Re: asm on san

On Dec 12, 5:17 pm, Michael Austin <maus..._at_firstdbasource.com> wrote:
> DA Morgan wrote:
> > Michael Austin wrote:
> >> Mladen Gogala wrote:
> >>> helter skelter wrote:
>
> >>>> Hi,
>
> >>>> I'm preparing to test some configurations on san storage array. I would
> >>>> like to find out what will be better in my environment: raid1+0 or
> >>>> raid5. Other thing is what size of segment size should be configured on
> >>>> storage array. For example, I've got 5 disks in RAID5, so if ASM
> >>>> default
> >>>> stripe size for datafiles is 1MB, so segment size on strage shouls be
> >>>> 256KB to hit all drives, am I right?
> >>>> What tools are You recommend to do tests like this: sequentail/sequence
> >>>> reads etc?  thanks
>
> >>>> oracle 10gr2, rhel5
>
> >>> RAID 5 is not good for databases, period. Not for data files,
> >>> especially not for the log files, you can only use RAID 5 partition
> >>> for log_archive_dest_25
> >>> If your boss told you to evaluate RAID 5, it is very likely that he
> >>> wants to
> >>> save some money in the wrong place and will buy you RAID 5, no matter
> >>> what
> >>> your findings are. Moan Isnogood has a great site at
> >>>http://www.baarf.com. The abbreviation "BAARF" stands for "Battle
> >>> Against Any Raid Five". Your company is probably doomed and will not
> >>> make it through the recession. Have
> >>> a nice day.
>
> >> IMProfessionalO baarf is so out-dated when it comes to the modern day
> >> SAN - especially on IBM Shark/whatever, EMC, Hitachi, NetApp, HP
> >> (rebranded Hitachi), HP Storage Works (formerly DEC) and a host of
> >> others where they have xxxGB of cache on the front end. Reads and
> >> Write acknowledgments will be returned in the 1-3ms range. I have had
> >> databases on all of the aforementioned Arrays with both RAID1+0 and
> >> RAID5 at the device level even on systems that require hundreds of
> >> thousands of transactions/sec with no noticeable difference.  When
> >> carving out  200 x 1.5TB LUNS to be presented to a host, it is the
> >> only reasonable and cost effective way to manage something of this
> >> size as well as have some reasonable idea that even a double spindle
> >> failure will not cripple you.
>
> >> On ALL of these systems, bottlenecks can be in different places.  If
> >> your "network (NAS)" or SAN (Fibre) does not have sufficient bandwith,
> >> then it really doesn't matter the spindle read/write rate.  If your
> >> CPU and the system/PCI bus is slow, you are still not even going to
> >> see the spindle read/write rate due to the cache on the array. When
> >> baarf was originally "thought up", you had RAID controllers in the
> >> systems that connected directly to a SCSI bus that connected directly
> >> to the spindle.  And yes, RAID5 was quite expensive.  Again, with the
> >> tons of cache on the array front end, the write acknowledgment is very
> >> fast - LONG before it ever hits the spindle.  Reads on RAID5 are
> >> faster as it reads from many spindles. And in an ASM environment - ALL
> >> bets are off, because now it reads from many LUNS which are carved out
> >> of many RAIDx devices and if you are using IBM SVC - you have another
> >> layer of obfuscation.
>
> >> You can listen to the "baarf" crowd - or you can actually use it on a
> >> day to day basis and see that even if it is somewhat measurable, in
> >> any moderately sized/busy system, you will never see it.  Maybe on a
> >> pristine - unused server/system as that is the only time you can truly
> >> measure those differences and as long as you know exactly where on the
> >> spindle it is being written, how far the head has to travel to get to
> >> the cylinder you want etc. etc... all I can say is BAARRRRRFFFFF!.
>
> >> The baarf crowd can throw numbers all day long, but the bottom line is
> >> that like the TPS benchmarks they are generally gathered from pristine
> >> systems with no real work being done.
>
> > The IBM Shark is a boat anchor.
>
> > I really like a lot of things about IBM hardware ... but the Shark
> > isn't on that list ... and neither is it on the list of many of IBM's
> > own internal hardware purchasers and users.
>
> > If you think BAARF is out of touch I suggest you consider your comments
> > extend to Mogens Norgaard, James Morle, Jonathan Lewis, Cary Millsap,
> > and a few others who might well take exception. And, as a member of
> > BAARF, I most certainly do and I have the lab benchmarks to prove it.
>
> The number of systems and applications that "require" the differences in
> those performance numbers vs. cost on a truly busy system are few and
> FAR between.
>
> Based on experience, I would venture a guess, that the numbers produced
> from your lab environment would vary greatly not only dependent on the
> workload presented, but the hardware, hardware vendor and operating
> system used to generate those numbers. Not all systems are created
> equal. (Something most "commodity" vendors never get).
>
> All I am saying is that unless you actually DESIGN performance into the
> system**, your RAID setting is of very little consequence in 99.9% of
> the databases in use today - especially if you are using some COTS
> package. Don't waste the money - use RAID5/6 - they will never know the
> difference.
>
> Sadly, there are far too many who read the "baarf" comments that would
> ever in their life time need to create a system** where the difference
> would even be noticeable.  Wall Street? Yes. Main Street - I highly
> doubt it...
>
> Again, I would not be as pragmatic on "baarf" - even to the illustrious
> group you mentioned.
>
> **system in this context is defined as the application code, database
> logical AND physical design, hardware (cpu, bus, memory, cache), os,
> drivers, hba's, SAN and Network switches and storage arrays and even
> down to the cables and spindle types and speed.

It certainly does depend a lot on vendor, hardware, type of system, load etc.

The guy you are volleying back and forth with now is also someone who posted in here how wonderful Apple storage is using raid 5 and that everyone inside oracle corp was migrating to that kind of hardware plus he has lots of customers running production systems on that hardware.

So you may not want to exercise some skepticism about this new religion against raid 5 from this poster. Might be having some second thoughts evidently ... Received on Sat Dec 13 2008 - 09:34:16 CST