LVM Layout for Oracle under SAN EVA 5000

[Alex Georgiev]

Simon, just a few quick things that I don't think anyone has mentioned yet:

. old strategies about striping and spreading loads over different LUNs generally do not work on the EVA because of the virtualization that it does

. when creating disk groups, keep in mind that the more disks you have in a single group, the more IO requests per second that group can service

. thus, more disk in a single group = higher performance

. for better protection they recommend that your data and your logs reside in different disk groups... if one disk group goes to hell, you might still have the other with good data on it

. try to spread your disk group(s) vertically - across all the disk shelves

. do read the best practices docs; you can find them by going to www.hp.com/go/eva5000 and clicking on the "Technical docs" link on the right side

. if you'll be doing large data loads, and feel like taking risks, you can disable the write cache mirroring feature - it will boost your IOs per second... remember to turn it back on after the data load is done

. when defining LUNs, set the "preferred path" through the "Command View" software but keep in mind what others have said about the caching and load balancing

. finally, it is VERY IMPORTANT to make sure that you have the latest EVA controller firmware (aka VCS code); you want at least 3.028

Hope that helps!