Oracle Architecture

Tom Hamilton Americas

Channel Database CSE

Common Oracle Versions

Oracle 8i (no SMO support)
Oracle 9i (no SMO support 3.3 or later)
Oracle 10g
Oracle 11g
Coming attractions
Oracle 12c not released by Oracle yet

Oracle Components
Database files
Automatic Storage Management (ASM)
Real Application Cluster (RAC)
Protocols
Disaster Recovery

Oracle Database Files

Storage System
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Oracle Database Files

Binaries
Configuration files
Datafiles
Temporary database files
Redo log files
Archive redo log files
Cluster-related files

Whats a Block?
The basic unit Oracle uses to manage data.
Typically 8k in size.
Some data warehouses or any other
database with a lot of long sequential reads
will have 16k or 32k.
You can have a database with mixed block
sizes, but it is very rare

Block Structure.
It has a header that
contains a database
address, SCN number,
checksum, etc.
It has a tail with more
metadata about the
block.
Not a good candidate
for deduplication.

Block Structure: Deduplication

The header should
be globally unique in
the whole database,
meaning that first 4k
WAFL block will have
no duplicates.
The tail is not 100%
unique, but its highly
variant, meaning that
final 4k WAFL block
will have very few
duplicates.

NetApp Deduplication and Data

Compression
Sample Use Cases and Space Savings

Legend
Compression
Only

Deduplication
Only

Compression &
Deduplication

Neither
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Oracle Database Backup and Recovery

Backup and recovery
Archivelog mode

Control files
Redo logs
Archive logs
SCN
Benefits
Consequences

Non-Archivelog mode

Control files
Redo logs
Benefits
Consequences
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Oracle Database Backup and Recovery

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Automatic Storage Manager

What is it?
Features

Mirroring and Striping

Dynamic Storage Configuration
Interoperability with non-ASM databases
RAC and single instance

Components

Disk Groups
Disks
Failure groups
Files
Templates

NetApp interoperability
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NetApp Adds Value to Oracle ASM

Oracle ASM

NetApp

Oracle ASM + NetApp

Protect against Single Disk Failure

Yes

Yes

Yes

Protect against Double Disk failure

No

Yes

Yes

Passive Block corruption detection

Yes

Yes

Yes

Active Block corruption detection

Yes

Yes

Yes

Lost disk write detection

No

Yes

Yes

Stripe data across ASM Disks

Yes

No

Yes

Balance I/O across ASM Disks

Yes

No

Yes

Stripe data across Physical Disks

No

Yes

Yes

Balance I/O across Physical Disks

No

Yes

Yes

I/O prioritization

No

Yes

Yes

Free space management across

physical disks

No

Yes

Yes

Thin provisioning of ASM Disks

No

Yes

Yes

Space efficient Cloning

No

Yes

Yes

Storage Snapshot based Backups

No

Yes

Yes

Storage Snapshot based Restores

No

Yes

Yes

Data Resilience

Performance

Storage Utilization

Data Protection

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ASM versus FC: IO Layers

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Real Application Cluster

Shared database
Cluster-aware storage

ASM
Oracle Cluster File System (OCFS)
NFS
Raw devices

Distance between RAC nodes

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Oracle RAC

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Introducing Oracle dNFS

What is Direct NFS client?

Collaborative solution from NetApp & Oracle
NFSv3 client within Oracle RDBMS server
NFS files accessed directly from Oracle
Eliminates extra O/S NFS client code path
Optimized NFS code path for database I/O
patterns via direct I/O and asynchronous I/O
support

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Introducing Oracle dNFS

What is Direct NFS client?

Eliminates the need for NFS mount options
Standard NFS client implementation across all
platforms supported by the Oracle Database,
even Windows.
No infrastructure changes are required to
change from kNFS to dNFS.

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dNFS Optimizes Oracle I/O Traffic

Direct NFS I/O

Database

Traditional NFS I/O

Extra layers

Not optimized
for Oracle
Extra network
traffic

2
FS layer
3
NFS client

TCP / IP layer

TCP / IP layer
OS

dNFS

Driver + NIC HW
Storage

Driver + NIC HW
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Oracle dNFS Innovation

dNFS is scalable, reliable, & easy to use!

Scales across 4 separate network paths
between DB host & NFS server
Load balances across available paths
Scales linearly with number of paths
High Availability across paths
Tested with NetApp VIF technology
No configuring O/S LACP bonding

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Improved Scalability with dNFS

Performs on par with blocks protocols
Higher concurrent access to NFS server

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Protocols
FCP/FCoE
iSCSI
Native NFS
Direct NFS (DNFS)
DO NOT USE CIFS

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Performance Considerations
FCP/FCoE
iSCSI
Native NFS
Direct NFS (DNFS)
Which one do you choose?

The customer is always right

Current infrastructure
Expertise level
Requirements
DO NOT GET IN A PROTOCOL WAR!
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Performance Considerations TR3932

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Performance Considerations TR3932

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Oracle Disaster Recovery Methods: Data

Guard
Data availability, data protection and disaster recovery solution
What:
Replicates Oracle databases from one data center to another
Ability to perform backups from the standby database instead of the production database
Both physical and logical versions

Image from
Oracle Corp