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Re: Automanagement of extent sizing

From: <Cherie_Machler_at_gelco.com>
Date: Fri, 14 Sep 2001 04:57:49 -0700
Message-ID: <F001.0038E519.20010914044532@fatcity.com>

!! Please do not post Off Topic to this List !!

Don,

Just to confirm a point that I think that you are making:

Each tablespace should only have one extent size in it? Once you get too many extents, you move the object up to the next-size tablespace?

Thanks,

Cherie

                                                                                       
                            
                    "Don Granaman"                                                     
                            
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!! Please do not post Off Topic to this List !!

I've been using LMTs in production systems since 1999 with no problems. I've
been doing uniform extents for (almost) everything (enforced through controlling
the DDL) since 1990 - and wouldn't have it any other way.

My strategy is simple - assign objects to tablespaces bases on three criteria.
1) How big are they (or will they get)
2) What is the nature of the object (Table? Index? Read-only? Truncate/Reload, etc.)
3) Separate objects that are likely to contend with each other into different
tablespaces.
Pretty basic stuff really.

Other basic "best practices", in my opinion, are:

I know that autoextend is popular, but consider fragmentation at the filesystem
level also. Consider this: You create N * datafiles on a brand new filesystem,
using virgin disks and load them up with data. A month later, all of these have
autoextended 5 times each (assume - in round robin fashion). How many different
contiguous file chunks are now on this filesystem? Answer: 5 * N. Each file
would have 5 discontiguous "extents". Is this a problem? Probably not much of
one, but "it depends"... I prefer to just create datafiles out of a small set
of sizes and add a new datafile when a tablespace needs more space. The other
advantage is that moving files about is a lot simpler - you only have a few files sizes and a few "hole sizes" ("hole size" = size of space vacated by a
moved datafile).

If you are using raw devices, remember two things. 1) A single raw volume can contain at most one datafile - it never gets fragmented the way a filesystem can.
2) You CAN resize or autoextend a datafile on a raw volume - up to the size of
the volume.

The paper so frequently mentioned "How to Stop Defragging and Start Living" is a
good one and the latest in the line of evolution, but it certainly isn't the
first one or the only one. This philosophy has been around, but perhaps not
well known or commonly adopted, for well over a decade. Popular published papers on this topic go back to at least the mid-1990s. One classic is Cary
Millsap's "Space - The Final Frontier". For many years, at every major conference there were at least a couple of presentations that were some variation on this same theme. Don't be concerned too much about uniform extents. LMTs are relatively new, but the practice is very well established and
thoroughly proven.

I will add one last thing though. There is a potential "gotcha". If you have
an object that is routinely cleaned out and reloaded (say via drop|truncate and
recreate|reload) in batch, you may not want 1000+ extents. When in doubt about
where to put something, based on its size and probable number of extents, it is
usually better to "round up".

-Don Granaman
[OraSaurus - Honk if you remember UFI!]

> !! Please do not post Off Topic to this List !!
>
>
> How many people are using the new 8i and 9i feature for automatic space
> management?   I'm specifically interested in the management of extent
> sizing.
>
>
> For those of you that are using it, what has your experience been with
it?
> What have you learned?   What are the pros and cons?   What sort of
> strategy have you used to implement it?
>
>
> We are considering using this feature for a new project.  Is this a good
> idea?  What would be the "right" way to implement this?


--
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Author: Don Granaman
  INET: granaman_at_home.com

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Received on Fri Sep 14 2001 - 06:57:49 CDT

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