Oracle on a Storage Area Network

[hoffmak]

Hi.

I am running Oracle 8i (8.1.6) on a Windows NT 4.0 Server platform. I am preparing to order a new server that will have Windows 2000 Server and Oracle 8.1.7 on it.

Our systems administrator's are trying to get me to put it on their Storage Area Network (SAN). While I would like the reliability and recovery options that it offers, I cannot find a great deal of information on it, and I am concerned about response time. I would like to put an older server I have as part of the SAN to see how it would work.

Does using Oracle on a SAN increase read/write times? Does it increase the DBA's administration capabilities, or is more complex than a simple server to disk architecture? The system admins have little to no Oracle experience, and this database is the only Oracle database in our shop, this would be totally new territory.

Any input from those of you out there that might have a an Oracle installation on a Storage Area Network would be welcome.

Thanks

[marist89]

Running Oracle in a SAN evironment is AWESOME! It gives you so many recoverability and expansion possibilities. I have been running several boxes on a SAN and are moving most of my Oracle hosts to a Switched SAN environment.

Things to remember in a SAN environment:
1. Underlying RAID structure DOES matter.
Don't let your sysadmins tell you the underlying RAID structure doesn't matter. You DO care if it is RAID 5 or RAID 0+1. As with all I/O, you want to make sure it is distributed. If your sysadmins give you 5 filesystems and they all reside on three 72G drives, performance will suck.

2. SAN Transport speed. Your SAN Transport speed is probably faster than your network. The SAN should be a dedicated 1Gbps or 2Gbps network just for storage. Most Fibre host bus adapters are MUCH faster than SCSI.

3. Oracle doesn't care where the data is, just as long as it LOOKS local.

4. Sharing RAID sets with other applications CAN affect performance. Again, the name of the I/O game is distribution. Don't share your physical devices with other applications as they might behave differently than Oracle.

I have a good relationship with my sysadmin group. I tell them I need 12 filesystems of 6 disk 0+1 and it magically appears. I don't care which 144 disks I am using on which array. I just care that I have the space, it's 0+1, I know it's not being shared by the email system, and it's mounted as /u01 - /u12! I may get 3 filesystems from Array1, 2 from Array2, and 7 from Array4.

[nagarjuna]

Originally posted by hoffmak
Hi.
Our systems administrator's are trying to get me to put it on their Storage Area Network (SAN).

G O F O R I T ! !

[hoffmak]

Marist

Thank you for your response.

Just a question: what are the benefits to RAID 0+1 vs RAID 5? I am new to running Oracle on RAID, and was curious about which one is better.

Thanks

[marist89]

Originally posted by hoffmak

Just a question: what are the benefits to RAID 0+1 vs RAID 5? I am new to running Oracle on RAID, and was curious about which one is better.

If you got the $$$, 0+1 is definitely better than RAID 5. RAID 5 has an inherent penalty during the write phase.

See http://www.bitpipe.com/data/detail?i...S&x=1704389170 for details.