We have 32 physical disk that I need to be configured for small RAC Database. The 32 disk are a total number of disk available to setup a Prod and Test environments data and failover (DATA and FRA). The Oracle Binaries and other will reside on local disks.
Server/Database
2 Node RAC Cluster
Oracle Linux 6 (6.4 or 6.5)
Oracle Grid Infrastructure 12c Release 1
Oracle Database 12c Release 1 Enterprise Edition
Storage Environment
EMC VNX 5400
32 disks SAS 15k
Requirements:
DATA capacity at least 500GB
- datafiles
- redologs
- controlfile
- flashback data archives
FRA capacity at least 1 Terabyte
- redolog multiplex
- controlfile multiplex
- archivelogs
- flashback logs
Performance
3000 peak iops
300 avg iops
I want to come up with the best design I can given what I am provided. The EMC Fast Cache is sizable given the size of the database so IOP will most likely not be the issue, so, putting a design together that will not step on itself is the priority.
DESIGN 1
PRODUCTION ENVIRONMENT
RAID
RAID 10 x 16 disks
LUN
- 4 LUNs 125GB
- 4 LUNs 350GB
ASM
ASMDISKS
4 LUNs 125GB -------> 4 ASMDISKs of 125GB each
4 LUNs 350GB -------> 4 ASMDISKs of 350GB each
ASMDISKGROUPS
DATA Diskgroup ---------> 4 ASMDISKs of 125GB each
FRA Diskgroup ----------> 4 ASMDISKs of 350GB each
TEST ENVIRONMENT
Same as Production using 16 disks
Questions
Q1: Is it true that by following best practices that we would need to add 16 disks in order to add additional storage?
Best Practices
- Use LUNs with the same performance characteristics
- Use LUNs with the same capacity
Q2: Will carving all DATA and FRA LUNs from the same set of disks a design problem?
In the Oracle 11g: RAC Administration Student Guide (training), an example of Hardware RAID - Striped LUNs is an example. Four distinct RAID 0+1 Groups are created. Each RAID 0+1 Group represents one ASMDISK for both the DATA and FRA DGs - achieved by carving 2 LUNs from RAID group. There is contention between DATA and FRA but not between multiple disk from the same data group on the same physical devices. I don't know if having all DATA and FRA ASMDISKs layered across the same RAID 10 x 16 Group will cause problems or whether I'd be better off splitting RAID Groups into 4 x (RAID 10 x 4 Disks) matching to the books model. My storage admin says that the storage vendor says RAID 10 x 8 disks is optimal.
Q3: Should I split RAID Groups into 4 (representative of each disk to be used) matching to the Oracle 11g: RAC Administration Student Guide (training) model described above.
Q4: Another design that is better?
Thank you.