Abstract

    This document details the high performance characteristics of Symantec Database Editions 3.0.2 for Oracle (DBE) in the 64- bit AIX 5.2 and Oracle 9iR2 operating environment based on the results of OLTP benchmark tests. Symantec Quick IO (QIO), Symantec Extension for Oracle Disk Manager (ODM), Symantec Volume Manager, (VxVM) Raw I/O, IBM JFS2 CIO and IBM LVM Raw I/O were the primary I/O configurations tested. Oracle 9iR2’s ODM is Oracle’s disk management feature designed to improve file management and maintain Raw I/O performance. Symantec Extension for Oracle Disk Manager interfaces into Oracle Disk Manager.

   Raw I/O delivers in most cases delivers the best OLTP performance numbers in an Oracle environment but at the cost of file system manageability and disk space management. Unix File Systems in a database environment traditional sacrifice performance due to file system locking layer and buffering for reads and writes. DBE QIO and ODM eliminate double-buffering and double copying and while delivering files system manageability and disk space management.

   The database OLTP benchmark throughput results show that DBE ODM and JFS2 CIO maintain their performance throughput against VxVM and LVM Raw I/O performance results throughout the range of the performance test. ODM was the only I/O configuration that maintained Raw I/O performance levels at the highest user stress levels. JFS2 CIO is able to maintain 93% of VxVM Raw I/O performance numbers The OLTP benchmark used in this study is commonly used to evaluate database performance of specific hardware and software configurations. By normalizing the system configuration and varying the file system I/O configuration, it was possible to study the impact of various storage layouts on database performance with this benchmark.

   The OLTP performance measurements illustrate that the Quick I/O and Oracle Disk Manager features enable the Symantec Database Editions 3.0.2 for Oracle to achieve comparable performance to RAW I/O configurations at lower cpu utilization. As the previous studies reported, this performance superiority remains the same no matter which Oracle release (32-bit Oracle or 64-bit Oracle) or which AIX flavor (32-bit or 64-bit) was used