Oracle ASM vs ZFS on VNX

In my last post on ZFS I shared results of a lab test where ZFS was configured on Solaris x86 and using XtremIO storage. A strange combination maybe but this is what a specific customer asked for.

Another customer requested a similar test with ZFS versus ASM but on Solaris/SPARC and on EMC VNX. Also very interesting as on VNX we’re using spinning disk (not all-flash) so the effects of fragmentation over time should be much more visible.

So with support of the local administrators, I performed a similar test as the one before: start on ASM and get baseline random and sequential performance numbers, then move the tablespace (copy) to ZFS so you start off with as little fragmentation as possible. Then run random read/write followed by sequential read, multiple times and see how the I/O behaves.

Pinpointing I/O bottlenecks on Linux

Does this story sound familiar?

The end users of a database application start complaining about poor system response and long running batch jobs. The DBA team starts investigating the problem. DBA’s look at their database tools such as Enterprise Manager, Automatic Workload Repository (AWR) reports, etc. They find that storage I/O response times are too high (such as an average of 50 milliseconds or more) and involve the storage team to resolve it.

The storage guys, in turn, look at their tooling – in case of EMC this could be Navisphere Analyzer, Symmetrix Performance Analyzer (SPA) or similar tools. They find completely normal response times – less than 10 milliseconds average.

The users still complain but the storage and database administrators point to each other to resolve the problem. There is no real progress in solving the problem though.