Dell Compellent SC8000 Controller - Manual (Page 13)

Optimizing an Oracle Database with Dell Compellent Automated Tiered Storage
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Table 1. Hardware and software configurations for Benchmark factory test
HARDWARE AND SOFTWARE CONFIGURATIONS FOR BENCHMARK FACTORY TEST
Server Two PowerEdge R720 servers, each with:
• Two Intel Xeon 8-core 2.20 GHz CPU’s
• 64 GB of RAM
• 4 Gb QLogic dual-port QLE2462 HBA for SAN traffic
External Storage Two Dell Compellent Series 40 controllers connected with
• 7 plus 1 spare 136GB SSD disks in a Dell Compellent SBOD Fibre
Channel enclosure
• 23 plus 1 spare 136GB 15K RPM SAS disks in a Dell Compellent 2.5’’
SAS enclosure
• 11 plus 1 spare 932GB 7K RPM SAS disks in a Dell Compellent 3.5’’
SAS enclosure
• Firmware: Storage Center 6.1.2
Volume Configuration Four volumes for database files; Four volumes for online redo log files; Four
volume for Flash Recovery area
OS Oracle Enterprise Linux 5 Update 7
Storage Network Two Brocade 5300 Fibre Channel switches
Test Software Quest Benchmark Factory 6.1.1 with Oracle 64 bit 11.2.0.3 EE RAC
The Oracle database in the test configuration was implemented using Oracle Automatic Storage
Management (ASM). Three ASM disk groups were created to host the Oracle data with a total of 12
storage volumes:
 DATA disk group consists of four 100GB volumes to host datafiles.
 FRA disk group consists of four 100GB volumes to host the Flash Recovery Area which stores the
archived redo log files.
 REDO disk group consists of four 25GB volumes to host the online redo log files.
Three storage tiers were configured in the Dell Compellent backend:
 Tier 1 – 7 plus 1 spare 136GB SSD drives.
 Tier 2 – 23 plus 1 spare 136GB 15K RPM SAS drives.
 Tier 3 – 11 plus 1 spare 932GB 7K RPM SAS drives.
To study the performance advantage of Data Progression, we compared between a baseline
configuration without storage tiering and the configuration after Data Progression rearranged data
placement to the three storage tiers. The test details are outlined in the sections below.
Baseline configuration without Data Progression
In the baseline configuration, all 12 Oracle storage volumes reside in the tier 2 15K RPM SAS drives with
RAID 10. Data Instant Replay is not configured on the volumes. The baseline configuration represents
the configuration where Data Progression is not implemented. All read and write IOs to the Oracle
volumes are directed to the 15 K RPM SAS drives configured with RAID 10.
Figure 4 shows the volume distribution of one of the DATA volumes and one of the FRA volumes in the
baseline configuration. All 12 Oracle volumes in the baseline configuration have similar type of volume