hp storage april 2002 technical white paper User's Guide Storing Windows®-based Oracle® Databases on the HP NAS 8000 1
executive summary The explosive growth in the amount of data being created, collected and analyzed has created an unprecedented need for storage that is quickly integrated into existing environments, highly reliable, easy to manage and maintain, and easily scalable. Contributing to the rapid growth of storage needs are highpowered database engines, such as Oracle, that can make collecting and analyzing of data a more efficient task.
for more information ..................................................................................................................2 hp solution overview ..................................................................................................................4 storage management and definition guide..............................................................................5 defining NAS 8000 storage for Oracle databases ...............................................................
hp solution overview Data integrity, reliability, scalability and high performance are top priorities in any database implementation. The use of Network Attached Storage (NAS) devices to store database data files has traditionally been discouraged because it was thought that network instability and perceived vulnerabilities of non-local storage posed too great of a potential risk to data integrity and would greatly reduce system performance.
CPU cycles and I/O bandwidth from the Oracle server to accomplish the mirroring. As well, the use of multiple disk controllers/RAID arrays creates administration overhead and can make the environment very complex and requires server CPU cycles to manage and maintain. The NAS 8000 and its storage subsystem provide a high level of concurrency for fast and efficient data access, and utilize RAID 0/1 or HP AutoRAIDtm technology to protect the data on the storage subsystem’s hard drives.
below for more details. For the NAS 8000 system that has a VA 7400, multiple volume groups on separate redundancy groups can be used to increase the fault tolerance level. The operating system of the NAS 8000 will always use the most efficient data pathway to access the VA 7xxx array. If the backup or usage plan calls for the use of NAS 8000 snapshots, space must be reserved in the volume group for the snapshots. After creating volume groups, the next step is to create file volumes.
location of alert logs and trace files Log and trace files can be an excellent source of information for analyzing problems with the database. If the Oracle executables/binaries are installed on the NAS 8000, the default location for Oracle to write the alert log(s) and trace files will also be on the NAS 8000. In an OFA-compliant configuration, by default, these files would be under the Oracle base directory tree, in the admin/oradb directory(ies) in the bdump, cdump and udump subdirectories.
is established, the Oracle service for the database can execute as any user. The dbassist (and oradim utility) will execute the service as “localsystem” unless changed. user level security creating a database with the Oracle Database Administration Assistant (dbassist) If the NAS 8000 is in User/Domain level security and the Oracle server is not executing on the PDC for the Domain (or on a PDC of a trusted Domain), it will not be possible to use the GUI (dbassist) to create a database.
@ECHO 7) Exit Services and control panel – then press enter in this @ECHO command window to continue creating the database. @PAUSE @\Oracle_home\bin\sqlplus INTERNAL/oracle @\some_path\create_database.sql : : Please note that if dbassist were used to create the command script, the command (batch) file would not have the comments and echo statements. The PAUSE command would be added directly after the oradim command.
2) 3) 4) 5) A complete backup is recommended. Copy/move the active redo log file(s) using operating system commands. Startup the database instance and mount the database ( SQL> startup mount pfile=”path”; ) Rename the redo log files in the control file. ( SQL> alter database rename file ‘old_redo_file_name’ to ‘new_redo_file_name’; ) 6) Open the database for use ( SQL> alter database open; ).
or hot spare protection, do not remove a hard drive or data loss will result. NOTE: Although the VA array is able to recover from most dual hard drive failures, there are certain dual hard drive failures that it cannot recover from (such as losing a master and its mirror). Be sure to only remove one drive at a time, then add the new hard drive, and allow the array to reconstruct the data before removing another hard drive.
amount of time a database is unavailable when performing a “cold backup”. If snapshots will be used, especially in a highly dynamic environment where data is rapidly changing, be sure to reserve space for the snapshots in the appropriate volume groups. Snapshots are taken at the file volume level. That is, a snapshot is taken of a single file volume. If the database data files are distributed across multiple file volumes, multiple snapshots will be needed.
The redundancy engineered into the VA 7xxx protects against data loss due to write cache failure in all single failure scenarios. As miniscule as the possibility is, there is a very slight possibility that a catastrophic failure could destroy both banks of the NVRAM. If both banks of the NVRAM were destroyed, the data in the write cache of the NVRAM would be lost. Please note that this NVRAM failure scenario is not unique to NAS devices, but also exists in direct-attach RAID/disk controllers that use NVRAM.
The use of HP Virus Guard Real Time Protection on a file volume that contains an Oracle database is not supported. The use of the Real Time Agent on an active database may cause data corruption to occur. It is possible to perform a scheduled virus scan on file volumes. Performing a virus scan during periods of heavy database traffic can cause excessive system performance degradation.
storage diagram for VA 7400 (single volume group) Hard Drives in Redundancy Group 1 Hard Drives in Redundancy Group 2 Volume Group: VG1 LUN 1 File Vol: Gen CIFS Shares: \ExportPaths File Vol: DB CIFS Shaes: \Ora_Archs \Ora_Data \Ora_Sys \Ora_Index \Ora_Rollbk \Ora_Redo LUN 2 This diagram depicts physical storage divided into two redundancy groups. Hard drives in the odd numbered drive bays are in redundancy group 1. Hard drives in the even numbered drive bays are in redundancy group 2.
storage diagram for VA 7400 (extra fault tolerance) Hard Drives in Redundancy Group 1 Volume Group: VG1 Hard Drives in Redundancy Group 2 Volume Group: VG2 LUN 1 LUN 2 File Vol: Gen_1 File Vol: Gen_2 CIFS Shares: \ExportPaths CIFS Shares: \ExportPaths File Vol: OData File Vol: OLogs CIFS Shares: \Ora_Arc_Logs \Ora_Data \Ora_Sys CIFS Shares \Ora_Index \Ora_RollBack \Ora_Redo This diagram depicts physical storage divided into two redundancy groups.
glossary AutoRAIDtm – Combination of RAID Levels 0, 1 and 5DP implemented by the firmware of the VA 7xxx controller to provide automatic data protection on VA 7xxx hard drives. CIFS/SMB – (Common Internet File System / Server Message Block). Protocols used to access non-local storage over a network. Primarily used by Windows based systems. Consistent Backup –A backup taken after the database has been shutdown and no changes are taking place to any database files.
