A new official Oracle support note on Advanced Format 4k storage – co-authored with Oracle ASM Development to replace the confusing and inconsistent guidance that existed before.
Category: Flash
The Ultimate Guide To Oracle with Advanced Format 4k
Everything you need to know about running Oracle on Advanced Format 4k storage – a high-level overview and a full Oracle deep dive, in one place.
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
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.
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
Oracle Exadata X4 (Part 1): Bigger Than It Looks?
The Exadata X4 announcement looked like a routine spec bump – but a closer reading of Oracle's positioning reveals something more significant about where the product is heading.
The Most Expensive CPUs You Own
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.
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.


