Data deduplication promises capacity savings, but databases are one of the worst use cases for it – the technology’s assumptions break down against the entropy and I/O patterns of database workloads.
Storage Myths: Dedupe for Databases
Category: Databases
Databases are the systems of record at the heart of the enterprise. They were designed for correctness, durability, and human-paced interaction – not for continuous, machine-driven access patterns.
As workloads evolve, the database remains the point of truth… but the assumptions around how it is accessed are starting to break.
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
Oracle RAC is sold as a high-availability solution, but its real cost – in licenses, complexity and the hidden assumption that losing a node doesn’t count as an outage – is rarely made explicit.
The Real Cost of Enterprise Database Software
Oracle database licensing is eye-wateringly expensive per CPU core – and storage costs, often seen as prohibitive, represent a surprisingly small fraction of the total three-year spend.
Storage Myths: Put Oracle Redo on SSD
Putting Oracle redo logs on SSD is a common reflex response to slow databases – but it usually misdiagnoses the problem, and SSDs handle write-heavy sequential workloads worse than you might expect.
Storage Myths: IOPS Matter
IOPS figures dominate flash storage marketing, but for databases latency is the metric that matters – high IOPS at unpredictable latency deliver no real-world value.
The Role Of The DBA
I'm back at work today after a week's travelling around Europe followed by a week's holiday sailing around the Ionian Sea. I have to say that I'd rather still be on holiday. It's not that I don't enjoy my job (I love it) but... Today, I need to install some database software - and it … Continue reading The Role Of The DBA
SLOB2: Testing The Effect Of Oracle Blocksize
I recently posted a test harness for generating physical I/O using the new version of SLOB (the Silly Little Oracle Benchmark) known as SLOBv2. This test harness can be used for driving varying workloads and then processing the results for use in ... well, wherever really. Some friends of mine are getting very adept with … Continue reading SLOB2: Testing The Effect Of Oracle Blocksize
New SLOB2 Physical I/O Harness
Short post to point out that I've now posted the updated PIO Test Harness for SLOB2. This can be used to run multiple SLOB tests with varying numbers of workers and values of UPDATE_PCT. In addition there is also a revised version of the AWR analyzer shell script which can be used to extract various … Continue reading New SLOB2 Physical I/O Harness
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