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New Oracle accelerator boasts speed improvements of
2,500%
Fixing I/O bottlenecks with
solid-state disk has become a popular way to improve speed and
throughput for Oracle databases, an inexpensive, fast, and low-risk
way to dramatically improve I/O throughput.
So, it's great news that Texas Memory
Systems (TMS) has introduced a new
Oracle accelerator kit, a tool designed for large Oracle systems
running on supercomputer hardware:
“The Oracle accelerator product
bundle is designed to make it easier to accelerate Oracle
database performance using supercomputer-class hardware.
The Oracle Accelerator Kit
includes Texas Memory Systems' RamSan solid state disks, QLogic
switches and QLogic host channel adaptors (HCAs) designed for
InfiniBand-based Oracle grid computing environments.”
This new Oracle accelerator tools
claims to be able to improve Oracle performance and throughput by an
astonishing 2,500 percent:
“The Texas Memory Systems Oracle
Accelerator Kit can accelerate Oracle databases up to 2500%.
Applications accelerated by solid
state disks can support more concurrent users, more simultaneous
transactions and demand less technical support.
By using a pre-configured solution
bundle, organizations benefit from extreme database performance
and productivity gains, yet maintain an infrastructure that is
scalable and easy to manage.”
TMS has three offerings of this new
Oracle accelerator, an accelerator kit for any sized Oracle
database:
- The Small
Business Kit combines a Texas Memory Systems' 32GB RamSan-300
SSD with a QLogic 9024 switch and two QLogic 4x InfiniPath HCAs.
- The Medium
Business Kit offers the Texas Memory Systems' RamSan-400 with 64
to 128GB of capacity along with the QLogic 9024 switch and two
QLogic 4x InfiniPath HCAs.
- The
Enterprise Business Kit is comprised of two Texas Memory
Systems' 128GB RamSan-400s, two QLogic 9024 switches and four
QLogic 4x InfiniPath HCAs.
For Oracle databases that have been
optimized and continue to suffer from I/O-related slowdowns, SSD is
a very popular technology. For complete details on using
Oracle SSD, there are two books dedicated to Oracle tuning with RAM
disks:
Market Survey of SSD vendors for
Oracle:
There are many vendors who offer rack-mount solid-state disk that
work with Oracle databases, and the competitive market ensures that
product offerings will continuously improve while prices fall.
SearchStorage notes that SSD is will soon replace platter disks and that
hundreds of SSD vendors may enter the market:
"The number of vendors in this category could rise to several
hundred in the next 3 years as enterprise users become more familiar
with the benefits of this type of storage."
As of January 2015, many of the major hardware vendors (including Sun and
EMC) are replacing slow disks with RAM-based disks, and
Sun announced that all
of their large servers will offer SSD.
Here are the major SSD vendors for Oracle databases
(vendors are listed alphabetically):
2008 rack mount SSD Performance Statistics
SearchStorage has done a comprehensive survey of rack mount SSD
vendors, and lists these SSD rack mount vendors, with this showing the
fastest rack-mount SSD devices:
| manufacturer |
model |
technology |
interface |
performance metrics and notes |
|
IBM |
RamSan-400 |
RAM SSD |
Fibre
Channel
InfiniBand
|
3,000MB/s random
sustained external throughput, 400,000 random IOPS |
|
Violin Memory |
Violin 1010 |
RAM SSD
|
PCIe
|
1,400MB/s read,
1,00MB/s write with ×4 PCIe, 3 microseconds latency |
|
Solid Access Technologies |
USSD 200FC |
RAM SSD |
Fibre Channel
SAS
SCSI
|
391MB/s random
sustained read or write per port (full duplex is 719MB/s), with
8 x 4Gbps FC ports aggregated throughput is approx 2,000MB/s,
320,000 IOPS |
|
Curtis |
HyperXCLR R1000 |
RAM SSD |
Fibre Channel
|
197MB/s sustained
R/W transfer rate, 35,000 IOPS |
Choosing the right SSD for Oracle
When evaluating SSD for Oracle databases you need
to consider performance (throughput and response time), reliability (Mean Time Between failures) and
TCO (total cost of ownership). Most SSD vendors will provide a
test RAM disk array for benchmark testing so that you can choose the
vendor who offers the best price/performance ratio.
Burleson Consulting does not partner with any SSD vendors and we
provide independent advice in this constantly-changing market. BC
was one of the earliest adopters of SSD for Oracle and we have been
deploying SSD on Oracle database since 2005 and we have experienced SSD
experts to help any Oracle shop evaluate whether SSD
is right for your application. BC experts can also help you choose
the SSD that is best for your database. Just
call 800-766-1884 or e-mail.:
 for
SSD support details. DRAM SSD
vs. Flash SSD
With all
the talk about the Oracle “flash cache”, it is important to note that there
are two types of SSD, and only DRAM SSD is suitable for Oracle database
storage. The flash type SSD suffers from serious shortcomings, namely
a degradation of access speed over time. At first, Flash SSD is 5
times faster than a platter disk, but after some usage the average read time
becomes far slower than a hard drive. For Oracle, only rack-mounted
DRAM SSD is acceptable for good performance:
|
|
Avg. Read speed
|
Avg. write speed
|
|
Platter disk
|
10.0 ms.
|
7.0 ms.
|
|
DRAM SSD
|
0.4 ms.
|
0.4 ms.
|
|
Flash SSD
|
1.7 ms.
|
94.5 ms.
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