Dell Power Solutions

NEW-GENERATION SERVER TECHNOLOGYDisk enclosuresDisksLUNsSoftwareaccording to the database provider’s installation guide for the respectiveserver platforms. The enterprise database server provided thesame Java-based tool for installation on both Solaris and Windows,allowing the test team to select exactly the same options.Dell engineers used a database creation assistant wizard tocreate the initial database instance on the Sun Fire V440 server.They then used scripts to finish the creation and loading of the testdatabase. The database consisted of approximately 100 GB of data,indexes, and stored procedures.Three Dell/EMC 2 GB Disk Array Enclosures (DAE2)Forty 73 GB 10,000 rpmFigure 2. Dell/EMC storage configurationThree 10-disk RAID-10 LUNs for dataTwo 2-disk RAID-1 LUNs for logsOne 5-disk RAID-0 for temporary data staging (to load the database)One hot-spare diskEMC Navisphere ® ManagerEMC Access Logix EMC PowerPathThe 100 GB database was moved from the Sun Fire V440 serverto the Dell PowerEdge 2850 server using migration tools includedwith the database server. Using a few commands, the test team convertedthe Sun data files and then transported those data files fromthe 64-bit Solaris-based server to the 32-bit Windows-based server.The basic steps were to create copies of the data files on the Sunserver, convert the copies into a Windows-readable format, move thenewly created files to the Dell server, and connect the transporteddata files into the database instance running on the Dell server.Database initialization parameters were obtained by allowingthe database to run in an auto-tuning mode on the Sun Fire V440server. The test team set a target of 7 GB of RAM for the databaseto use. After allowing the auto-tuning to occur on the Sun server,the team applied the tuned settings to the target Windows system asclosely as possible. Some slight differences in the memory initializationparameters occurred because of the different memory models onthe two platforms. Specifically, on the PowerEdge server, the databaseinitialization parameters were USE_INDIRECT_DATA_BUFFERSand DB_BLOCK_BUFFERS instead of DB_CACHE_SIZE to specify theamount of memory to be used. A slightly larger amount of memorywas available to the database on the Sun Fire V440 server becausea small amount of memory on the PowerEdge 2850 server must beused to enable the very large memory support on the 32-bit platform.The Sun server’s System Global Area (SGA) was 6.84 GB, comparedto 6.78 GB on the Dell system. The nondefault database initializationparameters used for this study are listed in Figure 3.Both systems used the database-provided storage manager forthe database data files and log files. This storage manager reducesthe overhead of a file system by allowing the database to accessand manage the storage more directly.The database tablespaces were set up exactly the same on eachof the systems (see Figure 4). The three 10-disk RAID-10 LUNswere put into one disk group in the storage manager, which wasused for the data, index, undo, and temporary tablespaces. Eachof the two RAID-1 LUNs was assigned to its own disk group andused for redo logs.The applicationThe test described in this article used the same version of the onlineDVD store database application (DVD Store 2, or DS2) 5 employedin a previous Red Hat ® Linux ® migration test. This version of thedatabase application includes advanced database features such astransactions, triggers, and referential integrity constraints. In addition,the database application includes functionality typical of someParameter Sun Fire V440 Dell PowerEdge 2850DB_BLOCK_BUFFERS n/a 668281DB_BLOCK_SIZE 8192 8192DB_CACHE_SIZE 5335154688 n/aJAVA_POOL_SIZE 16777216 16777216LARGE_POOL_SIZE 16777216 16777216OPEN_CURSORS 300 300PROCESSES 150 150PGA_AGGREGATE_TARGET 2136997888 2136997888SHARED_POOL_SIZE 1962934272 1762934272SORT_AREA_SIZE 65536 65536UNDO_RETENTION 300 300USE_INDIRECT_DATA_BUFFERS n/a TRUEFigure 3. Database initialization parametersTablespaceContains Space used/availableCUSTTBS Customers table 34 GB/38 GBINDXTBS Indexes 30 GB/32 GBORDERTBS Orders and orderlines tables 20 GB/24 GBDS_MISC Product and categories tables 0.05 GB/1 GBUNDOTBS Undo tablespace 1 GB/3 GBTEMPTemporary table 12 GB/12 GBFigure 4. Database tablespaces used in the test environment5For more information about DS2, see “Migrating Databases from Sun Systems to Dell Servers Running Red Hat Enterprise Linux AS 3” by Todd Muirhead and Dave Jaffe, Ph.D., in Dell Power Solutions,October 2004.www.dell.com/powersolutions Reprinted from Dell Power Solutions, February 2005. Copyright © 2005 Dell Inc. All rights reserved. POWER SOLUTIONS 43