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Oracle Database Tips by Donald Burleson
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SSD as an
Oracle Tuning Tool
The dramatic price:performance ratio of SSD is
changing the way that Oracle databases are tuned. Sub-optimal Oracle
databases no longer have to undergo expensive and time-consuming
re-design. SSD technology is now competing head-on with Oracle
consulting services.
For example, a poorly-designed Oracle database
might take six-months and over $500,000 in consulting cost to repair.
Using SSD as a remedy, the entire database will run more than ten
times faster, within 24 hours, at a fraction of the cost of repairing
the source code.
Of course, the code still runs sub-optimally, but
the performance complaints are quickly alleviated at a very
competitive cost.
SSD promises to radically change the way that
Oracle databases are managed. Consequently, understanding the best
approach to using this powerful new tool within Oracle architecture is
essential.
See
code depot for complete scripts
This is an excerpt from the book
Oracle
Solid State Disk Tuning.
You can get it for more than 30% by buying it directly from the
publisher and get immediate access to working code examples.
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 |
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IBM |
RamSan-400 |
RAM SSD |
Fibre
Channel
InfiniBand
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3,000MB/s random
sustained external throughput, 400,000 random IOPS |
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Violin Memory |
Violin 1010 |
RAM SSD
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PCIe
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1,400MB/s read,
1,00MB/s write with ×4 PCIe, 3 microseconds latency |
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Solid Access Technologies |
USSD 200FC |
RAM SSD |
Fibre Channel
SAS
SCSI
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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
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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:
|
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Avg. Read speed
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Avg. write speed
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Platter disk
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10.0 ms.
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7.0 ms.
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DRAM SSD
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0.4 ms.
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0.4 ms.
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Flash SSD
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1.7 ms.
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94.5 ms.
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