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    Storage Architectures For Oracle Rac: Matthew Zito, Chief Scientist Gridapp Systems

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    uthram
    This document discusses storage architectures for Oracle RAC databases. It begins with an introduction to Oracle RAC and the complexity of storage configurations in clustered environments. The document then covers various storage options for Oracle RAC including raw devices, clustered file systems, Oracle Automatic Storage Management (ASM), and network file systems. It recommends a configuration that uses local disks, a clustered file system for metadata, and ASM for database files to balance manageability, scalability and performance. The document concludes that Oracle RAC significantly increases infrastructure complexity and there is no one-size-fits-all solution, but that blending storage technologies can provide advantages.

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    Storage Architectures For Oracle Rac: Matthew Zito, Chief Scientist Gridapp Systems

    Uploaded by

    uthram
    79 views23 pages
    This document discusses storage architectures for Oracle RAC databases. It begins with an introduction to Oracle RAC and the complexity of storage configurations in clustered environments. The document then covers various storage options for Oracle RAC including raw devices, clustered file systems, Oracle Automatic Storage Management (ASM), and network file systems. It recommends a configuration that uses local disks, a clustered file system for metadata, and ASM for database files to balance manageability, scalability and performance. The document concludes that Oracle RAC significantly increases infrastructure complexity and there is no one-size-fits-all solution, but that blending storage technologies can provide advantages.

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    RAC

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    This document discusses storage architectures for Oracle RAC databases. It begins with an introduction to Oracle RAC and the complexity of storage configurations in clustered environments. The document then covers various storage options for Oracle RAC including raw devices, clustered file systems, Oracle Automatic Storage Management (ASM), and network file systems. It recommends a configuration that uses local disks, a clustered file system for metadata, and ASM for database files to balance manageability, scalability and performance. The document concludes that Oracle RAC significantly increases infrastructure complexity and there is no one-size-fits-all solution, but that blending storage technologies can provide advantages.

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    Download as PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as pdf or txt
    79 views23 pages

    Storage Architectures For Oracle Rac: Matthew Zito, Chief Scientist Gridapp Systems

    Uploaded by

    uthram
    This document discusses storage architectures for Oracle RAC databases. It begins with an introduction to Oracle RAC and the complexity of storage configurations in clustered environments. The document then covers various storage options for Oracle RAC including raw devices, clustered file systems, Oracle Automatic Storage Management (ASM), and network file systems. It recommends a configuration that uses local disks, a clustered file system for metadata, and ASM for database files to balance manageability, scalability and performance. The document concludes that Oracle RAC significantly increases infrastructure complexity and there is no one-size-fits-all solution, but that blending storage technologies can provide advantages.

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    Storage Architectures for Oracle RAC

    Matthew Zito, Chief Scientist GridApp Systems

    Agenda
    Oracle RAC Introduction Storage Foundations Storage and RAC Raw Devices Clustered Filesystems Oracle ASM Network File Systems Recommended Configuration Conclusions/Q&A

    Oracle RAC Introduction


    Oracle RAC adoption rates are increasing DBAs have come to grips with:
    Basic changes OS best practices

    Storage in RAC continues to be complex because:


    Complex support matrix Multitude of different options Storage typically isnt in a DBAs background

    Storage Foundations
    Traditional database model
    One server, one set of disks

    Active/passive model
    N servers, one set of disks

    Storage Foundations Oracle RAC


    Oracle RAC requires *shared* disk access N servers, all with concurrent access to the storage

    Shared Disk Access


    Requires some sort of networked storage
    iSCSI Fibre Channel/SCSI NFS

    Typical Network Technologies


    Ethernet Fibre Channel

    Networked Storage
    Centralized pool Storage admins allocate it out Designed for scale efficiencies Block- or file-based
    6

    Block Storage
    Fundamentals
    Traditional disk devices Operates at a low-level

    Internals
    Below the filesystem Basic IO primitives read, write, how big is the device Provides a generic way to access block storage, abstracts underlying tech Fibre Channel, SCSI, iSCSI

    File-based Storage
    Fundamentals
    Higher up the stack at an OS level More intelligence resides in the OS

    Internals
    NFS and CIFS (CIFS not Oracle-supported!) Metadata lives within the protocol
    Creation, access time File sizes, owners, permissions

    Much richer set of semantics:


    opendir, read, write, stat File locking

    Storage and RAC


    RAC clusters have access to a shared set of storage problematic because:
    Not as common a configuration Traditional technologies are not compatible with shared storage access Specialty storage technologies are required

    Four general classes of RAC-suitable solutions for storage on RAC:


    Raw devices Clustered filesystems ASM NFS

    Raw Devices
    Fundamentals
    A disk or partition where all I/O operations to that device bypass any OS-level caches or buffers and are delivered immediately to the driver subsystem Examples: /dev/raw/raw1, /dev/rdsk/c0t0d0s0, /dev/sda1 when opened with O_DIRECT
    [root@rh44-ma-012 tmp]# raw /dev/raw/raw1 /dev/sda1 /dev/raw/raw1: bound to major 8, minor 1 [root@rh44-ma-012 tmp]# ls -l /dev/sda1 brw-rw---- 1 root disk 8, 1 Jul 7 08:38 /dev/sda1 [root@rh44-ma-012 tmp]# ls -l /dev/raw/raw1 crw-rw---- 1 root disk 162, 1 Sep 8 14:17 /dev/raw/raw1

    Advantages:

    Removes double-buffering problem Guaranteed writes Minimal OS overhead from performance perspective
    10

    Raw Devices - continued


    Disadvantages
    Oracle treats each raw device or raw partition as one file can result in many many raw devices required Theres no way to get an accurate picture at an OS level of how much disk space is in use no df, find, ls -l Backup and recovery solutions that do backups at an OS level are unaware of raw devices Can only support database files ocr, voting, dbf files, redo logs, etc. As of 12g, raw devices are no longer supported by Oracle

    11

    Clustered Filesystem Basics


    Fundamentals
    Most familiar environment; resembles the traditional filesystems used in non-RAC environments Emulates a traditional filesystem with extra intelligence to handle shared negotiation of metadata, etc.

    Advantages:
    Simplified day-to-day administration, all existing tools, scripts work as before Simplified storage configuration Can be used to store non-database files

    Disadvantages:
    Additional initial configuration complexity Adds another product/solution to the database stack Can add performance overhead
    12

    Clustered Filesystems & Oracle


    Multitude of Oracle-supported cluster filesystems
    Specific support matrix ALL CFS solutions require an additional clustering technology to run on the system

    Except for Linux, all of the clustered filesystem options are provided by a third-party vendor On Linux, Oracle has written its own CFS, OCFS2 (Oracle Clustered Filesystem version 2)
    Supports datafiles, ORACLE_HOME, and general purpose file storage Integrated into the mainline Linux kernel OCFS2 is lacking in online scalability compared to some third-party vendors
    13

    Clustered Filesystem RAC Configurations


    Shared ORACLE_HOME:
    Some CFS architectures support sharing ORACLE_HOME installs across nodes Reduces total disk space requires, and number of homes to manage across nodes Creates SPOFs and increases patch complexity (impossible to patch one home without patching all)

    Oracle files on CFS:


    Datafiles, ocr, voting, all on CFS Reduces number of disk devices May run into limitations on the CFS concerning sizing, scaling, etc.

    Logs, admin directories, scripts:


    Useful to put on a CFS for centralization purposes CDSL an option, but more complex better to name directories based on node name
    14

    Oracle ASM
    ASM is a stripped down Oracle instance or RAC database ASMs concept of volume management is very simplistic compared to traditional volume managers
    Disks are grouped together as named disk groups Disks can be added to disk groups online No concept of plexes, snapshots, subdisks

    Primary advantages of ASM over raw devices are


    It removes the one disk, one datafile requirement Adds limited support for RAID

    ASM is cross-platform works with all OS vendors on 10g+


    15

    ASM and 11g


    Oracle 11g Enhancements:
    Now with ASM mirroring, Oracle does not need to completely rebuild all of the data on that disk if it fails Addition of the sysasm group separates out administrative overhead

    Future releases of Oracle are expected to extend the ability of ASM to hold non-database files 10g and 11g Standard Edition *require* ASM

    16

    NFS
    Network File System (NFS)
    Started by Sun Microsystems as a generic fileserver solution Originally UNIX-only, some windows support available today In the database world, generally dismissed as slow and unreliable

    In NFS environments, the NFS server or array acts as a CFS, arbitrating access, locks, and metadata updates
    Think of it like a CFS with the cluster and intelligence running on the storage array Frees the server to focus on driving IO to the storage NFS servers sometimes have additional functional capabilities over traditional block storage arrays
    17

    NFS Continued
    NFS & RAC
    Looks like a clustered filesystems All database components can live on NFS, but only certain OS and NAS array configurations are supported check Metalink Specific mount options are required

    Disadvantages:
    Per MB, NFS storage is often more expensive than Fibre Channel or iSCSI Certain workloads may not scale well on NFS platforms, though most will.

    18

    Recommended Configuration
    Certainly, no one size fits all However, GridApp has seen one configuration consistently offer a blend of manageability, scalability, and performance Three core components in use:
    Local disks of the servers Clustered Filesystem (OCFS2) ASM

    19

    Recommended Configuration
    Local disks:
    ORACLE_HOME separate per-node, and per database

    OCFS2:
    OCR Voting (optionally) archive_log_dest

    ASM:
    Local disks of the servers Clustered Filesystem ASM

    20

    Recommended Configuration
    Advantages:
    Minimum of disk devices required Allows scripts, etc. to be centrally shared ASM provides storage and capacity growth

    Disadvantages:
    Multiple moving parts Additional complexity

    21

    Conclusions
    Oracle RAC dramatically increases the infrastructure complexity surrounding its configuration With storage, there is a particular concern due to the breadth of options available Raw devices, NFS, CFS, and ASM all have particular advantages and disadvantages A recommended storage infrastructure uses all of these technologies

    22

    Q&A

    23

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