The most expensive CPUs in your data centre aren't the ones doing the most work – they're the ones sitting idle waiting for storage. Here's why I/O latency is a hidden CPU tax.
The Most Expensive CPUs You Own
Category: Storage for DBAs
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 Most Important Thing You Need To Know About Flash
NAND flash development is driven by the consumer market – not the enterprise. The question to ask any flash vendor isn't "how fast?" but "where's your innovation?"
Does My Database Need Flash?
Not every database benefits from flash storage – knowing when it matters requires understanding how much I/O your workload generates, how random it is and how much latency is already costing you.
Understanding I/O: Random vs Sequential
Disk I/O forces a choice between random and sequential access – and that choice defines whether latency compounds or disappears. Flash makes the distinction irrelevant.
The Fundamental Characteristics of Storage
Latency, IOPS and bandwidth are the three properties that define any storage system – understanding how they relate to each other is the first step to knowing what your database actually needs.
Performance: It’s All About Balance…
Database performance problems are rarely solved by faster CPUs alone – the real issue is imbalance between resources, and disk latency is the silent bottleneck that flash storage changes.
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