Re: Question - Oracle and IBM PowerVM Editions/Advance Power Virtualization
- From: "Mark Brinsmead" <pythianbrinsmead@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: DIANNA.GIBBS@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Sat, 15 Mar 2008 14:03:47 -0400
The last time I worked with IBM p-Series virtualization, it was still
referred to as LPAR and micro-LPAR, so any specific advice I might offer is
likely to be of limited value.
Here is some "general" advice that *may* be of value to you:
- Make certain you fully understand how Oracle's licensing rules apply
to PowerVM. IBM has probably done a nice job of muddying the waters (more
than they were already) by combining LPAR and micro-LPAR capabilities into a
single product. Basically, the way it *used to be* was that LPARs
were considered "hard partitions" and micro-LPARs were considered "soft
partitions". With "hard partitions", you need license Oracle for only the
CPUs in the partitions running Oracle; with "soft partitions", you must
license Oracle for all CPUs in the server, without regard to how many
(fractional) CPUs are or are not running Oracle software. Have the rules
changed since last I checked (three or four years ago)? Maybe. But
probably not. Oracle Corp *might *have changed the way they interpret
those rules, though.
- Even with "hard-LPARs", you ability to license Oracle Standard
Edition (or SE1) is determined by the size of the *physical server*,
not by the size of the *partition*. For Enterprise Edition, "1 CPU"
== "1 processor *core*". Possibly depending on the processor
architecture, on Standard Edition you may find that "1 CPU" == "1 socket"
(true of Intel, maybe not of PowerPC) or that "1 CPU" == "1 processor
core". Getting a correct and reliable answer to this question will be
difficult; rather than *asking*, I suggest that you read (very
carefully) the "Oracle Services and License Agreement" (OLSA) and/or the
Oracle 10g (11g) "Licensing Manual". If you go resort to "asking questions"
(don't waste your time on Oracle Support; questions of this type must go to
the sales organization), be sure to ask respondents to identify the
appropriate section(s) of the OLSA to substantiate their answers.
- You asked about "Virtual I/O Server". I am in no position to
comment on this in any authoritative way, however, when I googled on your
subject line "Oracle and IBM PowerVM Editions/Advance Power Virtualization",
I got exactly two hits -- the Oracle-L post to which I am replying and an
IBM powerpoint presentation. In that presentation (about page 8 or so) it
clearly states that "Virtual I/O Server" is not recommended for I/O
intensive workloads. If your databases do nothing the majority of the time,
this recommendation *might* not apply to you, but in most cases, it is
fair to assume that Oracle databases *will* constitute an "I/O
intensive workload". For best database pefrormance, I would suspect that
you will need (at least) dedicated disks, dedicated disk controllers, and
dedicated network interfaces. Your actual mileage may vary...
Please share your eventual findings with the list.
On Sat, Mar 15, 2008 at 10:10 AM, DIANNA GIBBS <DIANNA.GIBBS@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:
>
> Our AIX administrators are looking at IBM PowerVM Editions/APV moving
> forward.
> I've googled but found very little information on it relating to running
> Oracle.
> Any thoughts, comments, good, bad, performance gochas would be
> appreciated.
>
> A concern is the disks coming from the virtual I/O server and not the SAN.
> Is this a good thing? Should we consider ASM because of this?
>
> TIA.
>
>
> --
> //www.freelists.org/webpage/oracle-l
>
>
>
--
Cheers,
-- Mark Brinsmead
Senior DBA,
The Pythian Group
http://www.pythian.com/blogs
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