Re: ZFS or UFS? Solaris 11 or better stay with Solaris 10?

Hi Tony,

- regarding UFS vs ZFS. The best thing is to do any (!) sort of tests. But if 
you really cannot do This is really difficult question since:
        - zfs is brand new filesystem which will be improved more and more. UFS 
will not be improved.
                - but does it matter for you if you will keep this system for 
years without change ?
        - zfs has much more features which are unknown for UFS (and never will 
be)
                - but do you really need them ?
        - if you insist on using ZFS for Oracle read the following URL: 
http://www.solarisinternals.com/wiki/index.php/ZFS_for_Databases#Oracle_Considerations
        - there are a lot of knowledge (in terms of people experience) in the 
internet about using UFS + Oracle
        - if you can do any sort of tests (ZFS vs UFS):
                - you can do it on both ZFS and UFS using:
                        - Orion (Oracle tool to test storage performance)
                                - of course don't relay on just one tool and 
its results
                        - Oracle 11 IO calibration (new feature)
                and just compare the results
        - a couple of URLs:
                - https://blogs.oracle.com/roch/entry/zfs_and_directio

- regarding Solaris 10 vs 11
        - Solaris 11 has many new features. You can read WPs about What's new, 
etc. It's worth reading.
                - but do you need them for typical OLTP (DSS ?) environment ?
        - Solaris 10 is stable and predictable
                - but does it matter for you ? Maybe you like new environments 
? New features ?
                - having Solaris 10 does not mean that you cannot upgrade to 
Solaris 11 in the future. Live Upgrade is a feature which helps you in this 
area.
        - if you happen to have a bug in Solaris 11 Oracle support is not known 
to be the best on this planet regarding fixing new bugs ...

- regarding SAN
        - if you have typical hardware array I would not mirror at the 
filesystem level - don't complicate this.
        - quite old but anyway ... 
http://storagemojo.com/2007/04/23/new-zfs-performance-numbers/ 

Best regards
Przemyslaw Bak (przemol)
--
http://przemol.blogspot.com/

On Wed, Mar 28, 2012 at 11:34:25PM +1000, De DBA wrote:
> G'day,
> 
> I'm involved in a project to migrate a 4TB database from HP/UX 11 and Oracle 
> 9i to a brand-new Sun M5000 server with Oracle 11.2.0.3. This database 
> suffers insert transactions in the order of 70 tx/sec. The daily redo 
> production is in the order of 45GB. Management reports are also run with 
> great vigour (i.e. large volumes of disk read IOPS). Two further tiny 
> instances (5-7GB each) also live in the same environment.
> 
> The original plan was to install Solaris 10 on the new server and create a 
> big ZFS pool on the san, as proposed by Oracle Sales. However, doubts have 
> arisen as to the performance of ZFS with Oracle databases, and we now lean 
> towards using UFS for the database files. All discussions and white papers 
> that I have been able to find on the subject stress to closely follow the 
> upgrade path, as ZFS is continuously being improved still. Some blogs give 
> pointers on how to make ZFS perform "almost the same as UFS", which sounds to 
> me as a lot of extra effort for no gain. I struggle to find any validation 
> for choosing ZFS over UFS.
> 
> Today, the boss was told by a relation who used to work for Sun that that 
> relation would no longer install boxes with UFS. He would also enable direct 
> IO instead of totally relying on ZFS. The SAN disks should according to this 
> relation be presented as raw disks, rather than striped-and-mirrored LUNs, to 
> be RAIDed in ZFS. Apparently there are desirable features in ZFS that make 
> this worthwhile. It should be noted that the SAN is (almost) completely 
> dedicated to this one database machine and has block copy capabilities, 
> built-in raid, etc.
> 
> To me it seems a bit back-to-front to disable the SAN functionality, 
> effectively turning it into an expensive external disk array, and at the same 
> time shifting all the work that the SAN would have done to the database 
> machine CPU where it competes for resources with the Oracle instances. What 
> advantages, if any, exist that make using ZFS in this way is preferable over 
> UFS? Do you have any experience with it?
> 
> The Solaris version was bought before Oracle certified 11.2.0.3 on Solaris 
> 11, but now it seems silly not to upgrade Solaris before this system goes 
> life. It will quite possibly not be able to be upgraded any time soon, 
> possibly not until after Oracle 14x is released.. ;) The same relation 
> however also insisted that "there are certification issues with Solaris 11" 
> and he would never install Oracle 11g database on Solaris 11. However, MOS 
> clearly shows that 11.2.0.3 is fully certified on Solaris 11. Do you happen 
> to know what issues could exist that pre-empt the use of Solaris 11, even if 
> that might mean that the client will be on Solaris 10 for the next decade?
> 
> I would like to hear about your experiences and thoughts.
> 
> Cheers,
> Tony
> 
> --
> http://www.freelists.org/webpage/oracle-l
> 



















































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