How to Performance Tuning on HP Integrity VM 4.2 host and guests

[Jan Shu]

Hi All,
I just setup a new HP UX 11.31 (using 3/2010 DVD media) VM 4.2 host (rx2600 server) and created 2 guests (HPUX 11.31 EOE and BOE). My DBA told me that Oracle db creation is 140% - 200% slower on the VM guests vs. a regular physical server (with same 2GB memory, same kernel settings, and same CPU qty 2). How to performance tune on the VM guests so Oracle will run faster? Thank you.

Regards,
Jan Shu

[Pulse001]

Hello,

On rx2600 you maybe having 4 cores.
How have you done the cpu allocation ? How many cores to which VM and what % entitlement ?

[Prasanth V Aravind]

Hi,

certainly you will get slower performance in VM if your configuration & planning is not proper... suppose the guests are using same disks for oracle & both to are accessing the disks simultaniously ... its going hamper the server performance....

You you should plan the gust configuration, in a way that ... boths the gust should not use same physcical resource simultaniously....


Hp Virtual Machines Installation,
Configuration document have some sessions about performance..

Gudluck
Prasanth

[Jan Shu]

Dear Pulse001,
Here is the hpvmstatus output: Does this setting look OK to you??
Thanks,
Jan


Virtual Machine Name VM # #VCPUs Entitlement Maximum Usage Usage
==================== ===== ====== =========== ======= ======= ================
host1 3 1 10.0% 100.0% 1.3% 656126
host2 4 2 10.0% 100.0% 0.0% 0

[Virtual Machine Memory Entitlement]
DynMem Memory DynMem DynMem DynMem Comfort Total Free Avail Mem AMR AMR
Virtual Machine Name VM # Min Entitle Max Target Current Min Memory Memory Memory Press Chunk State
==================== ===== ======= ======= ======= ======= ======= ======= ======= ======= ======= ===== ======= =======
=
host1 3 512MB 0MB 8GB 8192MB 8192MB 0MB 8GB 0MB 0MB 0 0MB DISABLE
D
host2 4 512MB 0MB 8GB 8192MB 8192MB 0MB 8GB 0MB 0MB 0 0MB DISABLE
D

[Steven E. Protter · Accepted solution]

Shalom,

Your DBA is reading off a website. If you give the HPVM guest sufficient memory and CPU, there should be negligible change in time to execute commands.

HPVM is a mature virtualization scheme that has very low overhead.

Now its true, if we have a truly high volume, high impact system, we'd prefer to configure it in a vpar, but its pretty much the right tool for the right job.

Comparable performance of oracle in a hpvm guest situation is possible with normal tuning techniques. Kernel in the vm guest, just like you would do in a regular machine.

SEP

[Pete Randall]

It's still like tuning anything else - you start by finding where the resource contention lies: cpu, I/O, network? Standard tools like glance, top, sar, vmstat, etc. can help you narrow down the problem. Then it becomes much easier to address.


Pete

[Jan Shu]

Thanks, Steve/Peter. That's very helpful advise. I will try those items you mentioned and hopefully they will improve our vm-oracle performance and the DBA happy.

Have a great weekend.

Kind Regards,
Jan

[Jan Shu]

Thank you all for your helpful input.
Jan