Comments on: The Core Performance Fundamentals Of Oracle Data Warehousing – Balanced Hardware Configuration

By: LNey

LNey — Mon, 16 Aug 2010 18:15:18 +0000

Greg,

You have put good information here for us to reflect upon. However, you will agreed that you can have the most powerful machines(hardwares) correct size and all but if your code is not “tight” is just not going to WORK!. Good engineering begings with good understanding of the questions you are asking to your DB. Good engineering is testing to destruction as jonathan will tell you. Notice the sequence…Questions and Testing..then everything else.

By: Greg Rahn

Greg Rahn — Tue, 27 Jul 2010 11:17:28 +0000

@Flado

Thanks for the comment — was just a problem with a wordpress plugin. Fixed now.

By: Flado

Flado — Tue, 27 Jul 2010 10:35:11 +0000

Hi Greg,
The pictures in this post have gone to /dev/null, apparently.

By: The Core Performance Fundamentals Of Oracle Data Warehousing – Parallel Execution

Fri, 23 Apr 2010 16:17:37 +0000

[...] higher level (based on #CPUs). Often times though, the system that PX is being run on is not a balanced system and frequently has much more CPU power than disk and channel bandwidth, so data movement from disk [...]

By: The Core Performance Fundamentals Of Oracle Data Warehousing – Introduction

Fri, 23 Apr 2010 16:09:43 +0000

[...] be key features and/or technologies for Oracle data warehouses:Core Performance Fundamental Topics Balanced Hardware ConfigurationTable CompressionPartitioningParallel Execution Data LoadingRow vs. Set ProcessingIndexing and [...]

By: Greg Rahn

Greg Rahn — Wed, 13 Jan 2010 20:36:25 +0000

@Karl Arao

If your question is “how would I recommend sizing systems of which there is not sufficient information”, the answer is easy, I don’t. I require a workload profile to offer sizing guidelines. That may take the shape of a scale down test and not a full size, but as an engineer, I find it impossible to build good systems without requirements.

By: rnm1978

rnm1978 — Wed, 13 Jan 2010 14:51:54 +0000

Hi Greg,
Thoroughly enjoyed this post. Looking forward to the next in the series.

Cheers, RNM.

By: Karl Arao

Karl Arao — Tue, 12 Jan 2010 20:40:42 +0000

@Greg Rahn
Hi Greg,

I saw your reply just now.

“The problem I see with IT shops and planning is there is there is either no planning, or it is done incorrectly.”
<– Yes, I've said here (http://www.freelists.org/post/oracle-l/Experiencesthoughts-about-hardware-recommendations) I don't like the feeling of guessing or just giving something for the sake of coming up with a hardware recommendation and technical proposal

"Capacity planning and building computer systems is not about guessing, it is about engineering and calculations."
<– Yes, I agree with you on this.

But to build a balanced configuration. On the hardware perspective, I would do what Krishna did on his example.. But I have to match it with the Oracle requirements. The usual issue for me is if you'll have a new environment and you can't document the requirements because you don't have the existing baselines.. (and you don't want to guess)

- On usual cases it is a new system or application and although you'll have an idea on how many will be using the application, you'll not be able to build enough statistics or numbers to get the requirements you need for you to match it to the storage capacity/performance… this is also the same with CPU…

- And also you may not have a reference environment (or even close to it) for the new application.. So given this predicament it would be safer to put an assumption to the proposal with something like,
"With the information available, there is a significant risk the CPU/storage subsystem may not provide enough capacity to meet the application requirements."

But here's the catch, you still have to recommend the CPUs/storage.. & you have no choice.. :)
I would like to know what would you do with this kind of scenario?

By: Greg Rahn

Greg Rahn — Fri, 08 Jan 2010 19:23:37 +0000

@Karl Arao
Krishna’s post/ppt is just really the basics of capacity planning and understanding what hardware can deliver. The problem I see with IT shops and planning is there is there is either no planning, or it is done incorrectly. Very few shops take the time to build and test, it is more like build and deploy, then “tune”. Let me put this into a slightly different context: If you were tasked with building a bridge from point A to point B what information would you need? Would things like amount of traffic, both peak and average, type of traffic: train, bus, trucks, cars, bicycle & foot be important? It would to me. I see IT shops that design a foot bridge (because it is cheaper) and then try and put cars onto it and then it falls down and they complain. Capacity planning and building computer systems is not about guessing, it is about engineering and calculations. That being said, what calculations go into your system design?

By: Karl Arao

Karl Arao — Thu, 07 Jan 2010 04:23:59 +0000

Thanks for this Greg! I know this post is first of the series.. I suggest you also put the “balanced hardware configuration” on a real world context like the one written by Krishna Manoharan,

http://dsstos.blogspot.com/2009/09/download-link-for-storage-design-for.html

I’ve got some questions on his post, and the most important is the first one (about requirements and some usual predicaments) which will define what you’ll have on your “balanced” configuration..

I hope you could also shed some light on that area.. :)