04-20-2017
First, I'd say that a single RAID5 disk for both the OS and everything else is a bad setup.
As others have mentioned, put the OS on a hardware RAID mirror using two drives. That one drive will be your root ZFS pool (rpool). (And if this were to be a long-lived server under my control, I'd create another two-disk RAID mirror for a second ZFS root pool (rpool2) to be used for OS upgrades and patches - always creating the new boot environment on the other rpool in order to avoid a nasty hell of ZFS rpool clones and snapshots. If the boot environment being updated is on rpool, the new boot environment is created on rpool2)
Then use the other 6 disks for the database - exactly how would depend strongly on what database and what it stores and how it's going to be used.
And yes, in general you will want to limit the ZFS ARC on a DB server - severely (you don't need to read /var/adm/messages very fast...). If your database isn't using ZFS to store data, there's no need for more than a token ZFS ARC, and especially for an Oracle DB not using ZFS storage an unrestricted ZFS ARC can cause severe performance problems. (Oracle DB tends to use large-page-size chunks of memory. ZFS ARC uses 4k pages. On a server with high memory pressure, dynamic Oracle memory demands will force the kernel to have to coalesce memory to create large pages for the Oracle DB process(es). ZFS ARC pressure then breaks those pages up - rinse, lather, repeat as the server unresponsively just sits and spins...)
HP Proliant? Meh. A few years ago, a customer I supported bought new HP servers - because they were "cheaper" than Oracle's servers. Oh? Well, the new servers weren't any faster than the old (so old they still had "Sun" on them...) servers - and it took quite a bit of BIOS tuning just to get the brand-spanking-new "fast" HP servers to even match the old Sun ones performance-wise. As far as "cheaper"? We had to install the HBAs ourselves (labor time is expensive...) and THEN we found out that the ILOM software wasn't part of the basic HP server - it had to be bought/licensed separately - then installed (even more expensive labor hours). Oh, and the HP server didn't come with four built-in 10 gig ethernet ports, so we had to add ethernet cards - more money and more time. When all was done, the customer paid a lot of money and wound up with new HP servers that took a lot of time and effort to make just as fast as the older Sun servers they replaced. Simply buying new servers from Oracle would have resulted in actually getting faster servers - for less money, less time, and a lot less effort.
Slapping a bunch of commodity parts around a good CPU and a decent amount of RAM doesn't make for a fast server. I/O bandwidth, memory bandwidth, disk controller quality? They matter too, and using the cheapest parts you can find in China slapped onto the cheapest motherboard doesn't cut it - especially when you turn around and nickel-and-dime customers over things like ILOM software licenses...
I'm not impressed with HP.</RANT>
This User Gave Thanks to achenle For This Post:
10 More Discussions You Might Find Interesting
1. IP Networking
Hi;
Can someone please explain how do connections differ from threads? or a link to a good site about connection pooling and how threads are utilized by the OS.
Thanks (1 Reply)
Discussion started by: suntan
1 Replies
2. Solaris
hi,
i am looking for a tool to see how many CPUs, controlled by FSS inside a pool, a project used over some time....
i have a 20k with several zones inside some pools. the cpu-sets/pools are configured with FSS and the zones with different shares. Inside the zones, i use projects with FSS... (2 Replies)
Discussion started by: pressy
2 Replies
3. Infrastructure Monitoring
Here are the details.
cnjr-opennms>root$ zfs list
NAME USED AVAIL REFER MOUNTPOINT
openpool 20.6G 46.3G 35.5K /openpool
openpool/ROOT 15.4G 46.3G 18K legacy
openpool/ROOT/rds 15.4G 46.3G 15.3G /
openpool/ROOT/rds/var 102M ... (3 Replies)
Discussion started by: pupp
3 Replies
4. Solaris
I created a pool the other day. I created a 10 gig files just for a test, then deleted it.
I proceeded to create a few files systems. But for some reason the pool shows 10% full, but the files systems are both at 1%? Both files systems share the same pool.
When I ls -al the pool I just... (6 Replies)
Discussion started by: mrlayance
6 Replies
5. Solaris
I need to migrate an existing raidz pool to a new raidz pool with larger disks. I need the mount points and attributes to migrate as well. What is the best procedure to accomplish this. The current pool is 6x36GB disks 202GB capacity and I am migrating to 5x 72GB disks 340GB capacity. (2 Replies)
Discussion started by: jac
2 Replies
6. Solaris
i have this pool1 on my sun4u sparc machine
bash-3.00# zpool get all pool1
NAME PROPERTY VALUE SOURCE
pool1 size 292G -
pool1 used 76.5K -
pool1 available 292G -
pool1 capacity 0% -... (1 Reply)
Discussion started by: Sojourner
1 Replies
7. Solaris
Hi!
I would also like to know if I need first to create a pool before I can mirror my disks inside that pool.
My first disk is c7t0d0s0 and my second disk is c7t2d0s0 as seen in the figure below.
I would create a pool named rpool1 for this 2 disks.
# zpool create rpool1 c7t0d0p0 c7t2d0p0 ... (18 Replies)
Discussion started by: CarlosP
18 Replies
8. BSD
I am trying to test simple zfs functionality on a FreeBSD 8.2 VM. When I try to run a 'zpool create' I receive the following error:
# zpool create zfspool /dev/da0s1a
cannot create 'zfspool': no such pool or dataset
# zpool create zfspool /dev/da0
cannot create 'zfspool': no such pool or... (3 Replies)
Discussion started by: bstring
3 Replies
9. Solaris
I have a single zpool with 3 2-way mirrors ( 3 x 2 way vdevs) it has a degraded disk in mirror-2, I know I can suffer a single drive failure, but looking at this how many drive failures can this suffer before it is no good? On the face of it, I thought that I could lose a further 2 drives in each... (4 Replies)
Discussion started by: fishface
4 Replies
10. Solaris
Hi all,
I am trying out Solaris 11.3
Realize the option of -p when using beadm that i can actually create another boot environment on another pool.
root@Unicorn6:~# beadm create -p mypool solaris-1
root@Unicorn6:~# beadm list -a
BE/Dataset/Snapshot Flags... (1 Reply)
Discussion started by: javanoob
1 Replies
LEARN ABOUT OPENSOLARIS
install-solaris
install-solaris(1M) install-solaris(1M)
NAME
install-solaris - install the Solaris operating system
SYNOPSIS
install-solaris
install-solaris invokes the Solaris Install program. Depending on graphical capability and available memory at the time of invocation,
install-solaris invokes either a text-based installer or a graphical installer.
The following minimum requirements for physical memory dictate which features are available during installation:
For SPARC machines:
128 MB
Minimum physical memory for all installation types
128 MB
Minimum physical memory required for windowing system
384 MB
Minimum physical memory required for graphical-based installation
For x86 machines:
256 MB
Minimum physical memory for all installation types
256 MB
Minimum physical memory required for windowing system
512 MB
Minimum physical memory required for graphical-based installation
In some cases, even if the minimum physical memory is present, available virtual memory after system startup can limit the number of fea-
tures available.
install-solaris exists only on the Solaris installation media (CD or DVD) and should be invoked only from there. Refer to the for more
details.
install-solaris allows installation of the operating system onto any standalone system. install-solaris loads the software available on the
installation media. Refer to the for disk space requirements.
Refer to the for more information on the various menus and selections.
See attributes(5) for descriptions of the following attributes:
+-----------------------------+-----------------------------+
| ATTRIBUTE TYPE | ATTRIBUTE VALUE |
+-----------------------------+-----------------------------+
|Availability |SUNWcdrom (Solaris instal- |
| |lation media) |
+-----------------------------+-----------------------------+
|Interface Stability |Evolving |
+-----------------------------+-----------------------------+
pkginfo(1), install(1M), pkgadd(1M), attributes(5)
It is advisable to exit install-solaris by means of the exit options in the install-solaris menus.
23 Sep 2005 install-solaris(1M)