Dell EMC Ready Solutions for Oracle: Design for Dell EMC Unity All Flash Unified Storage

Transcription

1 Dell EMC Ready Solutions for Oracle: Design for Dell EMC Unity All Flash Unified Storage With Dell EMC PowerEdge R840 and R640, RHEL 7.4, ESXi 6.5, and Oracle Database 12cR2 and 18cR1 February 2019 H17577 Abstract This reference architecture guide shows that customers can migrate from Oracle Database 12c to Oracle Database 18c running on the Dell EMC Unity 650F All Flash storage array with no performance impact to production workloads. Dell EMC Solutions

2 Copyright The information in this publication is provided as is. Dell Inc. makes no representations or warranties of any kind with respect to the information in this publication, and specifically disclaims implied warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose. Use, copying, and distribution of any software described in this publication requires an applicable software license. Copyright 2019 Dell Inc. or its subsidiaries. All Rights Reserved. Dell Technologies, Dell, EMC, Dell EMC and other trademarks are trademarks of Dell Inc. or its subsidiaries. Intel, the Intel logo, the Intel Inside logo and Xeon are trademarks of Intel Corporation in the U.S. and/or other countries. Other trademarks may be trademarks of their respective owners. Published in the USA February 2019 H Dell Inc. believes the information in this document is accurate as of its publication date. The information is subject to change without notice. 2 Dell EMC Ready Solutions for Oracle: Design for Dell EMC Unity All Flash Unified Storage With Dell EMC PowerEdge R840 and R640, RHEL 7.4, ESXi 6.5, and Oracle Databases 12cR2 and 18cR1

3 Contents Contents Chapter 1 Executive Summary 5 Ready Solutions for Oracle... 6 Scope... 7 Audience... 7 We value your feedback... 7 Chapter 2 Architecture and Design Considerations 8 Unity 650F storage design Compute and network design FC fabric connectivity and zoning Virtual network design VM configuration Guest operating system configuration Chapter 3 Oracle Database 12cR2 Performance on Unity 650F 20 Test objectives Use cases, test methods, and test results Chapter 4 Oracle Database 18cR1 Performance on Unity 650F 32 Test objectives Upgrading Oracle Database 12cR2 to 18cR Use cases, test methods, and test results Chapter 5 Summary 49 Summary Chapter 6 References 52 Dell EMC documentation VMware documentation Oracle documentation SLOB documentation Appendix A Test Tools, and Database and SLOB Configuration 54 Testing and performance collection tools SLOB dataset customization Database parameter configuration SLOB parameter settings (slob.conf) Dell EMC Ready Solutions for Oracle: Design for Dell EMC Unity All Flash Unified Storage 3

4 Contents Appendix B Equipment List 59 Hardware components Software components Dell EMC Ready Solutions for Oracle: Design for Dell EMC Unity All Flash Unified Storage

5 Chapter 1: Executive Summary Chapter 1 Executive Summary This chapter presents the following topics: Ready Solutions for Oracle... 6 Scope... 7 Audience... 7 We value your feedback... 7 Dell EMC Ready Solutions for Oracle: Design for Dell EMC Unity All Flash Unified Storage 5

6 Chapter 1: Executive Summary Ready Solutions for Oracle Overview Today s database world faces many challenges including performance stabilization, data consolidation, rapid creation of production copies, cost of organizational infrastructure (space and storage), and other factors contributing to TCO. The challenges are becoming more complex, critical, and intense as organizations are pushed to upgrade their databases to the latest versions (for example, upgrading Oracle Database 12cR2 to 18cR1) because of business, technical, or infrastructure issues. Because of the challenging circumstances, it is extremely important to offer and support a reference architecture that is not only integrated, tested, and validated, but also addresses all the customers pain points. To address these challenges, Dell EMC Ready Solutions for Oracle provides a reference architecture that features operational agility, efficiency, stability, resiliency, and storage savings. Testing and validation of the architecture prove that customers can migrate from Oracle Database 12cR2 to Oracle Database 18cR1 running on a Dell EMC Unity 650 All Flash (Unity 650F) storage array with no adverse performance impact to production workloads. This Dell EMC reference architecture for Oracle yields a faster time-to-value along with superior performance, significant cost savings, and future-ready scalability. Design for Unity reference architecture Ready Solutions for Oracle: Design for Dell EMC Unity All Flash Storage is a reference architecture consisting of: Unity 650F storage Dell EMC PowerEdge R840 and R640 servers Dell EMC Networking and Dell EMC Connectrix switches VMware vsphere virtualization (version 6.5) Oracle Databases 12cR2 and 18cR1 By eliminating the time-consuming and complex process of designing a system, this tested and validated reference architecture streamlines the purchase and update cycles for the IT organization and accelerates delivery times of complex mission-critical Oracle Databases 12cR2 and 18cR1 and related applications. Features of this reference architecture for Oracle include: Significant data compression and storage savings, and reduced TCO Support for simplified upgrading of Oracle Database 12cR2 to Oracle Database 18cR1 with no degradation of performance, as demonstrated by the performance metrics in this guide Consistent database performance while running an 80/20 read/write Silly Little Oracle Benchmark (SLOB) stress test and creating two snapshots (both in 12cR2 and 18cR1 databases) hosted on the Unity 650F storage array 6 Dell EMC Ready Solutions for Oracle: Design for Dell EMC Unity All Flash Unified Storage

7 Chapter 1: Executive Summary Scope This reference architecture guide describes the architecture design and the process and outcome of upgrading an Oracle Database 12cR2 to an Oracle Database 18cR1. The guide describes how we tested and validated the architecture with multiple datasets and workloads, with and without database snapshots, to ensure maximum flexibility and to prove that upgrading the database has no negative impact on data integrity or performance. This guide describes how to upgrade the database and discusses the methodology and results of the testing that we conducted on the architecture. Audience We value your feedback This guide is for IT administrators, storage administrators, virtualization administrators, system administrators, IT managers, and personnel who evaluate, acquire, manage, maintain, or operate Oracle database environments. Dell EMC and the authors of this document welcome your feedback. Contact the Dell EMC Solutions team by or provide your comments by completing our documentation survey. Authors: Oracle Ready Solutions Engineering team, Indranil Chakrabarti, Reed Tucker Note: The following page of the Oracle space on the Dell EMC Communities website provides links to additional documentation for Dell EMC solutions for Oracle: Oracle Info Hub for Ready Solutions. Dell EMC Ready Solutions for Oracle: Design for Dell EMC Unity All Flash Unified Storage 7

8 Chapter 2: Architecture and Design Considerations Chapter 2 Architecture and Design Considerations This chapter presents the following topics: Unity 650F storage design Compute and network design FC fabric connectivity and zoning Virtual network design VM configuration Guest operating system configuration Dell EMC Ready Solutions for Oracle: Design for Dell EMC Unity All Flash Unified Storage

9 Chapter 2: Architecture and Design Considerations Architecture This section provides an overview of the physical and logical architecture of the database environment. Physical architecture The following figure shows the major hardware components of the reference architecture. Figure 1. Physical architecture As shown in the physical architecture diagram, the architecture consists of a server layer, network layer, and storage layer. Server layer The server layer consists of: PowerEdge R840 virtual database server One virtual OLTP database Oracle12cR2, which is later upgraded to Oracle 18cR1 is deployed in a single VM running Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) 7.4 as the guest operating system. The VM runs on a single PowerEdge R840 server with the VMware ESXi 6.5 hypervisor installed. The server includes the following network components: Two dual-port 10 GbE network interface controllers (NICs) For Oracle public traffic Two dual-port 16 Gbps host bus adapters (HBAs) For SAN traffic Dell EMC Ready Solutions for Oracle: Design for Dell EMC Unity All Flash Unified Storage 9

10 Chapter 2: Architecture and Design Considerations A minimum of one 1 GbE management remote Network Daughter Card (rndc) or LAN on motherboard (LOM) port For in-band management of the server from within the operating system Dedicated 1 GbE idrac Ethernet port For out-of-band management of the server PowerEdge R640 management server The management server runs the VMware ESXi 6.5 hypervisor. One 1 Gb rndc port is used for management traffic and two 10 GbE ports are used for the workload generation (SLOB I/O toolkit) traffic. Network layer The network layer consists of: Two 10 GbE network switches Connect to two 10 Gb ports on the database server to route the Oracle public traffic Two 16 Gbps Fibre Channel (FC) fabric switches Route SAN traffic between the R840 database/esxi host and the Unity 650F storage array One 1 GbE network switch Routes all management traffic between the components ESXi host, management server, switches, and Unity 650F storage Storage layer The storage layer consists of one Unity 650F storage array as the FC SAN storage to host Oracle Database 12c and 18c. The Unity array tested in this reference architecture consists of: One disk processor enclosure (DPE) with two storage processor (SP) controllers Four 16 Gbps front-end FC ports per SP Usable storage capacity of 48.6 TB The LAN and SAN design features redundant components and connectivity at every level to ensure that there is no single point of failure. The design enables the application server to reach the database server and the database server to reach the storage array even if any of the following components fail: One or more NICs or HBA ports One LAN or FC switch One or more Unity front-end ports One Unity SP For details about SAN zoning best practices and configuration, see FC fabric connectivity and zoning in Chapter Dell EMC Ready Solutions for Oracle: Design for Dell EMC Unity All Flash Unified Storage

11 Chapter 2: Architecture and Design Considerations Logical architecture The following figure shows the logical architecture overview of the database environment. It shows the multiple layers of infrastructure components in the reference architecture, along with a high-level overview of the software components that are deployed on the individual hardware components. Figure 2. Logical architecture We tested and validated the following types of Oracle databases in the reference architecture: A single-node Oracle Database 12cR2 in a virtual environment Oracle 12cR2 Grid infrastructure (GI) and a standalone Oracle Database 12cR2 run on one virtual machine (VM). A single-node Oracle Database 18cR1 in a virtual environment Oracle 18cR1 GI and a standalone Oracle Database 18cR1 on one VM. This Oracle Database 18cR1 stack is upgraded from the Oracle Database 12cR2 stack. As shown in Figure 2, one PowerEdge R840 server is the ESXi host, with ESXi 6.5 U2 hosting a single VM. The VM hosts Oracle Database 12cR2, which we later upgraded to Oracle Database 18cR1. The R840 server has four Intel 18C CPUs and 1,536 GB RAM. The VM uses RHEL 7.4 as the guest operating system that runs the Oracle 12cR2 Dell EMC Ready Solutions for Oracle: Design for Dell EMC Unity All Flash Unified Storage 11

12 Chapter 2: Architecture and Design Considerations software stack, which includes Oracle 12cR2 GI and a standalone Oracle Database 12cR2. After completing the Oracle Database 12cR2 validation and performance studies, we upgraded the Oracle 12cR2 software stack to Oracle 18cR1; that is, we upgraded Oracle 12c GI to Oracle 18cR1 GI and Oracle Database 12cR2 to Oracle Database 18cR1. A management server runs the VMware vcenter Server Appliance (VCSA) and the SLOB benchmarking tool, which are deployed on two separate VMs. The Unity 650F storage array hosts the storage volumes of Oracle Database 12c and 18c as well the VM operating system disks. The Unity 650F storage array has two pools: VM pool (VM_pool) Stores the VM operating system LUN, three Oracle GI clusterware storage LUNs for Oracle Cluster Registry (OCR), the voting disk, and the GI Management Repository (GIMR). Oracle Database pool (DB_Pool) Stores all the database LUNs and the snapshots of these database LUNs. This architecture includes the following networks: Unity 650F storage design LAN/Public network Provides the public network connection between the database server and applications. For our test environment, this network connects the SLOB benchmark server and the database server. This network is based on 10 GbE physical network components, as described in Physical architecture. SAN network Provides storage I/O communication between the database server and the Unity storage array. The 16 Gbps Fibre Channel (FC) network is used for this SAN network. Management network Manages the ESXi host, Unity storage array, and network switches. This network is based on a 1 GbE physical network, as described in Physical architecture. Dell EMC Unity storage systems support two types of storage pools on all-flash storage arrays: traditional pools and dynamic pools 1. Dynamic pools provide many benefits over traditional pools. The new pool structure eliminates the need to add drives in multiples of RAID stripe-widths. Data space and replacement space are spread across the drives within the pool. For greater flexibility in managing and expanding the pool, better drive utilization, and improved application I/O, we recommend that you create a small number of dynamic pools that include large numbers of drives of the same type. When determining the number of pools, consider that there might be different types of workloads, and dedicate resources to meet specific performance goals. For additional Unity storage best practices for Oracle Database, see Dell EMC Unity Storage with Oracle Databases. 1 Dynamic pools are supported in Unity OS version 4.4.x and higher. Refer to Appendix B for storage array details 12 Dell EMC Ready Solutions for Oracle: Design for Dell EMC Unity All Flash Unified Storage

13 Chapter 2: Architecture and Design Considerations The following table details the storage pools that we created for this reference architecture. Table 1. Unity storage array pool design Pool name RAID configuration Capacity Purpose Number of LUNs VM_Pool RAID 5 2.8TB VM operating system LUN and Oracle Clusterware LUNs DB_Pool RAID TB Database LUNs and their snapshots 4 11 original database LUNs plus additional snapshots upon creation The following table details the database LUNs that we created in the storage pools. In additional to these database LUNs, we created two snapshots of the database volumes to study the impact of snapshot creation on database performance and storage capacity. Table 2. Oracle Database LUN design on Unity storage LUN Purpose VM_POOL DB_POOL Thin LUN Data reduction enabled? VM OS OCR/VD DATA VM operating system volume Clusterware and virtual disk (VD) storage Database files 1 x 500 GB Yes Yes 3 x 50 GB Yes Yes 4 x 500 GB Yes Yes REDO REDO logs 4 x 25 GB Yes Yes TEMP FRA TEMP tablespace Flash Recovery Area for archive logs 1 x 500 GB Yes Yes 2 x 100 GB Yes Yes Dell EMC Ready Solutions for Oracle: Design for Dell EMC Unity All Flash Unified Storage 13

14 Chapter 2: Architecture and Design Considerations Compute and network design ESXi host configuration We configured the PowerEdge R840 database server as follows: Installed ESXi 6.5 by using the Dell EMC customized ISO image (Dell Version: A04, Build# ), which is available on Dell EMC Online Support at VMware ESXi 6.5. Zoned two dual-port 16 Gb/s HBAs, four initiators in total, and configured them with the Unity 650F front-end FC ports for high-bandwidth, load-balanced, and highly available SAN traffic. For the recommended FC connectivity and zoning best practices, see FC fabric connectivity and zoning. For optimal performance, the two HBA cards are populated in slots 2 and 5 of the R840 server. Configured one 1 GbE rndc or LOM port for the management traffic and two 10 GbE ports for the Oracle public traffic. For more details on the virtual networking design, see Virtual network design. For optimal performance, we installed the two 10 GbE network adapters in slots 3 and 6 of the R840 server. Created a single VM with RHEL 7.4 as the guest operating system for the virtual Oracle standalone databases. For more details about the VM properties and best practices, see VM configuration. We configured, monitored, and maintained the ESXi host, virtual networking, and the VM by using VMware vsphere Web Client and VCSA, which is deployed as a VM on the management server. Multipath configuration We configured multipathing on the ESXi 6.5 host according to the following best practices: Use vsphere Native Multipathing (NMP) as the multipathing software. Retained the default selection of round-robin for the native path selection policy (PSP) on the Unity volumes that are presented to the ESXi host. Change the NMP round-robin path switching frequency from the default value (1,000 I/O packets) to 1. For information about how to set this parameter, see Dell EMC Unity Storage with VMware vsphere. FC fabric connectivity and zoning The following figure shows the recommended FC connectivity between the HBAs and the FC switches, and the connectivity between the FC switches and the Unity storage array. As shown in the figure, each port in each HBA connects to two separate FC switches, and two front-end ports from each of the Unity SPs connect to two separate FC switches, forming two FC fabrics. 14 Dell EMC Ready Solutions for Oracle: Design for Dell EMC Unity All Flash Unified Storage

15 Chapter 2: Architecture and Design Considerations Figure 3. FC fabric connectivity design Dell EMC recommends single-initiator zoning when creating zone sets on the FC switches. For high availability, bandwidth, and load balancing, each initiator or HBA port on the ESXi host is zoned with four front-end Unity storage ports that are spread across the two storage controllers or SPs, as shown in the following logical representation of zone sets. Figure 4. FC zoning logical representation Dell EMC Ready Solutions for Oracle: Design for Dell EMC Unity All Flash Unified Storage 15

16 Chapter 2: Architecture and Design Considerations Virtual network design The following diagram shows a high-level overview of the virtual network design that we implemented in the ESXi host. It also shows the mapping between the virtual switch network and the physical switch network. Figure 5. Virtual network design in the ESXi host The virtual network design supports: VM and management traffic The VM network and management traffic uses the default standard virtual switch (vswitch), which contains two default standard ports groups. The Management Network port group provides the VMkernel port vmk0 to manage the ESXi host from VCSA. The VM Network port group provides the 1 GbE virtual interfaces for in-band management of the database VM. All management traffic is routed through the 1 GbE physical rndc or LOM port on the ESXi server that is connected to the external 1 GbE management switch virtual or network. Public traffic The Oracle public traffic uses an additional dedicated standard vswitch to which we assigned two physical 10 GbE uplink ports. For high availability and load balancing, the two 10 GbE uplink ports reside on two separate physical network adapters and are connected to two separate 10 GbE physical network switches. Within this vswitch, we created a standard port group that provides the virtual network interface for the Oracle public traffic within the database VM. 16 Dell EMC Ready Solutions for Oracle: Design for Dell EMC Unity All Flash Unified Storage

17 Chapter 2: Architecture and Design Considerations VM configuration We used the following design principles and best practices to create the database VM: Table 3. SCSI controllers We created multiple SCSI controllers to optimize and balance the I/O for the different database disks, as shown in the following table. We chose the controller type VMware Paravirtual for optimal performance. SCSI controller properties in the database VM Controller Purpose SCSI bus sharing Type SCSI 0 Guest operating system disk None VMware Paravirtual SCSI 1 Oracle DATA disks Physical VMware Paravirtual SCSI 2 Oracle REDO disks Physical VMware Paravirtual SCSI 3 Oracle OCR, GIMR, FRA, TEMP Physical VMware Paravirtual Hard disk drives We assigned the following properties to all database-related virtual disks (for example, DATA, REDO, FRA, OCR/VD, and TEMP): Raw Device Mapping (RDM) For optimal performance and management simplicity, all Oracle related disks presented to the ESXi host from the Unity storage array are mapped directly as raw devices to the database VM. Virtual Device Node For load balancing and optimal performance, the SCSI controllers are assigned as noted in Table 3. VM vcpu and vmem The following table lists the amount of virtual CPU (vcpu) and virtual memory (vmem) that we assigned to the database VM during the testing of the reference architecture. Table 4. VM configuration: vcpu and vmem details vcpus vmem Number of vcpus Limit (MB) Reservation (GB) Total (GB) Limit (MB) 18 Unlimited Unlimited Network adapters We added two network adapters, one for in-band VM or guest operating system management and one for Oracle public traffic, to the database VM. We configured the two adapters with the recommended type setting of VMXNet 3. Enable disk UUID In each of the VM options, we added the configuration disk.enableuuid parameter and set it to TRUE. This setting ensures that the VMDK always presents a consistent disk UUID to the VM. Dell EMC Ready Solutions for Oracle: Design for Dell EMC Unity All Flash Unified Storage 17

18 Chapter 2: Architecture and Design Considerations Guest operating system configuration In this reference architecture, we use the following best practices to deploy and configure RHEL 7.4 as the guest operating system in the VM running the Oracle standalone database: Install and configure the operating system, network, storage disks, Oracle 12cR2 Grid, and standalone Oracle Database 12cR2 within the VM, as instructed in the following Dell EMC knowledge base article: How to deploy Oracle 12c Release 2 Standalone Database on RHEL 7.x Set up the Oracle Grid and database software prerequisites (required operating system RPMs, users, groups, kernel parameters, and so on) by using the information and deployment package in the following Dell EMC knowledge base article: Dell Oracle Deployment RPMs for Oracle 12cR2 on RHEL7.x Important best practices include: For each Oracle virtual disk, create a single partition that spans the entire disk and has a starting offset of 2,048 sectors. Ownerships and permissions on the Oracle disks within the VM are established using UDEV rules. The following example shows a UDEV rule set for one of the Oracle disks (REDO disk) within the custom /etc/udev/rules/60-oracleasmdevices.rules UDEV rules file: KERNEL=="sd[a-z]*[1-9]", SUBSYSTEM=="block", PROGRAM=="/usr/lib/udev/scsi_id -g -u -d /dev/$parent", RESULT==" f004300accaed5bd9741db5", SYMLINK+="oracleasm/disks/ora-redo1", OWNER="grid", GROUP="asmadmin", MODE="0660" Note: For this reference architecture, we tested the standalone Oracle Database 18c by performing an in-place upgrade of the deployed 12cR2 database. For an overview of the upgrade process, see Upgrading Oracle Database 12cR2 to 18cR1. As described in Unity 650F storage design, we mapped all Oracle related LUNs that are presented to the ESXi host from the Unity 650F storage array directly as raw devices to the database VM through RDM. In compliance with the UDEV rules, we assigned the ownership of the raw devices to the grid user who is the owner of the Oracle GI and Oracle Automatic Storage Management (ASM). The device link for these Oracle related raw devices is /dev/oracleasm/disks/ora-xxx. For example, /dev/oracleasm/disks/ora-redo1 is the device link for REDO1 LUN/raw device. The following table shows the Oracle disk groups that are created based on these LUNs/raw devices. Except for the OCR disk group that uses the normal redundancy (with triple mirroring), all other disk groups use the external redundancy setting. The coarse striping setting is also used for DATA, FRA, and OCR disk groups, and the fine-grain striping setting is used for REDO1, REDO2, and TEMP disk groups. 18 Dell EMC Ready Solutions for Oracle: Design for Dell EMC Unity All Flash Unified Storage

19 Chapter 2: Architecture and Design Considerations Table 5. ASM disk group design ASM disk group Purpose Redundancy ASM striping ASM disk group size (GB) LUN LUN size (GB) DATA Data files, control files, undo tablespace External redundancy Coarse 2,000 DATA DATA DATA DATA FRA Archive log files External redundancy Coarse 200 FRA0 100 FRA1 100 REDO1 Online redo logs External redundancy Fine-grain 50 REDO0 25 REDO1 25 REDO2 Online redo logs External redundancy Fine-grain 50 REDO2 25 REDO3 25 TEMP Temp files External redundancy Fine-grain 500 TEMP 500 OCR OCR, voting disk, GIMR Normal redundancy Coarse 50 OCR0 50 OCR1 50 OCR3 50 Oracle ASM has a feature to move the data to higher performance tracks of the spinning disks in the compact phase at the end of ASM disk rebalancing. This feature has no benefit for Dell EMC Unity storage when the physical storage is virtualized and the flash devices are used. You can disable the rebalancing feature by running the alter diskgroup command for all the disk groups. The following example shows the command for the DATA disk group: SQL> alter diskgroup DATA set attribute '_rebalance_compact' = 'FALSE'; For more information about the ASM disk group guidelines, see Dell EMC Unity Storage with Oracle Databases. For more information about ASM compact rebalancing, see Oracle Support note Dell EMC Ready Solutions for Oracle: Design for Dell EMC Unity All Flash Unified Storage 19

20 Chapter 3: Oracle Database 12cR2 Performance on Unity 650F Chapter 3 Oracle Database 12cR2 Performance on Unity 650F This chapter presents the following topics: Test objectives Use cases, test methods, and test results Dell EMC Ready Solutions for Oracle: Design for Dell EMC Unity All Flash Unified Storage

21 Chapter 3: Oracle Database 12cR2 Performance on Unity 650F Test objectives In a typical IT environment, databases might be required for testing, development, reporting, or online analytics. Usually, these additional databases must be based on copies of the production databases because the new features or hardware cannot be tested directly on the production systems themselves. The Dell EMC Unity 650F storage array s snapshot feature enables you to create multiple copies of any database. The objective of the tests described in this chapter is to simulate a typical customer environment in which we create a baseline Oracle production database, measure its performance, and then create multiple snapshot copies of it to measure the impact of creating snapshots. Another objective is to study the data savings feature of the Unity storage as applied to the Oracle databases and analyze how it can help customers with data compression and space savings. These savings will ultimately translate into storage-cost and TCO savings. In our use cases, we analyze the impact of upgrading Oracle Database 12c to the 18c version on the related performance and data savings numbers. This data benefits the DBAs and test/dev engineers who frequently must spend hours managing database creation and refreshing the environments, often while limited by capacity, performance, and number of database copies. The following use cases demonstrate the performance and capacity savings of Oracle Database 12cR2 running on the Unity 650F storage array, as well as the performance impact of creating Unity snapshots of Oracle Database 12c: Use case 1: Deduplication and compression of Oracle Database 12cR2 Use case 2: Oracle Database 12cR2 baseline performance Use case 3: Unity storage snapshot-creation impact on Oracle Database 12cR2 performance Use case 4: Deduplication and compression of Oracle Database 12cR2 with data changes Our use-case testing included stress and compression testing to produce the performance numbers that are shown in this reference architecture guide. The data was extracted from Oracle Automatic Workload Repository (AWR) reports. Compression and performance results documented in this guide are provided as a reference. The actual numbers you achieve might vary with your environment. Note: During all testing, the Unity inline data reduction feature was enabled, as noted in Unity 650F storage design. This feature uses some storage CPU and memory cycles. Dell EMC Ready Solutions for Oracle: Design for Dell EMC Unity All Flash Unified Storage 21

22 Chapter 3: Oracle Database 12cR2 Performance on Unity 650F Use cases, test methods, and test results Use case 1: Deduplication and compression of Oracle Database 12cR2 In this use case, we loaded data into Oracle Database 12cR2 on the Unity 650F storage array to understand the impact of data compression and deduplication, also referred to as data reduction. We tested this reference architecture by loading approximately 1.2 TB of data into the Oracle 12cR2 test database using the SLOB multiple schema model. The native SLOB schema contains highly redundant data and, therefore, is highly compressible. To remove redundancy and to showcase the Unity array s data compression capabilities in the worst-case scenario, we used a custom PL/SQL script to insert randomized and unique data into the SLOB schema (for details, see Appendix A). After loading approximately 1.2 TB of data into the Oracle 12cR2 test database, a space savings of percent was realized from the data reduction features in the storage layer, as shown in the following figure. Figure 6. Space savings for Oracle Database 12cR2 running on Unity 650F storage As shown in the following figure, the CLI (sqlplus) interface reflects the schema capacity as seen by the Oracle database. The database sees the entire 1, GB of the data loaded in the IOPS tablespace, which validates that all the reduced physical capacity as seen on the storage is due to the Unity array's data reduction feature and is transparent to the database. 22 Dell EMC Ready Solutions for Oracle: Design for Dell EMC Unity All Flash Unified Storage

23 Chapter 3: Oracle Database 12cR2 Performance on Unity 650F Figure 7. CLI interface (sqlplus) showing schema capacity as seen by the database In this test, we loaded 100 percent unique data that was generated by the PL/SQL program. Through the Unity 650F storage compression capabilities, we reduced the amount of storage space required by 29 percent on a loaded data volume of 1,225 GB. The actual data reduction numbers might vary, depending on the workload, quality of data, or other factors that are unique to any typical organization. Note: The compression numbers that are shown in this guide were generated by Dell EMC engineers on in-house equipment and are for reference purposes only. The compression feature of the Dell EMC Unity 650F storage array generates storage cost savings (CAPEX) and TCO savings for a typical organization. For a similar demonstration of storage data reduction in Oracle Database 18c, see Use Case 1: Deduplication and compression of Oracle Database 18c in Chapter 4. Use case 2: Oracle Database 12cR2 baseline performance In this use case, we created a standalone Oracle Database 12cR2 on a Dell EMC PowerEdge R840 server, as shown in the following figure. We ran the performance test for 30 minutes using SLOB on an OLTP workload featuring an 80/20 read/write mixture. This database features an 8 KB block size with Automatic Storage Management (ASM) in a coarse-striped and externally redundant configuration. Figure 8. Performance testing on 12cR2 DB running on Unity 650F (Test 1) Dell EMC Ready Solutions for Oracle: Design for Dell EMC Unity All Flash Unified Storage 23

24 Chapter 3: Oracle Database 12cR2 Performance on Unity 650F During the stress test, we collected performance data from the AWR report that was generated by the Oracle database. For database and SLOB parameter settings used during all test cases, see Appendix A. The following table shows the performance metrics that we captured from AWR for Test 1. We used these values as the baseline numbers for comparison in Use Cases 3 and 4. Table 6. Test 1 performance results Performance metric Value IOPS 101,727 Database server CPU utilization (%) 25 Database bandwidth (MB/s) 805 Database response time (milliseconds) 0.32 Transactions per second (TPS) 6,869 The performance metrics in Table 6 show that the IOPS value was over 100,000 with an average database server CPU utilization of 25 percent and a database response time of 0.32 milliseconds (ms). The database server had plenty of capacity for performing other tasks while running this Oracle Database 12c. The database bandwidth was healthy (805 MB/s) and the average response time for queries was quite fast at 0.32 ms. Also, the database performed 6,869 TPS, which means the commits and rollbacks were happening very quickly. We use the Test 1 results as a baseline to later compare these results to those that we obtained while creating snapshots in Use Case 3. This use case shows the performance efficiency of Oracle Database 12cR2 on the Unity 650F storage array. In Chapter 4, we compare the results in Table 6 to the results we obtained when running the upgraded Oracle Database 18cR1 on the Unity 650F array. Use case 3: Unity storage snapshot-creation impact on Oracle Database 12cR2 performance The goal of this use case is to study the performance impact of creating Unity snapshots on Oracle Database 12cR2. This use case involves two tests Test 2 and Test 3: In Test 2, we performed a 30-minute stress test using SLOB and, at the same time, created snapshots to measure performance impact, similar to the testing in Use Case 2. In Test 3, we created two snapshots and then performed SLOB stress testing to observe and understand the resulting change in performance numbers. Note: Before taking the snapshots, we created a consistency group on the Unity storage array and added all Oracle database volumes to it. Dell EMC recommends taking snapshots of database volumes at the consistency group level rather than at the individual database-volume level to guarantee that the Oracle database snapshots can mount and restart successfully on the database host. 24 Dell EMC Ready Solutions for Oracle: Design for Dell EMC Unity All Flash Unified Storage

25 Chapter 3: Oracle Database 12cR2 Performance on Unity 650F The following figures show the methodology for Tests 2 and 3. Figure 9. Test 2 methodology Figure 10. Test 3 methodology The goals of Tests 1, 2, and 3 were to: Capture the baseline performance of Oracle Database 12cR2 (Test 1) Capture the performance impact on the baseline database during its snapshot creation (Test 2) Capture the performance impact on the baseline database after its snapshot is created (Test 3) Dell EMC Ready Solutions for Oracle: Design for Dell EMC Unity All Flash Unified Storage 25

26 Chapter 3: Oracle Database 12cR2 Performance on Unity 650F Compare the following performance metrics from the three tests: IOPS TPS Database server CPU utilization (%) DB bandwidth DB response time IOPS results The following figure shows the comparison of IOPS among Test 1 (Use Case 2), and Tests 2 and 3 (Use Case 3) on Oracle Database 12c. Figure 11. Total IOPS for Test 1, Test 2, and Test 3 As shown in Figure 11, with the snapshots created in Test 2 and Test 3, including the SLOB stress testing in Test 3, the IOPS dropped less than 0.7 percent in comparison to Test 1 (the baseline test). The IOPS numbers from these three tests prove that, despite requiring more system resources like drive I/O to handle metadata writes, this reference architecture generates impressive IOPS numbers. 26 Dell EMC Ready Solutions for Oracle: Design for Dell EMC Unity All Flash Unified Storage

27 Database server CPU utilization results Chapter 3: Oracle Database 12cR2 Performance on Unity 650F The following figure shows the database server CPU utilization as captured by the AWR report for Tests 1, 2, and 3. Figure 12. Database server CPU utilization (%) comparison for Tests 1, 2, and 3 Creating two snapshots caused virtually no change in CPU utilization in Test 2 and Test 3. In Test 3, which included stress testing with the SLOB tool after creating snapshots, CPU utilization decreased very slightly as compared to Test 2. Tests 2 and 3 prove that snapshot creation and stress testing do not have a major impact on the Oracle Database 12cR2 server running on the Unity 650F storage array. Any data that is written to either the baseline database or to the snapshot database is redirected to a new write location in the same storage pool. The Unity storage array uses metadata to track data blocks belonging to the base objects, and snapshots of metadata consume more storage system resources such as CPU and memory to handle metadata updates. Even considering the metadata updates, there was no increase in database CPU utilization (Test 3) as compared to Test 1 (the baseline test). Dell EMC Ready Solutions for Oracle: Design for Dell EMC Unity All Flash Unified Storage 27

28 Chapter 3: Oracle Database 12cR2 Performance on Unity 650F Database bandwidth results The following figure compares database bandwidth in terms of MB/s for Oracle Database 12cR2 for Tests 1, 2, and 3. Figure 13. Comparative analysis of database bandwidth for Test 1, Test 2, and Test 3 Figure 13 demonstrates that creating two snapshots and performing OLTP operations such as SLOB data loading do not adversely impact the bandwidth. Therefore, there is no impact on the performance of Oracle Database 12cR2 running on the Unity 650F storage array. On the contrary, the database bandwidth increased by 3 to 4 percent during performance stress testing and snapshot creation. 28 Dell EMC Ready Solutions for Oracle: Design for Dell EMC Unity All Flash Unified Storage

29 Database response time results Chapter 3: Oracle Database 12cR2 Performance on Unity 650F The following figure shows that the database response remained the same while snapshots were created during stress testing (Test 2) and when snapshots were created before the stress testing (Test 3) when compared with the baseline number (Test 1). Therefore, creating snapshots had no impact on the latency performance of the baseline Oracle Database 12cR2 running on the Unity 650F storage array, which is notable performance considering that there was also virtually no increase in the CPU utilization. Figure 14. Database response time during Test 1, Test 2, and Test 3 Dell EMC Ready Solutions for Oracle: Design for Dell EMC Unity All Flash Unified Storage 29

30 Chapter 3: Oracle Database 12cR2 Performance on Unity 650F Transactions per second results Transactions per second (TPS) is also known as transaction throughput. The following figure shows the TPS results in Tests 1, 2, and 3. The figure shows a minimal drop in TPS of less than 1.3 percent in Test 2 and Test 3 compared with the baseline number from Test 1. Figure 15. TPS during Test 1, Test 2, and Test 3 The performance metrics from Tests 1, 2, and 3 show that there was minimal impact from creating snapshots and applying stress testing, and there was no performance impact when running an Oracle Database 12cR2 on the Unity 650F storage array. This ability to maintain performance is helpful when you have to create multiple copies of the production database while the production OLTP workloads are running in parallel. 30 Dell EMC Ready Solutions for Oracle: Design for Dell EMC Unity All Flash Unified Storage

31 Chapter 3: Oracle Database 12cR2 Performance on Unity 650F Use Case 4: Deduplication and compression of Oracle Database 12cR2 with data changes Test methodology To further determine the storage capacity savings that is realized through the use of the deduplication and compression feature of the Unity 650F storage array during a data change, we increased the data that was loaded during Use Case 1 by 5 percent and captured the savings in storage capacity. The following diagram shows the comparison of storage capacity before and after the 5 percent data increase. Figure 16. Data reduction achieved in 12c database after 5% data insertion Test results We performed Use Case 4 to find the data reduction percentage after inserting data in six new SLOB schemas with 100 percent randomized and unique data generated by a PL/SQL program. After loading the data in six new schemas, we achieved a space savings of percent, as shown in Figure 16. As described in Chapter 4, we achieved similar savings by running the same tests on an Oracle Database 18cR1. Dell EMC Ready Solutions for Oracle: Design for Dell EMC Unity All Flash Unified Storage 31

32 Chapter 4: Oracle Database 18cR1 Performance on Unity 650F Chapter 4 Oracle Database 18cR1 Performance on Unity 650F This chapter presents the following topics: Test objectives Upgrading Oracle Database 12cR2 to 18cR Use cases, test methods, and test results Dell EMC Ready Solutions for Oracle: Design for Dell EMC Unity All Flash Unified Storage

33 Chapter 4: Oracle Database 18cR1 Performance on Unity 650F Test objectives The preceding chapter describes the performance and capacity saving studies of Oracle Database 12cR2 on the Unity 650F storage array. This chapter focuses on similar studies of Oracle Database 18cR1. We upgraded Oracle Database 12cR2 to 18cR1, conducted the same performance and capacity-saving studies, and compared the results. Because we upgraded the previously used Oracle Database 12cR2, both the 12c and 18c test databases shared the same data and the same configuration of the entire stack, from the storage to the ESXi host/guest VM operating system and the Oracle database. Through the same set of use cases as described in Chapter 3, we can compare the performance and capacity savings on the Unity 650F storage array before and after upgrading the 12c database to 18c. To achieve these objectives, we first upgraded the 12cR2 database to 18cR1 as shown in the following figure. Figure 17. Upgrading Oracle Database 12c to 18c Dell EMC Ready Solutions for Oracle: Design for Dell EMC Unity All Flash Unified Storage 33

34 Chapter 4: Oracle Database 18cR1 Performance on Unity 650F Upgrading Oracle Database 12cR2 to 18cR1 We upgraded the database by using Oracle Data Pump technology and the upgradable tablespace method. Upgrading from Oracle Database 12cR2 to 18cR1 involves the following steps: 1. Upgrade the GI from 12cR2 to 18cR1. 2. Upgrade the Oracle Database from 12cR2 to 18cR1. This section provides a high-level overview of the process. For detailed information about the Oracle 18cR1 upgrade, see the following Oracle documentation: Oracle Database Upgrade Guide 18c Oracle Support MOS note (Doc ID ): Oracle 18c - Complete Checklist for Upgrading to Oracle Database 18c (18.x) using DBUA Upgrade 12cR2 Grid Infrastructure to 18cR1 To upgrade Oracle 12cR2 GI to 18cR1: 1. Stage the software. Download the 18c GI binary LINUX.X64_180000_grid_home.zip and unzip the files to the new 18c GI home: /u01/app/18.3.0/grid 2. Ensure that the prerequisites for upgrading to Oracle 18c GI are met. Check the version and status of the current clusterware with crsctl commands and run the clusterware verification utility runcluvfy.sh as shown in this command: $ /u01/app/18.3.0/grid/runcluvfy.sh stage -pre hacfg 3. Apply the pre-upgrade GI patch on the Oracle 12cR2 ( ) GI home (see Doc ID ). Download and unzip this patch (p _122010_linux-x86-64.zip) to the /home/grid/patches directory, and then use the opatchauto utility to apply the patch to GI home as the grid user: [grid@]$/u01/app/12.2.0/grid/opatch/opatchauto apply /home/grid/patches/ h /u01/app/12.2.0/grid 4. Run the following command to validate that the GI patch is applied successfully on the 12cR2 GI home: $/u01/app/12.2.0/grid/opatch/opatch lsinventory 5. Before upgrading the 12cR2 GI, back up the clusterware configuration including OCR. 6. Shut down the 12cR2 database and run the Oracle GI 18c installer setup.sh, selecting upgrade the Oracle Grid Infrastructure to upgrade the 12cR2 GI to 18c. 34 Dell EMC Ready Solutions for Oracle: Design for Dell EMC Unity All Flash Unified Storage

35 Chapter 4: Oracle Database 18cR1 Performance on Unity 650F Upgrade Oracle Database 12cR2 to 18cR1 To upgrade Oracle Database 12cR2 to 18cR1: 1. Install Oracle Database 18c software. Download and unzip the Oracle Database 18c software LINUX.X64_180000_db_home.zip, and then run the installer to install the software to the new 18c Oracle home: /u01/app/oracle/product/18.3.0/dbhome_1 During the installation, select the Set up Software Only configuration option. Also, during database installation, select the Single Instance database installation option and select Enterprise Edition for the database edition. 2. Restart the 12cR2 database, and then run the pre-upgrade information tool (preupgrade.jar) command: java -jar /u01/app/oracle/product/18.3.0/dbhome_1/rdbms/admin/preupgra de.jar TERMINAL This command checks the current Oracle Database 12cR2 and identifies any required pre-upgrade actions. The output of this command includes the preupgrade actions and post-upgrade actions. 3. Perform the 18cR1 upgrade with the dbua upgrade utility from the 18c Oracle Database home page. The dbua upgrade utility prompts the database to upgrade. To speed up the upgrade process, select Enable parallel upgrade and Recompile invalid objects during post upgrade. Once the upgrade is complete, upgrade results are displayed, as shown in the following figure. Figure 18. Upgrade results Dell EMC Ready Solutions for Oracle: Design for Dell EMC Unity All Flash Unified Storage 35

36 Chapter 4: Oracle Database 18cR1 Performance on Unity 650F Use cases, test methods, and test results The following use cases for Oracle Database 18cR1, which mirror our 12cR2 use cases, demonstrate the performance and capacity savings of Oracle Database 18cR1 running on the Unity 650F storage array, as well as the performance impact of creating Unity snapshots of Oracle Database 18cR1: Use case 1: Deduplication and compression of Oracle Database 18cR1 Use case 2: Oracle Database 18cR1 baseline performance Use case 3: Unity storage snapshot-creation impact on Oracle Database 18cR1 performance Use case 4: Deduplication and compression of Oracle Database 18cR1 with data changes To establish the comparison with the 12cR2 database, we used the same test methods and test configuration and ensured that the 18cR1 database contained the same data as the 12cR2 database. Use Case 1: Deduplication and compression of Oracle Database 18cR1 To establish the comparison of the deduplication and compression (data reduction) savings between the 12c database and the 18c database, we reloaded the 1.2 TB of test data that was used for Test 1 of the 12c database, as described in Chapter 3. We observed that the size of the database was 1,223 GB, as shown in the following figure. We inserted 100 percent randomized and unique data (generated by the PL/SQL program) stored in 128 SLOB schemas. These schemas are initially created by a SLOB data load and then the data from those schemas is truncated and repopulated with randomized data. As shown in the following figure, we achieved a data reduction rate of percent. Figure 19. Data reduction in 18c database 36 Dell EMC Ready Solutions for Oracle: Design for Dell EMC Unity All Flash Unified Storage

37 Chapter 4: Oracle Database 18cR1 Performance on Unity 650F When we compare the space savings of Oracle Database 12cR2 with Oracle Database 18cR1, we observe a slight improvement, as shown in the following figure. Figure 20. Data reduction observed between 12c and 18c databases for Use Case 1 Use case 2: Oracle Database 18cR1 baseline performance In Use Case 2, we ran the performance test for 30 minutes using SLOB to generate an OLTP workload with an 80/20 read/write mixture on the PowerEdge R840 server, as shown in the following figure. We used the same database configuration for the 18cR1 database as we used for the 12cR2 database. Figure 21. Performance testing on 18cR1 database running on Unity 650F (Test 1) Dell EMC Ready Solutions for Oracle: Design for Dell EMC Unity All Flash Unified Storage 37

38 Chapter 4: Oracle Database 18cR1 Performance on Unity 650F For database and SLOB parameter settings that were used during all test cases, see Appendix A. During the stress test, we collected performance data from the AWR report generated by the Oracle database. The following table shows the performance metrics that we captured from AWR for Test 1. We used these values as the baseline numbers for comparison with Test 2 and Test 3 in Use Case 3. Table 7. Test 1 performance results Performance metric Value IOPS 104,067 Database server CPU utilization (%) 26 Database bandwidth (MB/s) 823 Database response time (milliseconds) 0.31 Transactions per second (TPS) 7,023 The performance metrics in Table 7 show that the IOPS value was over 100,000 with an average database server CPU utilization of 26 percent and a database response time of 0.31 milliseconds (ms). The database server had plenty of capacity for performing other tasks while running this Oracle 18c database. The database bandwidth was healthy (823 MB/s) and the response time for queries was quite fast at 0.31 ms. Also, the database performed 7,023 TPS, which means that the commits and rollbacks were happening very quickly. We use the Test 1 results as a baseline to later compare these results to those that we obtained while creating snapshots in Use Case 3. Use case 3: Unity storage snapshot-creation impact on Oracle Database 18cR1 performance The goal of Use Case 3 is to study the performance impact of creating Unity snapshots on the Oracle 18cR1 OLTP database. This use case involves two tests Test 2 and Test 3: In Test 2, we performed a 30-minute stress test using SLOB and, at the same time, created snapshots to measure performance impact, similar to the testing in Use Case 2. In Test 3, we created two snapshots and then performed SLOB stress testing to observe and understand the resulting change in performance numbers. Note: Before taking the snapshots, we created a consistency group on the Unity storage array and added all Oracle database volumes to it. Dell EMC recommends taking snapshots of database volumes at the consistency group level rather than at the individual database-volume level to guarantee that the Oracle database snapshots can mount and restart successfully on the database host. The following figures show the methodology for Test 2 and Test Dell EMC Ready Solutions for Oracle: Design for Dell EMC Unity All Flash Unified Storage

39 Chapter 4: Oracle Database 18cR1 Performance on Unity 650F Figure 22. Test 2 methodology Figure 23. Test 3 methodology As shown in Figure 24, with the snapshots created in Test 2 and Test 3 including the SLOB stress testing in Test 3, the IOPS dropped less than 0.7 percent in comparison to Test 1 (the baseline test). The IOPS numbers from these three tests prove that, despite requiring more system resources like drive I/O to handle metadata writes, this reference architecture generates impressive IOPS numbers. Tests 2 and 3 let us study the performance impact after running stress testing on an Oracle Database 18cR1 with or without snapshots by comparing the following benchmark parameters: IOPS TPS Dell EMC Ready Solutions for Oracle: Design for Dell EMC Unity All Flash Unified Storage 39

40 Chapter 4: Oracle Database 18cR1 Performance on Unity 650F Database server CPU utilization (%) DB bandwidth DB response time IOPS results The following figure shows the comparison of IOPS among Test 1 (Use Case 2) and Tests 2 and 3 (Use Case 3) on Oracle Database 18cR1. Figure 24. Total IOPS numbers for Test 1, Test 2, and Test 3 As shown in Figure 24, with the snapshots created in Test 2 and Test 3, including the SLOB stress testing in Test 3, the IOPS dropped less than 1 percent in comparison to Test 1 (the baseline test). The IOPS numbers from these three tests prove that, despite requiring more system resources like drive I/O to handle metadata writes, this reference architecture generates impressive IOPS numbers. The following figure compares the number of IOPS generated by the 12c and 18c databases during the three tests. 40 Dell EMC Ready Solutions for Oracle: Design for Dell EMC Unity All Flash Unified Storage

41 Chapter 4: Oracle Database 18cR1 Performance on Unity 650F Figure 25. Comparative analysis of total IOPS numbers for Test 1, Test 2, and Test 3 As shown in Figure 25, all three tests generated slightly more IOPS with the 18c database than with the 12c database. In Tests 2 and 3, despite snapshots being created during stress testing (Test 2) and before stress testing (Test 3), the reduction in the number of IOPS is minimal. Also, the IOPS numbers achieved by the 18c database are consistently higher than those of the 12c database. Database server CPU utilization results The following figure shows the database server CPU utilization as captured by the AWR report for Tests 1, 2, and 3. Figure 26. Database server CPU utilization (%) comparison for Tests 1, 2, and 3 Creating two snapshots in Test 2 caused database server CPU utilization to increase very little in Test 2 and Test 3. In Test 3, which included stress testing with the SLOB tool after Dell EMC Ready Solutions for Oracle: Design for Dell EMC Unity All Flash Unified Storage 41

42 Chapter 4: Oracle Database 18cR1 Performance on Unity 650F creation of snapshots, CPU utilization actually decreased by 1 percent in comparison to Test 2. Tests 2 and 3 prove that snapshot creation and stress testing have very little impact on the Oracle Database 18cR1 server running on the Unity 650F storage array. Any data written to either the baseline database or to the snapshot database is redirected to a new write location in the same storage pool. The Unity storage array uses metadata to track data blocks that belong to the base objects, and all snapshots consume more storage system resources such as CPU and memory to handle metadata updates. Even considering the metadata updates, there was no significant increase in the database server CPU utilization percentage. Therefore, there is no significant performance impact on Test 2 and Test 3 in comparison to Test 1 (the baseline test). Comparing database server CPU utilization during the tests running on the Oracle 12c database with those on the 18cR1 database, we find that database server CPU utilization decreases with the 18cR1 database, as shown in the following figure. Figure 27. Comparative analysis of database server CPU utilization (%) during Test 1, Test 2 and Test 3 This leaves plenty of unused CPU resources available for other activities. Database bandwidth results The following figure compares database bandwidth in terms of MB/s for Oracle Database 18cR1 for Tests 1, 2, and Dell EMC Ready Solutions for Oracle: Design for Dell EMC Unity All Flash Unified Storage

43 Chapter 4: Oracle Database 18cR1 Performance on Unity 650F Figure 28. Comparative analysis of DB bandwidth during Test 1, Test 2, and Test 3 Figure 28 demonstrates that creating two snapshots and performing OLTP operations such as SLOB data loading do not adversely affect the bandwidth, so there is no impact on the performance of the Oracle Database 18cR1 running on the Unity 650F storage array. On the contrary, the database performance (bandwidth) increases by about 2 percent as more workloads are applied along with the creation of snapshots during Test 2. The following figure compares the bandwidth results for the Oracle 12cR2 and 18cR1 databases during the three tests. Figure 29. Comparative analysis of database bandwidth during Test 1, Test 2, and Test 3 As shown, the bandwidth numbers that were recorded during 12c and 18c database testing remained the same or improved slightly despite snapshots being created during Dell EMC Ready Solutions for Oracle: Design for Dell EMC Unity All Flash Unified Storage 43

44 Chapter 4: Oracle Database 18cR1 Performance on Unity 650F stress testing (Test 2) and before stress testing (Test 3) compared with the benchmarking test (Test 1). Database response time results The following figure shows database performance (response time) as measured in Tests 1, 2, and 3. As shown, the database maintained the same response level during the creation of snapshots during stress testing (Test 2) and before the stress testing (Test 3) when compared with the baseline number (Test 1). Creating snapshots and doing stress testing did not significantly impact the database response time and had no impact on the latency performance of Oracle Database 18cR1 running on the Unity 650F storage array. Figure 30. Database response time during Test 1, Test 2, and Test 3 The following figure compares the 12cR2 and 18cR1 database response times during our testing. 44 Dell EMC Ready Solutions for Oracle: Design for Dell EMC Unity All Flash Unified Storage

45 Chapter 4: Oracle Database 18cR1 Performance on Unity 650F Figure 31. Comparative analysis of database response time during Test 1, Test 2, and Test 3 As shown in Figure 31, the database response time during testing of the 12c and 18c databases remained nearly the same despite snapshots being created during stress testing (Test 2) and before stress testing (Test 3) compared with the benchmarking test (Test 1). Transactions per second results The following figure shows the transaction throughput that was achieved in Tests 1, 2, and 3 during the testing of the Oracle Database 18c. The figure shows a minimal drop in TPS of less than 1 percent in Test 2 and Test 3 compared with the baseline number from Test 1. Figure 32. TPS during Test 1, Test 2, and Test 3 Dell EMC Ready Solutions for Oracle: Design for Dell EMC Unity All Flash Unified Storage 45

46 Chapter 4: Oracle Database 18cR1 Performance on Unity 650F The following figure compares the 12c and 18c database TPS results. Figure 33. Comparative analysis of TPS during Test 1, Test 2, and Test 3 A comparison of the 12c and 18c database test results shows a minimal reduction of 2 percent TPS from the creation of two snapshots. Thus, we can conclude that Oracle 12c and 18c databases running on this reference architecture maintain stable transaction throughput. The performance metrics from Tests 1, 2, and 3 show that there was minimal impact from creating snapshots and applying stress testing, and there was no performance impact when running an Oracle Database 18cR1 on the Unity 650F storage array. This capability of minimizing impact on the server performance is helpful when you have to create multiple copies of the production database for nonproduction purposes. Use case 4: Deduplication and compression of Oracle Database 18cR1 with data changes Test methodology To further determine the storage capacity savings that is realized through the use of the deduplication and compression feature of the Unity 650F storage array during a data change, we increased the data that was loaded during Use Case 1 by 5 percent and captured the savings in storage capacity. The following diagram shows the comparison of storage capacity before and after the 5 percent data increase. 46 Dell EMC Ready Solutions for Oracle: Design for Dell EMC Unity All Flash Unified Storage

47 Chapter 4: Oracle Database 18cR1 Performance on Unity 650F Figure 34. Data reduction achieved in 18c database after 5% data insertion The figure above shows that Unity s data reduction capabilities yield a space savings of percent inside the Unity storage array after adding five percent new data. This space savings helps the customer to consolidate their data which reduces the cost of storage and the total cost of ownership. (TCO). Dell EMC Ready Solutions for Oracle: Design for Dell EMC Unity All Flash Unified Storage 47

48 Chapter 4: Oracle Database 18cR1 Performance on Unity 650F Test Results We performed the testing in Use Case 4 to find the data reduction percentage after inserting data in six new SLOB schemas with 100% randomized and unique data generated by a PL/SQL program. After loading the data in six new schemas, we achieved a space savings of percent, as shown in Figure 34. We achieved similar savings by running the same tests on an Oracle Database 12c. The following figure compares the data compression rates that were achieved during our testing with the 12cR2 and 18cR1 databases. Figure 35. Comparative analysis of data reduction (%) for Use Case 4 between 12c and 18c databases Figure 35 shows that the data reduction percentage between Oracle Database 12cR2 and 18cR1 on the Unity 650F storage array is quite similar. Conclusion The tests described in Chapters 3 and 4 prove that Dell EMC Ready Solutions for Oracle designed using the Unity 650F storage array and other Dell EMC hardware for networking and servers creates a reliable reference architecture that will support the upgrade from Oracle Database 12cR2 to Oracle Database 18cR1. Snapshot creation results in very little impact to the performance of these databases. This solution exhibits a simplified upgrade from 12c R2 to 18cR1. Customers can enjoy the many advantages of Dell EMC product portfolios along with the advanced features of the Oracle Database 18cR1. 48 Dell EMC Ready Solutions for Oracle: Design for Dell EMC Unity All Flash Unified Storage