L-Class 2000 with 4 36GB internal drives

[Kathy McGohan_1]

We just got a L-Class 2000 with 4 - 36GB internal drives. HP-UX 11.0 is installed on it, and we will be installing Oracle 8.1.6. This system will be used as a test system. We want to know the best way to configure these drives with optimal performance. Of course the OS is on vg00. We were thinking about putting the other 3 drives into vg01 and striping them. Please let us know the best solution. This system will be used heavily.
Thanks in advance.

[Pedro Sousa]

Kathy, if you need high availability on this system, you should use mirror/ux and striping. But, if you're only applying 3 disks to vg01 you only can use striping.

So, I would advise you to buy OnlineJFS for you to have access to all vxfs features.
If I were you, I would use vg00 with the 4 disks and would put them with mirror and striping.

Note: Striping is a very good idea for performance purposes, but if you don't use mirror and you loose a disk, then you'll be without much of the information on vg01.

good luck

[Thierry Poels_1]

Hi,
personally I would use 4 separate disks, and spread all Oracle datafiles over the 4 disks.
One bad disk in a stripe will make you loose all 3 of them, for starters.
But anyhow, the ideal setup will depend on your application: are there enough datafiles to spread around, or is there only one big datafile and one indexfile, etc....
regards,
Thierry.

[Alexander M. Ermes]

Hi there.
Take 18 GB for the system ( plus mirror ) in volume group 00. That leaves you with a rest of 108 GB.

Install a volume group 01.
The lvols should be 18 GB in size.

For the control and online logs of Oracle :
Install one files on disk1 / controler 1 and a copy on disk2 / controler 2
You should go for two control files and two of each online log file.
Remember, if the database is complete, switch to archive_log=yes for offline logfiles.

Rgds
Alexander M. Ermes

[Tim D Fulford]

More info please.

What is your system used for? OLTP DSS etc.
What is your expected read/write profile?
random large reads, small multiple reads .....
What storage subsystem do you have.

Do you know the above info? before anyone can help!

I have a similar question, but no takers yet!

Cheers

Tim

[Pedro Sousa]

Other things you should pay attention to are:

- db_block_size and filesystem block size. Normally you don't need to change the default value of vxfs.
- add /dev/async driver and give permissions to oracle's group (setprivgrp MLOCK)

http://forums.itrc.hp.com/cm/QuestionAnswer/1,1150,0x39f7a12d6d27d5118fef0090279cd0f9,00.html

[Kathy McGohan_1]

Thanks for all the replys. We do not have mirroring software. Customer did not order it. We do not need high availability since it is a test system. It looks like we don't have much to work with. We just had a talk with the DBA and decided we need to just use all 4 disks, no raid. Thanks again for your help.