Unix instance with NetApp storage
Gerard H. Pille
Our Oracle instances on AIX use DS6800 for storage, but the DS6800
will have to be replaced.
One of the candidates is NetApp. My colleague, who is responsible for
keeping these systems up and running, warned me: "Do you know that AIX
can only reach NetApp via NFS?".
My first reaction was: "You're not seriously considering an Oracle
instance with its data on an NFS?".
But then I realized I might be getting too old for this shit, and
getting behind the times. So I had a look around the internet.
My Google skillz must be failing me, but I couldn't find anything on
the web about this combination, apart from whitepapers from NetApp
itself, which were quite positive.
Anyone with real life experience who survived and wishes to tell about
it?
It would be very well come!
Thanks,
Gerard
Robert Klemme
Disclaimer: my experience is a bit rusty (3+ years) and also not hands on.
Alas, we had a customer running Oracle 8.1.7 (albeit on Solaris Sparc)
by that time with our application and data files were on a NetApp filer
mounted via NFS (unfortunately I don't have the model handy). DB was
pretty big (at least a few hundred GB) and usage patterns were a mix of
OLTP and DWH. I remember they had to do some tweaking to NFS and NIC
options (something about large frames comes to mind) but IIRC the
performance they got out of it was good. Plus, with the filer you could
take snapshots pretty fast so if there was a schema migration to do they
did a snapshot before and went on so they could pretty painlessly switch
back.
Now, having said that: this was not a RAC installation and a very
specialized setup. And apparently tuning was not too easy but I suspect
this is always the case whatever storage infrastructure you use. Maybe
tools are better today I cannot really comment on that. With newer
versions of Oracle and other applications the results may look
dramatically different. Hope it helps nevertheless.
To sum it up: datafiles on NetApp NFS drives is certainly doable and can
be fast but may not be easy to set up and tune.
Kind regards
robert
--
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Mladen Gogala
Oracle Direct NFS, integrated with version 11 can be used to access a NFS
share. NFS is supported since version 9.2. Been there, done that.
Performance is way better than directly attached RAID 5. Besides, NetApp
storage can also be attached via FC cable and Brocade switches so your
colleague's statement doesn't hold water.
skyste-
> Hallo en een gelukkig nieuwjaar / happy new year!
>
> Our Oracle instances on AIX use DS6800 for storage, but the DS6800
> will have to be replaced.
>
> One of the candidates is NetApp. My colleague, who is responsible for
> keeping these systems up and running, warned me: "Do you know that AIX
> can only reach NetApp via NFS?".
Sure? I've some AIX using NetApp via FC... Althought...NetApp is a good
(with many doubt) for NFS. Using Netapp with ISCSI or FC is not a good
idea. Consider that NetApp is a Linux machine and works better in fact
with NFS/CIFS.
BTW NetApp is not really a good choiche if you need reliability and
speed. Here we have more than 50+ NetApp and many of these supports
Oracle installation, both single nodes and RAC. IBM storage is really
affordabile a quick. Also NetApp is not so really cheap if you want to
use some function that is not CIFS (CIFS is licensed with the system,
NFS not).
I think that the better choiche for you is to replace your DS6800 with a
new IBM storage, avoiding IBM N series that is a NetApp.
My $$ cents.
Stefano
--
http://www.stefanocislaghi.eu