Hp COMPAQ PROLIANT 5000, COMPAQ PROLIANT 6000 Oracle Fail Safe 2.0 Performance

Database Technology and Solutions Center

Compaq 9th Annual Systems Engineering Conference – Living LAB

ECG05/0998 August, 1998

Oracle Fail Safe 2.0 Performance on Compaq

CONTENTS

ABSTRACT ....................1

INTRODUCTION...........3

Living Lab

Demonstrations ..........3

OFS Overview ............ 3

Scope..........................3

TEST APPROACH .........3

TEST ENVIRONMENT .......3

Hardware ................... 3

Software ..................... 3

Benchmark Factory

Overview.................... 6

Client re-connect

implementation...........6

TEST FINDINGS ............6

APPENDIX A ..................7

Installation and Configuration of Oracle Fail Safe 2.1 on Compaq ProLiant Servers for the 9th ASE

Conference................. 7

INSTALLATION TIPS . 9

APPENDIX B (PREPARED BY ORACLE

CORPORATION).........11

ORACLE FAIL SAFE........ 11

ORACLE FAIL SAFE

MANAGER..................... 11

CLIENT APPLICATIONS... 12

FAILOVER TIMING ......... 12

PRODUCT AVAILABILITY 12 FURTHER INFORMATION 12

Oracle Fail Safe(OFS) on Compaq servers has been one of the most reliable and mature high availability solution on Microsoft Windows NT MSCS. Compaq’s Database Technology and Solutions Center(DTSC) has conducted a series of performance tests to characterize the performance of Oracle Fail Safe running on Compaq ProLiant servers. The tests also captured the impact of system loads as additional processors were added to the test systems.

These tests were performed at the Compaq/Oracle International Competency Center (ICC), located within the Compaq DTSC in San Bruno, California. The Compaq/Oracle ICC was established to address Oracle database related issues such as solution development and validation, advanced technology, customer case studies and proof of concept projects.

The main focus of the tests were to,

q Evaluate the system performance in the two node fail over

environment

q Capture the fail over performance of the system under various

user loads

q Characterize the performance of the surviving node as well as the

failing node when using one, two, or four processors on both servers

The test results indicated, Ø The overall performance in the OFS environment is highly

dependent on the system load of each server.

Ø When the combined system load on the surviving node and the

failing node was under 90%, the performance of the surviving node is similar to the baseline tests. The baseline tests were implemented to measure the performance of each server without the fail over event.

Ø When the combined loads were over 90%, the fail over

performance and the performance of the surviving node degraded compared to the performance of the baseline tests.

Ø When the surviving node was heavily loaded, adding additional

processors to the node helped to improve the overall system performance.

ProLiant Servers

ABSTRACT

NNOOTTIICCE

The information in this publication is subject to change without notice.

COMPAQ COMPUTER CORPORATION SHALL NOT BE LIABLE FOR TECHNICAL OR

EDITORIAL ERRORS OR OMISSIONS CONTAINED HEREIN, NOR FOR INCIDENTAL

OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES RESULTING FROM THE FURNISHING,

PERFORMANCE, OR USE OF THIS MATERIAL.

This publication contains information protected by Copyright, except for internal use distribution; no part of this publication may be photocopied or reproduced in any form without prior written consent from Compaq Computer Corporation.

This publication does not constitute an endorsement of the product or products that were tested. The configuration or configurations tested or described may or may not be the only available solution. This test is not a determination of product quality or correctness, nor does it ensure compliance with any federal, state or local requirement. Compaq does not warrant products other than it’s own as stated in product warranties.

Product names mentioned herein may be trademarks and/or registered trademarks of Oracle Corporation, Client/Server Solutions INC., Compaq Computer Corporation, or other companies listed or mentioned in this document.

COMPAQ COMPUTER CORPORATION

Enterprise Solutions Division

Database Technology and Solutions Center

PREPARED BY

Compaq Database Technology and Solutions Center

Client/Server Solutions, INC

Oracle Corporation

COMPAQ 9th Annual System Engineering Conference – Living LAB

ECG05/0998

August 1998

INTRODUCTION

There are three demonstrations designed for the SE conference living lab session.

Living Lab Demonstrations

Demo #1: OFS overview/simple transaction fail over This demo illustrates a basic setup of the OFS environment on Compaq servers, and how a simple query reacts when the database server fails. Demo #2: Automatically client re-connect implementation Through a sample C program, it shows how the application program uses Oracle Call Interface(OCI) to implement the re-connect feature. Demo #3: OFS Performance characterization This demo illustrates the OFS performance under various number of users and system load.

OFS Overview

Oracle Fail Safe is the easy-to-use high availability option for Oracle databases.

• Oracle® Fail Safe databases are highly available with

fast automatic failover capabilities. Oracle Fail Safe server optimizes instance recovery time for Oracle Fail Safe databases during planned and unplanned outages.

• Oracle Fail Safe configuration and management is

straightforward with Oracle Fail Safe Manager, the easy-to-use graphical user interface (GUI). This is integrated with Oracle® Enterprise Manager for comprehensive database administration.

• Oracle Fail Safe databases are configured within

virtual servers that allow client applications to access Oracle Fail Safe databases at a given network name at all times, regardless of the cluster node hosting the database.

3. Partitioned Workload The ‘partitioned workload’ is a variation of ‘active/active’ solution. The only difference is that one server is setup as an application server where the other is a database server.

Appendix B addresses answers to some of the frequently asked questions of OFS, and the document was downloaded from the Oracle web site, http://www.oracle.com/.

Scope

The major intent of this tech note is to share the findings of the performance characterization tests using the ‘active/active’ solution on Compaq servers. All tests were performed in a controlled laboratory environment. The goal was to establish a consistent test bed where all the test results can be compared fairly. Therefore, the test environment was not tuned for optimal performance. The demo environment used at the 9th ASE conference is a smaller scale of environment in the lab.

TEST APPROACH

Test Environment

Hardware

Model (Quantity) ProLiant Servers (2) DeskPro (2+) Fiber hub (1) Fiber storage (1) Network hub (1)

Usage #

Database Server

Database Clients

Shared storage

RAM Miscellaneo CPU 2 P6 1GB 1 Fiber card;

1 P6 128MB

2 network card

13 4.3GB drives

There are three major ways to deploy the OFS solutions.

1. Standby (Active/Passive) The ‘standby’ solution is expensive since it requires one additional server standing by to take over the existing server in the event of failure. The ‘standby’ solution will be able to provide the best response time since the backup server is idle all the time.

2. Active/Active The ‘active/active’ solution may be the most commonly used solution since both servers can be utilized at all times. Meanwhile they are both configured to back each other up in the event of failure.

COMPAQ 9th Annual Systems Engineering Conference

ECG05/0998

Software Database Server 1

- Windows NT 4.0 MSCS

- Oracle 8.0.4; OFS

2.0

- Complex OLTP workload;

- DB Size: ~8GB

Database Server 2

- Windows NT 4.0 MSCS

- Oracle 8.0.4; OFS

2.0

- AS3AP database

- DB Size: ~16GB

Database Clients

- Windows NT 4.0

August 1998

The overall test environment is illustrated as Figure 1 in the next page. Appendix A documented 14 steps for building a two-node OFS environment.

COMPAQ 9th Annual Systems Engineering Conference

ECG05/0998

August 1998

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