RE: New NetApp storage

  • From: "Matthew Zito" <mzito@xxxxxxxxxxx>
  • To: <jkstill@xxxxxxxxx>, "Oracle-L Freelists" <oracle-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
  • Date: Thu, 10 Apr 2008 00:14:56 -0400


NetApp is good stuff - the best things for you to get accustomed to are:

a) flexvols and aggregates - netapp's volume management system, which is much 
more flexible than most SAN arrays, but has implications as far as trying to 
divide IOs across different raid groups, and generally understanding how to try 
to lay out data
b) how WAFL (the netapp filesystem) works under the covers in terms of data 
placement (useful to know and understand)
c) How can you metric the netapp as far as IOs - you want to ask about sysstat 
vs. perfstat vs. statit
d) snapshots - get a really good understanding of how snapshots work, what they 
are, what they're not

What I've seen with probably ~10 customers that have moved from SAN to NAS on 
NetApp is how to best take advantage of the much greater level of flexibility 
with netapp, plus snapshots - it can be a little challenging to wrap your mind 
around.  Also, netapp has a pile of best practices papers around running oracle 
over nfs, and definitely peruse them.

Thanks,
Matt
--
Matthew Zito
Chief Scientist
GridApp Systems
P: 646-452-4090
mzito@xxxxxxxxxxx
http://www.gridapp.com



-----Original Message-----
From: oracle-l-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx on behalf of Jared Still
Sent: Wed 4/9/2008 5:33 PM
To: Oracle-L Freelists
Subject: New NetApp storage
 
We are moving our databases (and some other stuff) to NetApp.

This is my first experience with NetApp and using NFS as storage.

Thursday I am meeting with some NetApp technical reps.

What are some of the questions I should be asking these folks?

We've already discussed IOPs and determined what is needed 
in that regard, but I'm sure there must be more items to discuss 
that are specific to NetApp and FTP.

Thanks,

-- 
Jared Still
Certifiable Oracle DBA and Part Time Perl Evangelist


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