Running Oracle OLTP workloads in HP Integrity VM 4.3

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Technical white paper

Table of contents

Abstract ....................................................................................................................................... 2

Acronyms and terms used in this paper ....................................................................................... 3

Using HP Integrity VM for hardware consolidation ............................................................................ 4

Oracle OLTP test environment (Used during this performance characterization) ................................... 4

Integrity VM host configuration ................................................................................................... 5

Storage configuration ................................................................................................................ 5

Integrity VM guest configuration ................................................................................................. 6

Oracle configuration ................................................................................................................. 7

Workload generator configuration .............................................................................................. 8

Oracle OLTP testing methodology (Used during this performance characterization) ............................. 9

Generation of different-sized “clean” databases ........................................................................... 9

Workload run ........................................................................................................................... 9

Results ....................................................................................................................................... 10

Interpreting the results .............................................................................................................. 10

Oracle best practices with Integrity VM (Observed during this performance characterization) ............. 11

Integrity VM host best practices ................................................................................................ 11

Integrity VM guest best practices ............................................................................................... 11

Oracle best practices .............................................................................................................. 11

Conclusion ................................................................................................................................. 12

For more information ................................................................................................................... 12

Customer feedback ..................................................................................................................... 12

Summary of content (12 pages)

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Running Oracle OLTP workloads in HP Integrity VM 4.3 Technical white paper Table of contents Abstract.......................................................................................................................................2 Acronyms and terms used in this paper .......................................................................................3 Using HP Integrity VM for hardware consolidation ............................................................................
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Abstract The mission-critical converged infrastructure is the foundation for the next decade of computing. The newest line of HP Integrity systems combines years of trusted Integrity resiliency with HP BladeSystem efficiencies.
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Acronyms and terms used in this paper Acronyms/Terms Definition AVIO Accelerated Virtual I/O AWR Oracle Automated Workload Repository DB Database DCOE HP-UX Data Center Operating Environment DSS Decision support system FC Fibre Channel LVM HP Logical Volume Manager NUMA Non-Uniform Memory Access OLTP Online transaction processing PGA Oracle Program Global Area RAID Redundant array of inexpensive disks RPM Revolutions per minute SAN Storage area network SGA Oracle System Global A
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Using HP Integrity VM for hardware consolidation HP Integrity VM provides complete OS instance isolation, while sharing hardware resources that are dynamically adjusted based on workload demand. Virtualization makes it easier to share hardware because one Integrity server can host multiple OS instances. Therefore, the Integrity VM product is a good solution for hardware consolidation.
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Integrity VM host configuration The Integrity BL860c i2 Server Blade is configured as follows: • VM host 2 CPU: Two sockets, each populated with an Intel® Itanium® Processor 9340 Series; the Itanium 9340 is a quad-core CPU, and it delivers clock frequency of 1.
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Integrity VM guest configuration The Integrity VM guest was configured as follows: Hardware configuration • 8 virtual CPUs with 100 percent entitlement • 64 GB RAM with dynamic memory disabled • All storage is presented to the guest using AVIO whole LUNs – 8 LUNs used for holding Oracle binaries – 16 LUNs used for holding Oracle redo logs – 32 LUNs used for holding Oracle data files – 16 LUNs used for holding Oracle archive logs – 16 LUNs used for holding “clean” copies of the Oracle database Software conf
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Filesystem configuration Each of the Oracle filesystems is created using OnlineJFS 5.0.1 and disk layout version 7. Each filesystem resides in a separate LVM 2.2 volume group. The filesystems were created using LVM Distributed Extent Allocation and 1 MB extents.
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Workload generator configuration Swingbench is a workload generator that runs against Oracle databases. Swingbench has an OLTP workload and a DSS workload. For this set of measurements, the OLTP workload was used as our customers indicated that they are predominantly interested in running OLTP workloads in their Integrity VM guests. The Swingbench OLTP workload used in this analysis is called SOE. It comprises five transactions that are run repeatedly. The default workload mix used by Swingbench version 2.
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Oracle OLTP testing methodology (Used during this performance characterization) For this effort, we ran a number of Oracle workloads inside an Integrity VM guest. Next, we booted the Integrity BL860c i2 Server Blade, using the VM's boot disk, to run the same Oracle workloads on the native blade. The differences in Oracle TPS and the CPU utilization of the VM, vs. the native blade, were compared, to arrive at a rough estimate of virtualization overhead associated with a given workload.
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Results Several different benchmark tests were run using varying Oracle database instance sizes and varying numbers of Swingbench users. Table 1 below contains the results from the different Swingbench runs conducted during this effort. The results in table 1 are merely an example of Integrity VM performance achieved during an internal benchmarking effort. Your results will vary based on configuration and workload. The columns in the table are as follows: 1.
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Oracle best practices with Integrity VM (Observed during this performance characterization) Optimizing Oracle in an HP-UX environment requires several best practices that apply regardless of whether Oracle is running in an Integrity VM guest or on a native Integrity server. Those best practices are outside the scope of this paper. However, there are several best practices specific to running an Oracle workload inside an Integrity VM guest. Integrity VM host best practices • Set the base page size to 64 KB.
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Conclusion In this white paper, we demonstrated that HP Integrity VM running on the new HP Integrity servers is well suited to running Oracle OLTP workloads. This was demonstrated through various performance and overhead measurements of an Oracle OLTP configuration, running in an Integrity VM on an HP Integrity BL860c i2 Server Blade. For more information HP Integrity VM http://hp.com/go/integrityvm HP Integrity VM documentation and white papers http://hp.