Configuring a new N4000

[Joanne Joki]

We recently received our N-4000 and are unhappy with the default file sizes from the intstallation. We have two 32 gig internal hard drives (mirrored) and a virtual array of 360 gig. What would be recommended for the following file systems (all are jfs except swap and stand)

/ (root)
/stand
/tmp
/home
/opt
/usr
/var

How much swap would be suggest wiuth 4906 meg of ram?

Does anyone know of a formular to figure our what needs to set to run 8+ instances of oracle
on this machine?

I know this is a lot to ask, but I am a new administrator with a new dba.

Thanks to all ....

[Patrick Wallek]

Here are sizes of the standard LV's in vg00 on an N4000 I helped to set up:

/dev/vg00/lvol3 319488 / - 16% used
/dev/vg00/lvol1 303125 /stand - 12% used
/dev/vg00/lvol8 2097152 /var - 39% used
/dev/vg00/lvol7 1540096 /usr - 47% used
/dev/vg00/lvol4 1540096 /tmp - 18% used
/dev/vg00/lvol6 1540096 /opt - 35% used
/dev/vg00/lvol5 524288 /home - 54% used

[Sanjay_6]

Hi Joanne,

Have a look at this thread.

http://docs.hp.com/hpux/onlinedocs/5971-0642/5971-0642.html

Look under Section Cold-installing HP-UX 11.0 ---> System Requirements

This list out the standard HP-UX space requirement. You can put more in /usr, /var, /opt depending on what additional applications you want to load.

For the Oracle Database Tuning, once you have setup the system, go to SAM ---> Kernel Configuration --> Configurable Parameters --> Select Action ---> Apply tuned parameter set --> General OLTP / Database Server System. Apply the parameters, rebuild kernel and reboot.

In most cases these should be sufficiect for the normal operations. However you may want to have a look at these PDF's to be sure

Oracle8i Administrator's Reference, Release 3 (8.1.7) for HP 9000 Series HP-UX

Oracle8i Installation Guide, Release 3 (8.1.7) for HP 9000 Series HP-UX

Oracle8i Release Notes, Release 3 (8.1.7) for HP 9000 series HP-UX (64-bit)


You can get these at

http://docs.oracle.com/database_mp_8i.html

Hope this helps

Thanks

[A. Clay Stephenson]

Hi Joanne:

Really the only filesystem sizes that matter
are / and /stand since they are the only one's which can't be grown 'on the fly'. I would set them both at 128MB - that will give you plenty of room for extra kernels. The others of
I would set something like this: /var - 512MB; /tmp - 256MB; /home - 128MB; /usr - 800MB; /opt - 1024 MB. The good news is that
these file systems can be expanded without unmounting if you have OnlineJFS. If you don't have it, you should. The bad news is that 4GB is not very much to run 8 Oracle instances and you almost certainly will be swapping if more than 1 or 2 of these instances need a lot of SGA. I would really purchase at least another 4GB (3rd party if you like). The goal is to not swap at all and configure only about 512 MB of primary swap - you would then need to enable pseudo-swap. If you must stick to 4GB then yours is one of the few cases that I would suggest the old 2x-3x (8-12GB) rule for swap.

My favorite way to configure swap is 512MB of primary swap (mirrored); the remainder as filesystem swap at very low priority - just in case. My rule is buy enough memory so that I never swap.

You will also need to increase the shared memory tunables, message tunables, and semaphore tunables as well as nproc, nfile, etc.

Regards, Clay

[Patrick Wallek]

If you do apply the tuned parameter set recommended by Sanjay, be SURE to look at the TIMESLICE kernel parameter and make sure you change it back to 10. When you apply the tuned parameter set it will probably get changed to 1, which you really do NOT want.

[Wodisch]

Hello Joanne,

you will propably want to use about 4 of your almost 5
GB of RAM for your ORacle instances, hence you will need
about 10 to 15 GB of swap! And perhaps you will set the
kernel parameter "swap_memon" to 0 to be a little bit
faster - but then you will need even more swap, for all
your shared memory needs just the same amount of
spap space...

Make sure that your "buffer cache" is NOT exceeding
about 300 to 400 MB of RAM, hence modify your kernel
parameter "bufpages" from 0 to something between
75000 to 100000.

Since your root and boot disks are 32GB each, you may
want to have your $ORACLE_HOME directories there,
too. So take into account that you will need about
1.5GB for Oracle8.1.6, but about 2GB for Oracle8.1.7
(do not forget space for Oracle patches)!

Make "/var" at least 1 GB in size to be able to uninstall
at least the most recent (hpux) patches...

I am not quite certain, wether the old rule for the primary
swap space still helds true: it must be within the first
2 GB for your boot disk!

If your Oracle instances are 32bit applications, then you
will have to go for "Memory Windows", sometimes called
"Application Domains" - see the white paper on
http://docs.hp.com/hpux/onlinedocs/os/memwn1_4.pdf

HTH,
Wodisch

[Jim Turner]

Hi,

First and foremost: Never, ever, *ever* tell your DBA how much disk space you have. Give him/her only what is asked for -- nothing more.

Here's what my "test" data warehouse looks like for vg00:
415 hpux20:/home/dcs0582> bdf | grep vg00 | sort
/dev/vg00/lvol1 87701 31486 47444 40% /stand
/dev/vg00/lvol3 147456 37637 102980 27% /
/dev/vg00/lvol4 1048576 19306 965561 2% /tmp
/dev/vg00/lvol5 4194304 2639107 1458025 64% /home
/dev/vg00/lvol6 1835008 1098942 690523 61% /opt
/dev/vg00/lvol7 1261568 552108 665192 45% /usr
/dev/vg00/lvol8 1835008 1084135 704155 61% /var
This box has all of the routine stuff loaded like MirrorDisk/UX, Glance Pak, Ignite/UX, HP C/ANSI C, JetAdmin 6.21, OnlineJFS, etc.

On your VA, I would recommend two equally-sized LUNs consuming all available space. On the presumtion that you have two FC controllers in the VA, Create your VG with a path through each card (c3 for LUN0 and c5 for LUN1, for instance) then go back and vgextend the alternate paths into the VG. Now, here's the really important part: Each and every LV you create in the VG that lives on the VA should be striped (Clay!) across both PVs (LUNs). This way, you will light up both FC paths when you access anything on the VA. It's good for fail-over, too.

As for Oracle parameters, your mileage will vary. Your DBA should be able to find some decent documents on Oracle's metalink that should get you in the ballpark.

All the best,
Jim

[Angus Crome]

Attached are the output from one of our L-class servers running 12 instances of oracle and one additional app.

As for the swap, you should at a minimum make swap as large as your physical memory size (once you reach 8 Gb of memory though, this may no longer apply). As long as you have the disk space go ahead and make it 1.5 times physical. It just gets costly in disk space when you typically won't use anywhere near that much swap space.

/ (root) - 100 Mb (the OS grows over time)
/stand - 80 - 100 Mb (the kernel grows over time)
/tmp - 200 - 300 Mb ( depends on how you use it)
/home - (20 Mb, however, since most users and dba's utilize this for insane purposes, you should size it around your environment. I usually try to limit this to no more than 2 Gb and I never leave it on vg00.
/opt - Depending on how many extra products you plan on installing, this could be anywhere from 600 Mb to 2 Gb. I try to split the diff and go with 1.2 Gb. This should cover most sane needs.
/usr - Same as /opt above.
/var - Depends on many things ( I generally default this to 1.2 Gb as well, but if you are going to turn on accounting, then you may need more for log space.

Finally, make sure everything is vxfs (except stand of course) so that you can increase/decrease online (with Online JFS). Nothing ticks off your user community more than down time.

The most important thing to remember is; once you come up with a decent configuration for your environment, try to stick to it. It will generally make upgrades and new software utilization easier to deal with.

Finally, when looking at the output from the attachment, always take the numbers from the SAM output if there is a disparity between them. Maxusers, nproc, maxuprc and most of the semaphore parameters are important for sure, but there are certainly others.

[Angus Crome]

As you can see, there are a multitude of ideas on this question. I do think that everyone will agree that the defaults are not adequate for most normal utilizations in HP-UX (or any of the other OS's for that matter). As you are new to this, you won't have any pre-dispositions based on your environment. Remember the old saying "it is easier to add than to take away", but don't let this rule your decisions either.

Mr. Turner brings up a good point. Unless this system is the absolute bread and butter of your company, don't tell your DBA how much space you have. He/she will want it all, and will try to sell that in the best light to management (decrying performance and growth). It will make your life much harder down the road.

[Michael Tully]

Hi Joanne,

Please don't be afraid to ask questions and
plenty of them if you like. This is place
where a number of sys admins start, and then
they are answering questions as well.

The other guys have given you sufficient
information on vg00 file system sizing that
you can make up your onw mind. Have a look
the below posting on what to do after
installation of the actual operating system.
There are a number of items I am sure that
you will need.

http://forums.itrc.hp.com/cm/QuestionAnswer/1,1150,0x4499e7e60861d511abcd0090277a778c,00.htm

HTH
-Michael