Friday, July 15, 2011

The Oracle Exadata: latest Business Weapon

Add to Technorati Favorites
Ver este articulo en Español

Sorry I’ve been having a lot of work installing, maintaining and migrating to Database Machines all over Latinamerica for the latest 10 months; that means lot of travels abroad, all of them very exciting, but the real excitement comes from my job working with this wonderful Machine.

Was on the last project when realized how important is this investment for our customers, having this big caribbean Telco installed their first Exadata and later migrated their databases meant for them dramatic performance improvements and the ability to get more up-to-date analytical information and compete better and more agile.

Of course the Database Machine fulfilled expectations when we achieved a processing reduction of 6x on their nightly batch processes, going from 8-9hrs processing time, down-to 1.5-2hrs processing time. What this means: now they’re able to increase the refreshing time of their analysis tools 12 times a day and on demand, instead of having latest information one day behind.

Read my related article on Exadata Hybrid Columnar Compression

My steps to implement EHCC

Recommended reading on My Oracle Support notes that helped make this happen:

Migrating to Oracle Exadata Storage Server Paper (PDF)

Oracle Sun Database Machine Performance Best Practices [ID 1067520.1]



Subscribe to Oracle Database Dissected by Email
Follow IgnacioRuizMX on Twitter

Delicious Bookmark this on Delicious

Tuesday, November 30, 2010

My Steps to Implement Exadata EHCC

Add to Technorati Favorites


Ver este articulo en EspañolSubscribe to Oracle Database Disected by Email

Last time I was engaged with an Exadata migration, customer asked me about EHCC and how to implement it for their datamarts.

My approach (at that time) consisted on the following:
1) Get a sample of very big objects to play with
2) Used DBMS_COMPRESSION in order to get estimations for compression rates
3) Try every compression type: Basic, Query Low, Query High, Archive Low, Archive High and recorded size reductions, time to import and time for FTS.
4) Recorded and compared timings for various batch processes and important queries

With all those statistics, went to the customer and then he was able to take a decision based on nature of data, popular timeframe of querying within the data window, parallel degree, partitioning defined (BTW customer already had it on place, best practice!), and so on.

I've used Datapump to import because it uses direct path load and Basic compression needs it to kick in.

Further thinking on this matter resulted on proposals to include table usage (V$SEGMENT_STATISTICS) & table data dynamics (Monitoring+DBA_TAB_MODIFICATIONS) in order to fine tune the compression mode selected. The next time I've the opportunity to include this on the process, I'll share with you the results...

Thank you very much for your time, and if you liked this post please share with others freely...

Follow IgnacioRuizMX on Twitter

Delicious Bookmark this on Delicious

Tuesday, November 23, 2010

From 3Tb to 1.5Tb Using standard COMPRESS and PCTFREE

Add to Technorati Favorites

Ver este articulo en Español

I've been working on a migration project, with very aggressive dates and a couple of requirements that increase difficulty: switch from filesystem to ASM, using 50% of new storage... yes, you got the right picture, we don't have full set of disks for ASM to fit all data, therefore I need to move data trying to release complete datafiles in order to free those logical volumes or LUNs, and later add them to ASM.

Anyway, I realized that given this is a DSS or Datawarehouse, there is some margin to increase "data density" per block, in other words decrease the amount of space within one data block that is wasted reducing PCTFREE.

Another opportunity to decrease storage usage came from the fact customer is upgrading from 10.2.0.4 to 11.1.0.7, so I can use STANDARD improved compression features on DATA!!!

The final touch came from a long time (and some times under-used feature), Index Key Compression. If you want more detail, can see my posts back from 2008 about this feature Index Key Compression - part I, Index Key Compression - part II and Index Key Compression - part III. Well, thanks the customer provided an environment dedicated to this project I was able to start doing som very expensive analysis on Index compression, with this strategy on mind: choose the biggest indexes to compress, then doing the ANALYZE INDEX ... VALIDATE STRUCTURE OFFLINE and SELECT * FROM INDEX_STATS for each candidate. (Please note you can consider not only massive indexes, but those heavily used too... for that you need to get usage info from V$SEGMENT_STATISTICS). Some indexes compressed very well, with 40%-50% space savings, while others didn't got that good rates on 4% or 6%, just depends on information nature/distribution.

First got all my tables with current allocated space, from DBA_SEGMENTS, filled one spreadsheet with this info and considered extra columns for PARALLEL degree for movement and compression flag, and so on. Using a formula was able to get 3000+ statements like this one:

ALTER TABLE ... MOVE PCTFREE 2 TABLESPACE DAT_ASM_HP NOLOGGING COMPRESS PARALLEL 8;

or like this one for indexes:

ALTER INDEX ... REBUILD TABLESPACE IDX_AHP COMPRESS 1 PARALLEL 8 NOLOGGING PCTFREE 2;


Well, final figures were:

Tables Starting:1.9Tb Ending:1Tb
Indexes Starting:1.0Tb Ending:0.5Tb

I have to remark that this space reductions:
1) Depend on this particular data distribution or patterns
2) After index rebuild, with time flowing and info gets inserted, Indexes will tend to "stabilize" and make block splits thus free space. (see this post on Index Dynamics)
3) Inserts and updates on tables will tend to "expand" some data, therefore next step will be to implement Partitioning to isolate some other regions of data blocks AND enf-of-period maintenance tasks in order to keep data compressed.

Well, if you want to follow this route, please share with us on the comments section how it went for your database or what your findings were, we will appreciate hearing (or better said, reading) from You!

Thanks for your time, have a good time...

Subscribe to Oracle Database Dissected by Email

Follow IgnacioRuizMX on Twitter
Delicious

Bookmark this on Delicious

Wednesday, November 10, 2010

Migration time: Oracle Database Machine/Exadata

Add to Technorati Favorites


Ver este articulo en Español
Guess what I've been doing lately??!! taking vacations? well, that was on September (and that's another post) watching movies? wish I could... none of that, but something more exciting: migrating multi-terabyte datamarts to some Oracle DBMs/Exadatas!!!

My first attempt back in March was Datapump, and it worked fine up-to database sizes around 2Tb using import over the network (DB Link) which is cool, but has the following caveat: cannot disable estimation when using DB Link and therefore much time is spent just measuring how much info Datapump is going to transfer.

However, lately I've been using something we call O2O migration (Oracle-to-Oracle) that is a set of tools and procedures developed by Oracle with SAP database systems in mind, which easily get into the Terabyte league and on top of that critical downtimes, then need to perform super-fast... and it does!!!

On my last migration, took about 36 hours to make a clone of 10Tb datamart ... results may vary according to source hardware config, and things like storage setup and maker or number of cpus factor in; of course on the other side you need to take into account the DBM/Exadata sizing. Summarizing, results may vary according to your hardware and database sizing.

This is an excellent alternative you may take into account, but remember this tool is not included with the database: is sold as a service from Oracle.

Subscribe to Oracle Database Disected by Email

Follow IgnacioRuizMX on Twitter
Delicious
Bookmark this on Delicious

Friday, September 10, 2010

Oracle patchset 11.2.0.2 released (and docs updated)

Add to Technorati Favorites
Ver este articulo en Español

***Sep 13th, Patchset has been released***

Today Oracle released latest patchset for Database Server 11g2: 11.2.0.2 which packs some very interesting improvements and new features; for now, release covers Linux x86 and x86_64, with download measuring near 5Gb(!) .

Also updated all documents for release 11.2, in order to reflect improvements introduced by 11.2.0.2. You can see on following picture a New Features addition
From now on you will see full distribution instead of a patchset (MyOracle Support Note 1189783.1 ), that's why seven ZIP files are listed for download. First two belong to database/RAC: p10098816_112020_{platform}_1of7.zip and p10098816_112020_{platform}_2of7.zip.

If you're looking for Grid Infrastructure then you must download file p10098816_112020_{platform}_3of7.zip.

For client and gateways, download p10098816_112020_{platform}_4of7.zip or p10098816_112020_{platform}_5of7.zip files respectively.

You want to update Examples? then file p10098816_112020_{platform}_6of7.zip contains what is needed.

Finally, you may want to de-install, then is needed file p10098816_112020_{platform}_7of7.zip.

See Oracle 11.2 documentation library

Cheers!



Subscribe to Oracle Database Disected by Email
Follow IgnacioRuizMX on Twitter
Delicious Bookmark this on Delicious

Thursday, September 2, 2010

Oracle database recovery with data unloading

Add to Technorati Favorites
Ver este articulo en Español


What I'm going to share with you is an example of how you can recover from an apparently dead-end situation when a database crashes due to storage failure and gets corrupted.

During past two days I was engaged with a customer where the disk array had a double failure on a RAID-5 arrangement, hence lossing information. When asking for backup... none!!!; unfortunately this database wasn't backed-up regularly (was managed by an application team, not customer's formal Storage-OS-DB areas), database was in NOARCHIVE mode and on top of that NOLOGGING for all objects, including objects (remember we can turnoff logging on indexes),

Well this seems like a terminal case, one that you cannot escape ... but Oracle provides a Data Unloading service for this cases when either corruption or hardware failure renders a database unable to open, I'm part of Support - Advanced Customer Services within Oracle Corporation and our team is entitled to realize those services, under a service contract. There is no guarantee of how much information can be recovered and our tool only recovers data within datafiles/blocks, but hey! that's good help. (Hint: database dictionary included)

But this case was difficult, since customer didn't had QA nor DEV environments, where we can get DDL for objects like stored procedures or indexes, I had to individually extract database dictionary objects, load them on new database distinct schema (of course not SYS) and modify some DBA_ views in order to point these objects. Of course wasn't able to use DBMS_METADATA.GET_DDL because it uses SYS objects, and I didn't wanted to mess with database's DD. So, I had to handcraft scripts to get DDL for sequences, indexes, constraints, views and stored procedures/functions ... lot of work!!! but customer got almost all data back, all structure and very happy, so worth the time invested ... this experience is something they won't forget, as a matter of fact they are going to transfer administration to operational departments.

Thank you for your time and see you later!
Subscribe to Oracle Database Disected by Email

Follow IgnacioRuizMX on Twitter

Delicious Bookmark this on Delicious

Monday, August 30, 2010

Back home and writing


After a few trips abroad and very interesting projects with vip-big customers & new features that demanded lot of time and concentration ... I'm back!

Want to share with you some goodies from my trips ... and advice.

Trinidad & Tobago: be aware of displicent and slow service, lot of chinese places.

Brazil, Rio de Janeiro: try Feijoada at Rondinella Rest. (Av. Atlantica, Copacabana Beach); if you go alone, ask for 1 person sizing ... you won't regret!!


Custom Search