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Understanding Disk: Over-Provisioning

Storage for DBAs: In a recent news article in the UK, supermarket giant Tesco said it threw away almost 30,000 tonnes of food in the first half of 2013. That's about 33,000 tons for those of you who can't cope with the metric system. The story caused a lot of debate about the way in … Continue reading Understanding Disk: Over-Provisioning →

Understanding Disk: Mechanical Limitations

Storage for DBAs: The year 2000. Remember that? The IT industry had just spent years making money off the back of the millenium bug (which turned out not to exist). The world had spent even more money than usual on fireworks, parties and alcohol. England failed to win an international football tournament again (some things … Continue reading Understanding Disk: Mechanical Limitations →

Understanding Disk: Superpowers

Storage for DBAs: It's a familiar worn-out story. A downtrodden and oppressed population are rescued from their plight by a mysterious superhero. Over time they come to rely on this new superbeing - taking him for granted even, complaining when he isn't immediately available to save them and alleviate their pain. As the years progress, memories … Continue reading Understanding Disk: Superpowers →

The Most Expensive CPUs You Own

Storage for DBAs: Take a look in your data centre at all those humming boxes and flashing lights. Ignore the storage and networking gear for now and just concentrate on the servers. You probably have many different models, with different types and numbers of CPUs and DRAM inside. My question is, which CPUs are the most … Continue reading The Most Expensive CPUs You Own →

OOW13: The Future Is Here (Just Don’t Mention “Legacy”)

Last week I attended Oracle OpenWorld 2013 in the stunning city of San Francisco, along with 60,000 other attendees. At times it felt like we'd taken over the entire city, with every street, bus, billboard and hotel plastered in Oracle logos and pictures of engineered systems... although apparently there was some other stuff going on … Continue reading OOW13: The Future Is Here (Just Don’t Mention “Legacy”) →

The Real Cost of Oracle RAC

Storage for DBAs: In my previous article (in this mini-series on database economics) I explained how to calculate the cost of a mid-range Oracle database system. My motive was a concern that many people working either directly or indirectly with database software are uninformed about just how expensive it is - particularly in comparison to … Continue reading The Real Cost of Oracle RAC →

The Real Cost of Enterprise Database Software

Storage for DBAs: The strange thing about enterprise databases is that the people who design, manage and support them are often disassociated from the people who pay the bills. In fact, that's not unusual in enterprise IT, particularly in larger organisations where purchasing departments are often at opposite ends of the org chart to operations … Continue reading The Real Cost of Enterprise Database Software →

Storage Myths: Put Oracle Redo on SSD

Storage for DBAs: "My database is slow"... "Well then why not put your redo logs on SSDs?" Gaaaah. I still hear people having this discussion and it drives me mad. "Nobody got fired for putting Oracle redo on ...<flash vendor>". Yeah right, but does that mean it was worth the investment? I'm bored of this … Continue reading Storage Myths: Put Oracle Redo on SSD →

Storage Myths: IOPS Matter

Storage for DBAs: Having now spent over a year in the storage industry, I've decided it's time to call out an industry-wide obsession that I previously wasn't aware of: everyone in storage is obsessed with IOPS (the performance metric I/O Operations Per Second). Take a minute to perform a web search for "flash iops" and … Continue reading Storage Myths: IOPS Matter →