMAX 250F array along with large sequential reads to the storage workload. This load is reflected by the database size of 2 TB and the db_32k_cache_size and db_file_multiblock_read_count settings that enable larger database I/O to improve large sequential read performance. The entire architecture and database configuration of this use case has been depicted in the figure 3 and 4.
Fig 3: Architecture of the use case for large configuration
Fig 4 : Oracle RAC configuration for the use case in large configuration of RBO
The large configuration included two PowerEdge R940 servers and a VMAX 250F array. Here is a review of the results for this use case, in which the workload of 10 production OLTP databases, 30 development OLTP databases, and 10 OLAP databases ran in parallel:
- 100 vCPUs and 2,640 GB vMem per R940 computer server were used to generate a workload of over 189,968 IOPS on the VMAX array as is depicted in figure 5.
- Due to the processing power of the PowerEdge servers, the CPU utilization was only 20 percent, leaving room for more databases or for failover of VMs from one ESXi server to another.
- The VMAX array with inline deduplication and compression saved 5X the flash space, using only 8,280 GB of capacity for 30 development databases.
- Database IOPS was also excellent. The 189,000 IOPS of workload (highlighted in figure 5) were serviced at sub-millisecond latency.
- The 10 OLAP databases generated a total of 3.88 GB/s of throughput.
Fig 5. Aggregate IOPS numbers for the use case of large configuration
Figure 6 below illustrates the complete dashboard of the configuration and performance numbers (including the results that were discussed above) that got generated after the stress-testing for this use case in large configuration of RBO.
Fig 6. Stress-testing Dashboard of the use case for large configuration
The test results show that this configuration of RBO offer twice the number of supported IOPS compared to the small and medium configurations. The salient feature of this large configuration is that it supported just over 189,968 IOPS below sub-millisecond latencies for all OLTP databases. It supported the total bandwidth of 3.88 GB/sec using two PowerEdge R940 servers and a VMAX 250F with more flash drives. Under this database workload, a mere 20 percent of the CPU capacity was utilized, while the VMAX array accelerated 100 percent on most of the writes. Like the small and medium configurations, storage efficiency continued with 5X space savings across the 30 development OLTP databases due to the inline compression of VMAX 250F. In addition, the large configuration still had plenty of unused resources to support even greater workloads. In the next blog (Part III), I would like to discuss about a new Oracle solution on XtremIO X2 Array.
The best of all worlds: Dell EMC Ready Bundle for Oracle (Part I)
Fri, 09 Dec 2022 20:07:50 -0000
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The best of all worlds: Dell EMC Ready Bundle for Oracle (Part I)
The time has finally arrived! The Dell EMC Ready Bundle for Oracle which is an integrated, validated, tested and engineered system has been launched. This solution will help the Oracle DBAs and other IT users address and eliminate most of the below expectations and challenges in a typical Oracle database infrastructure.
- Higher performance which should be consistent and scalable with the exponential data deluge.
- Higher availability and reliability for mission critical applications.
- Optimal time and operational process management related to database infrastructure.
- Optimal control of database CAPEX, licensing and resource cost with enhanced productivity.
- Improved interoperability among multiple vendors for support of database and other related activities.
It is indeed incredible that the Dell EMC Ready Bundle for Oracle addresses all the above concerns/challenges and provides a better solution vis-à-vis its competitors. When we talk of vetted claims (verified by internal and external sources of Dell EMC) regarding its features, the following points are worth mentioning:-
- 20% lesser Oracle licensing cost.
- 5X Space savings for copies of Oracle databases.
- 99K+ IOPS with sub-millisecond(0.75 milliseconds) latencies
- Six Nine’s availability for Oracle databases.
Now let’s look into the individual components that deliver the above exceptional features/statistics. All the components of the Dell EMC Ready Bundle for Oracle come from the best of all worlds like Dell EMC VMAX 250F (storage), Dell EMC PowerEdge 14G servers (compute), VMware vSphere (Virtualization), Oracle 12cRel2 database (database), Dell EMC AppSync (Applications) etc. as depicted in figure 1 :-
Figure 1: Components of the Dell EMC Ready Bundle for Oracle
This stack of Dell EMC software and hardware along with Oracle Database and Red Hat Enterprise Linux offers umpteen benefits individually or as the Dell EMC Ready Bundle for Oracle. The Dell EMC Ready Bundle for Oracle facilitates the management, optimization, and reduction of OPEX & CAPEX costs to help with the ever-increasing pressure on organizational budget. This bundle offers high resiliency, availability, productivity, performance and innovation. For all technical and non-technical issues, there is a single support window manned by experienced and reputed Dell EMC personnel. Now let’s try to understand all the components of The Dell EMC Ready Bundle for Oracle.
Dell EMC VMAX 250F All Flash Array is the storage component which is designed to consolidate multiple mixed workload Oracle databases into a single platform with a very high IOPS and sub-millisecond response time. Dell EMC Connectrix Switches and directors provide six 9s high availability, built-in high availability, maximum scalability and unmatched reliability with high performance. The Dell EMC PowerEdge R940 is designed to power the Oracle mission-critical applications and real-time decisions, consolidate hardware resources and/or save Oracle licensing costs. Oracle databases are increasingly running(over 70% of the customer base) on the VMware vSphere platform . So far as Oracle Database is concerned, VMware delivers an industry-leading intelligent virtual infrastructure that maximizes performance, scalability and availability while enabling fully automated disaster recovery, better-than-physical security, and proactive management of service levels. Red Hat Linux 7.3 helps in optimizing Oracle Database environments to keep up with the ever increasing workload demands and evolving security risks. Dell EMC AppSync simplifies, orchestrates and automates the process of generating and consuming application consistent copies of production data. It provides intuitive workflows to setup scheduled protection and repurposing jobs that provide end to end automation of all the steps from application discovery and storage mapping to mounting of the copies to the target hosts.
All the benefits that are described above are available in the Dell EMC Ready Bundle for Oracle.
Variants of the Dell EMC Ready Bundle for Oracle
With the above components in place, we have two variants available at present. They are small and medium configurations as depicted in Figures 2 & 3. The “large configuration” variant will be discussed in my next blog..
Figure 2: Small Configuration
Figure 3: Medium Configuration
Both small and medium configurations ensure higher performance, scalability, resilience and availability. With these configurations, Dell EMC has conducted some in-house testing and found some interesting/extraordinary results. Let me discuss these results.
Dell EMC has run five tests for five different use cases as documented below:-
- Two production Oracle RAC clusters
- Repurposing five production databases to fifteen dev RAC database clusters.
- Cluster of five OLAP production databases
- Mixed OLTP workloads
- Mixed OLAP and OLTP workloads
The detailed configuration and the outcomes of the various tests are documented here. In this blog I want to touch upon the last test (use case five) that was run based on the below configuration.
Figure 4: Configuration and Pictorial Diagram of Use Case Five Test
The outcome of this test is phenomenal which is depicted in figure 5.
Figure 5: Outcome of Use Case Five Test
Summary
The Dell EMC Ready Bundle for Oracle is an awesome solution with great features like scalability, performance, consolidation, automation, centralized management and protection. So far as technical virtues of this solution is concerned, it has been internally tested which delivers fantastic results in terms of higher IOPS, bandwidth, scalability, consolidation along with consistent sub-millisecond (less than .75 milliseconds) latencies even after adding enhanced OLTP and OLAP workloads. All these salient features of the Dell EMC Ready Bundle for Oracle in turn reduce the CAPEX and OPEX costs. More importantly, you feel less worried as the Dell EMC Ready Bundle for Oracle makes lifecycle management simpler and all the support and services requests are taken care of by Dell EMC staff with over 10 years of experience. Additionally, the Dell EMC R740/R940 Servers can sustain multiple and larger workloads with less CPU and memory utilization. When we talk of Dell EMC VMAX 250F storage we observed that it generates 99K+ IOPS (in-house) along with higher throughput and less than .75 millisecond latencies for mixed workloads. Repurposing copies generated by the Dell EMC AppSync software helps in 5X flash storage space savings due to the inline deduplication and compression features of VMAX 250F All flash arrays. AppSync also helps in automation of the cloned production database copies and protection of the databases. Net-net, the Dell EMC Ready Bundle for Oracle is a winning solution in all aspects as it combines the best of all the worlds of a typical datacenter.
N.B : The large configuration of Dell EMC Ready Bundle for Oracle has been discussed in my next blog.
In the Part III of this blog series, I would like to discuss about a new Oracle solution on XtremIO X2 Array.
