Large enterprises rely on Oracle’s 11g RAC (Real Application Clusters) databases as the platform for their mission-critical business applications. In these environments, executing large volumes of transactions and processing data for real-time decision-making are core drivers of competitive advantage. But the limitations and latency of traditional hard disks in responding to application and server requests have become more and more costly. Businesses are embracing solid state disk (SSD) as the number one choice to improve performance and increase profits. Texas Memory Systems is responding to these demands with OPERA.
This new storage architecture leverages Texas Memory Systems’ Flash SSD and experience in accelerating Oracle databases to provide organizations with a turnkey storage system that can be integrated with existing Oracle 11g databases. The solution is tailor-made to meet the specific needs of all Input/Output (I/O) bound Oracle databases.
The unique new advantage offered by OPERA is simple and yet extremely powerful. Thanks to the dramatically lower total cost of ownership of Flash SSD, coupled with new functions offered in Oracle 11g, performance sensitive Oracle applications can now be completely stored on Flash SSD. The performance, reliability, and cost ramifications are profound.
Small Database (2TB) OPERA Configuration
- 2 1-TB RamSan-620s
- 24 drive SAS RAID
Medium Database (10TB) OPERA Configuration
- 2 5-TB RamSan-620s
- 96 drive SAS RAID Array
Large Database (20TB) OPERA Configuration
- 4 5-TB RamSan-620s
- 192 drive SAS RAID Array
Oracle’s Automatic Storage Management (ASM) functionality is a key to the OPERA architecture. Oracle introduced ASM in 10g as a compelling option to allow Oracle to provide storage redundancy and eliminate the expense of redundant storage heads. ASM provides striping and mirroring capabilities across multiple storage devices. This allows any storage component to fail without data loss and full redundancy can quickly be restored through automatic rebalancing. A new feature was added in Oracle 11g ASM that enables extremely cost effective SSD usage. The Preferred Mirror Read option enables a mirror to be created between storage devices with different performance characteristics. Writes are sent to both storage devices to ensure redundancy is maintained, but reads are only serviced by the storage specified as preferred. This enables SSDs to be mirrored with traditional storage when the read I/O performance is the primary concern.
OPERA tightly integrates RamSan-620 Flash SSD with Oracle 11g, Oracle ASM, and Oracle RAC. By serving all I/O requests from RamSan SSD, the industry’s highest-performing Flash SSD, OPERA provides unmatched Oracle performance. In an OPERA architecture, server RAM is used to handle frequently reused data and provide buffering. A minimum of two RamSan-620 SSDs are used to provide read and write I/O. All blocking write operations (such as transaction log writes) are mirrored between RamSan-620 units. For databases with heavy writes, the performance of these blocking write operations is crucial to database performance. By decreasing latency for these writes to 80 microseconds, Oracle applications will not stall or slow down during peak transaction processing. Oracle DataGuard is recommended for database replication.
All non-blocking write operations (background or lazy writes) are preferred read mirrored using Oracle ASM between RamSan-620 units and SAS hard disks. Because these writes are non-blocking, mirroring them to SAS hard disks doesn’t affect database performance, but does provide for data protection while eliminating the need to mirror Flash SSD capacity, thus decreasing installation costs.
The unique advantage that OPERA brings is that all read operations are from RamSan Flash SSD. Each RamSan-620 responds to read requests in 250 microseconds and provides 3GB/second of bandwidth, ensuring that heavy read performance queries are fast and consistent. Most OLTP databases, decision support systems, and data warehouses are read intensive.
OPERA is scalable to support small to large databases. The entry-level solution includes two RamSan-620 1TB Flash SSDs and a 24 drive SAS RAID for data redundancy. A full-rack solution uses four RamSan-620 5TB SSDs and a 192 drive SAS RAID for data redundancy. The result is a product that uniquely ensures that every performance sensitive I/O is handled at RamSan speed.
I/Os Per Second (up to): 1,000,000
Capacity (up to): 20 TB of Flash
Bandwidth (up to): 12 GB per second
Latency Writes: 80 microseconds
Latency Reads: 250 microseconds
SAS RAID
- Enterprise grade
- Handles non-latency sensitive writes
- RAID 0
Fibre Channel Connection
- 4-Gigabit dual ported Fibre Channel
- 32 ports available
- Supports point-to-point and switched fabric topologies
- Interoperable with Fibre Channel Host Bus Adaptors, switches, and operating systems
