ASM and IBM SVC

Michael Austin

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Dec 13, 2008, 9:26:00 PM12/13/08

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Can anyone share performance impressions when using ASM with SVC or even
9i(yeah we know...) cooked file systems?

We currently have the impression that SVC can only return data in 32k
chunks regardless of I/O setting at the OS (Solaris, AIX and HPUX) and
or storage parameters in Oracle causing additional I/O traffic.

Just curious.

hpuxrac

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Dec 14, 2008, 6:37:56 PM12/14/08

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Back in my old IBM days SVC was a SuperVisor Call ... what are you
talking about exactly?

Is this some kind of storage? ( We are an EMC shop ... so no clue ).

Michael Austin

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Dec 14, 2008, 9:31:23 PM12/14/08

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ahh yes.. more acronyms...

SVC=SAN Volume Controller.
I am just trying to figure it out but have been told you can think of it
as an array agnostic filer - similar to NetApp, but will work with any
storage. Essentially this "controller (cluster)" is a gateway between
your server and your storage whereby you can have any vendors arrays
behind it and it presents logical LUNS to your server and it handles all
of the I/O.

Do a quick google search on IBM SVC architecture.

joel garry

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Dec 15, 2008, 5:15:40 PM12/15/08

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OK, I did a quick google on that along with transfer size.

I would be bummed if it could do 256K reads but only returned 32K...
http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/blogs/page/storagevirtualization?tag=SVC

And further down:

"So this is just FUD. To re-iterate. This was a generated 70/30 mixed
workload. So 70% read, 30% write, with a block size of 4K. This is
industry accepted as a pseudo-typical database workload - and has been
for many years."

Putting this into context is left as an exercise for the student. As
is why someone would test raid-0 because raid-10 isn't done yet, and
admit it.

This may be cool stuff, but too much DKBness for my tastes. And
besides that, I'd rather know where my data is.

jg
--
@home.com is bogus.
"not picking on HP, but we do seem to migrate off a lot of these
boxes" - Barry Whyte

The Boss

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Dec 15, 2008, 5:52:01 PM12/15/08

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You also might want to read one or more of IBM's Redbooks on SVC:

- Implementing the IBM System Storage SAN Volume Controller v4.3
At the following link you can read an abstract and download the Redbook:
http://www.redbooks.ibm.com/Redbooks.nsf/RedbookAbstracts/sg246423.html?OpenDocument
(972-page PDF; 17.8MB)

- Implementing the SVC in an OEM Environment
http://www.redbooks.ibm.com/Redbooks.nsf/RedbookAbstracts/sg247275.html?OpenDocument
It offers info on using SVC with storage arrays from EMC, HDS, HP and
NetApp.
(286-page PDF; 9.3 MB)

- SAN Volume Controller Best Practices and Performance Guidelines
http://www.redbooks.ibm.com/Redbooks.nsf/RedbookAbstracts/sg247521.html?Open
(338-page PDF; 6.3 MB)

- Oracle and IBM storage solutions: Optimize your Oracle investment with IBM
http://www.redbooks.ibm.com/Redbooks.nsf/RedbookAbstracts/redp4421.html?OpenDocument
This Redpaper isn't dedicated to SVC, but has some info on its use.
(12-page PDF; 0.2 MB)

You may also be interested in this blog from SVC's Performance Architect:
http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/blogs/page/storagevirtualization

--
Jeroen