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Re: Oracle 10g and SAN volumes

 
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Darrell G
New Member

Re: Oracle 10g and SAN volumes

We have an Equallogic SAN with 3 LAN adapters, and an HP 4440 with 2 LAN adapters. The SAN is connected via a seperate LAN, but of course there are multiple servers outside the HP-UX enviroment using the SAN. All lan adapters are Gigabit. We have the iSCSI initiator from HP installed to communincate with the Equallogic. HPUX 11.23 and Oracle 10g will be running on these servers.

As iSCSI initiator does not suppport mulipath, will probably be using HP's Auto Port Aggregator to utilize the bandwidth of both HP lan adapters and to gain the ability to survive the loss of a single land adapter.

One item I recently discovered is that an iSCSI will be bound to a single lan adapter on the SAN. So this means that in order to get the maximum throuput to the SAN we will need multple LUNS. The obvious answer is a minimum 3 LUNS (one per adapter), although with only two HP lan adapters I suppose someone could argue for two. And since iSCSI does not load balance, then using ASM to spread the load would seem the right answer.

Re: Oracle 10g and SAN volumes

Darrel,

Ahhh iSCSI... Equallogic... and HP-UX iSCSI I think you may find yourself ploughing a fairly lonely furrow on this one. I've never come across these devices outside of a Windows Departmental environment, and I don't see the HP-UX iSCSI initiator used much either. So I'm afraid I have no specific reccomendations for you at this point. What you outlined seems fairly sensible though.

I'm not totally sure where you'll stand from a support perspective with this either - have Equallogic(Dell) commited to support this configuration? I don't see it on the HP support matrix for iSCSI:

http://www.docs.hp.com/en/iSCSI_SM/iSCSI_SM.htm

Have you done any sort of performance testing on this config yet?

HTH

Duncan

I am an HPE Employee
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Darrell G
New Member

Re: Oracle 10g and SAN volumes

Eqaullogic recommends the use of the HP iSCSI initiator, but then again, there are not a lot of choices out there. HP also supports it -apparently - and were helpful in overcoming some iSCSI/Equallogic obstacles. You are right that it does not show up in the matrix which concerned me when I was given this project. But HP claims to support Equalogic in a lot of literature. My concern has been noted by those that make these decisions and so we move on.

As for ploughing a lonely furrough. Its a lot like plowing in a desert. There is occasional help, and the plowing seems really easy, but you have this nagging feeling that the whole thing just maybe isn't supposed to be done this way...

I have done some performance testing. The results are much faster than the older system that is running. I am doing a bit more extensive testing right now to how different layouts perform.



Yogeeraj_1
Honored Contributor

Re: Oracle 10g and SAN volumes

Hi again Darrell,

I would also spend some time testing the ASM+Oracle database combination. The later itself should give you a boost in performance if properly configured.

Dont forget to size the area carefully. Important issues will also include the RMAN disk backup area/the Flash Recovery Area, etc

You will also need benchmarks from the old environment so that you can compare with the new one. I would collect statspack reports of the previous database...

Perform some backup and recovery tests as well.

good luck!
kind regards
yogeeraj
No person was ever honoured for what he received. Honour has been the reward for what he gave (clavin coolidge)
Gokul Chandola
Trusted Contributor

Re: Oracle 10g and SAN volumes

Hi,
Number of LAN cards are not main concern if these are more than one, thing is that network designing shoud be perfect regading collession etc.
Other thing are in main streem.

Regards,
Gokul Chandola
There is always some scope for improvment.