Re: Oracle & SAN Experiences?

> The Sys. Admin. team wants to consolidate storage (and
> probably get a new toy too) on all of our servers, so they
> are evaluating a SAN (LSI Logic E4600). The DBA team is
> doing some research to determine the pros and cons of
> doing this, and I'd like to hear any of your experiences
> (good and bad) using SAN with Oracle.
>
> My understanding is that all of our database servers would
> remain intact, but the attached disk storage would move
> into the SAN. So, we still have the Production, Test, and
> App. servers with their processors and memory, Oracle
> homes, etc. The SAN will hold database files from
> Production, Test, Apps., staging, ODS,data warehouse, etc.
>
> Their arguments:
> -the SAN is very scalable (500 GB - 40 TB)
> -easy to manage disks in one central location
> -fancy statistics collection on all SAN disks
> -much higher throughput on the fiber SAN connections than
> with locally attached disk arrays
> -capable of using mixed RAID levels (0, 1, 1+0, 5, etc.)
> -can partition sets of disks in the SAN for specific
> server access -Snapshot backup capability is very fast in
> the SAN (much faster than traditional Oracle backups)
>
> DBA arguments:
> -How will this affect database performance?
> -What are the drawbacks, if any, with the pre-fetch of
> data performed by the SAN (i.e., SAN cache)
> -How tunable is the SAN
> -Fast, small disks are better for performance and less
> wasted space than the typical huge disks in a SAN (it's
> possible to use smaller disks in the SAN) -Prove it!
>
>
> After reading the "Sane SAN" article and a case study
> about Volvo implementing a SAN, I believe it's possible to
> have a great Oracle/SAN implementation if it's setup
> correctly and tuned. Other resources that you can Google
> are "Using SVA SnapShot with Oracle", "Performance
> Benchmark LSI Logic E4600 (STK D178)", "SAN Storage for
> Open Systems Environments", and of course check the
> OraFaq.
>
> Thanks for sharing,
>
> David Wagoner
> Oracle DBA

Sounds like you're going through an excellent evaluation process. I would suggest to keep in mind Anjo's advice to also regard I/O in terms of units of throughput (i.e. read or write rates) instead of Gbytes or Tbytes (i.e. static capacity). Helps clarify the discussions...

The other thing is the idea of co-mingling production and dev/test. Of course it is possible and quite feasible, but if you look at things from the perspective of units of throughput, you might find a huge disparity or conflict. Perhaps the most telling indicator might be reviewing whether or not your LANs for production and dev/test are isolated from one another -- many of the rationales for doing so (or not doing so) might be similar to the considerations for your SAN.

Good luck!

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