Impact of SCSI delays (enabling Brocade zoning) on "live" Oracle

From: Vsevolod Afanassiev <vafanassiev_at_aapt.com.au>
Date: 19 Jul 2002 01:44:54 -0700
Message-ID: <4f7d504c.0207190044.1fccc893@posting.google.com>

We plan to implement Brocade zoning on our SAN, and I am looking for any info on impact of enabling Brocade zoning on "live" Oracle database
with IO going on.

Brocade manual makes following statement "Zones cab be configured dynamically. When onfiguring new zones: * Data traffic on ports and devices is idle for a moment, then resumes accordingto the new zining configuration. ..." I am mostly concern about this delay in SCSI traffic - is it going to cause Oracle databases any problems?

We don't have "test SAN", so any testing is rather difficult. Nevertheless, I was able to conduct a test with enabling/disabling zoning while
running "mkfile" or "cp" on SAN-based filesystem (no Oracle). While the box (Sun2.8) did not crash and the filesystem remained available,
I got messages in /var/adm/messages

scsi: [ID 107833 kern.warning] WARNING: /pci_at_8,600000.lpfc_at_1/sd_at_0,1 (sd132)
SCSI transport failed: reason 'tran_err': retrying command

What impact such SCSI delay would have on Oracle (various versions from 8.0.5 to 9.0.1)? Probably, ALTER SYSTEM SUSPEND will be helpful. Received on Fri Jul 19 2002 - 03:44:54 CDT