Like most people, I have a panel on the right hand side of my blog which contains my blogroll, i.e. a list of links to the blogs of other people I respect and admire. And like most people in the Oracle world, up until today it was full of the same names you always see. … Continue reading A New Approach To My Blogroll
Author: flashdba
Postcards from Storageland: Two Years Flash By
The start of March means I have been working at Violin Memory for exactly two years. This also corresponds to exactly two years of the flashdba blog, so I thought I'd take stock and look at what's happened since I embarked on my journey into the world of storage. Quite a lot, as it happens... … Continue reading Postcards from Storageland: Two Years Flash By
More Problems with Oracle’s Support of 4k Devices
Bypassing ASM and using a filesystem doesn't escape Oracle's 4k compatibility issues – here's what breaks when you put Oracle on a 4k native device without ASM.
Oracle ASMLib: Physical and Logical Blocksize
The ORACLEASM_USE_LOGICAL_BLOCK_SIZE parameter controls how ASMLib handles 4k Advanced Format devices – here's what it does and when you need to change it.
Oracle AWR Reports: Understanding I/O Statistics
Oracle AWR reports contain multiple I/O sections that measure subtly different things – here's what each one actually captures and why conflating them leads to the wrong conclusions.
New script for setting up multipath.conf entries
A shell script that automates the creation of Linux multipath.conf entries for storage devices – originally written for Violin arrays but applicable to other storage with minimal changes.
Oracle Fixes The 4k SPFILE Problem…But It’s Still Broken
Oracle patched the SPFILE failure on 4k devices in 11.2.0.4 – but the underlying support for Advanced Format storage remains incomplete and unreliable.
Playing The Data Reduction Lottery
Flash vendors routinely quote “effective capacity” figures based on optimistic data reduction assumptions – understanding what those numbers really mean is essential before signing a purchase order.
Oracle Exadata X4 (Part 2): The All Flash Database Machine?
With the X4's flash capacity changes examined, this post asks the harder question: is Oracle quietly turning Exadata into an all-flash array – and what would that mean for pricing?
Predictions for 2014: DataBase-as-a-Service
It's that time of year again where lots of people write articles which begin with the words "It's that time of year again..." and make endless references to crystal balls, tea leaves and the benefits of hindsight. But not me, I'm not descending into cliché. Apart from that first sentence, which with the benefit of … Continue reading Predictions for 2014: DataBase-as-a-Service
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