Posts Categorized: Oracle Exadata

Designing for Exadata: Maximizing Storage Indexes Use

Oracle Exadata V2 is a very well balanced database machine combined with smart and innovative software. One of these innovative features is the Storage Index – a game changing feature in my opinion.As with any feature, there are intended use cases, limitations and caveats. Use it right, and amazing performance gains can be achieved. Use it wrong, and nothing will happen. This is what is great about storage indexes in particular. They are there, without any overhead. It’s only a question of how to leverage them, in addition or combination withevery other feature that Oracle Exadata has to offer.

Exadata TPC Benchmarks

I’m not aware of any TPC results for Exadata V2. However a TPC-C test was run in late 2009 using a Sun F5100 flash array on Sun T5540 servers, setting a record for the benchmark that still stands. The Oracle wiki has a great overview of the various benchmarks and what they actually measure.

Exadata BP5 Patching Issues

We’re in the process of applying Exadata Bundle Patch 5, and ran into an issue I wanted to share.The system didn’t have a XDB user, and likely because of this, the two “alter package” commands invalidated the dbms_metadata objects. The subsequent recompilations all failed. On advice from Oracle support, we ended up backing out the patch and re-applying without running these “alter package” commands, and confirmed that DBMS_METADATA works fine. So if you don’t have XDB installed, skip the “alter package” commands. I hope the README is updated soon.

Making the Most of Exadata

My article Making the Most of Oracle Exadata in the August 2010 issue of the NoCOUG Journal has come out. It covers Exadata’s feature set, and then dives deeper, discussing how to make the best use of its capabilities. For those of you not subscribers of the print edition, it’s also available electronically.

Pythian Speaking @ Oracle OpenWorld 2010

If you’re attending Oracle OpenWorld 2010 in San Francisco, Sept. 19-23, 2010, be sure to stop by one of Pythian’s many sessions. We’ll be all over the show, with experts Alex, and Marc speaking as listed below. Or, you might find Paul, Alex and others attending the bloggers meetup, participating in Oracle ACE/ACE Director activities, or at some of the User Group or OPN sessions on Sunday. Drop us a line on twitter @pythian while you’re at the show to connect with Pythian.

Implementing Exadata Webinar

I’ll be giving a webinar about Exadata implementation, where I’ll be talking about Exadata features and how best to use them. I’ll also be sharing some lessons learned from my own implementation experience. The webinar will be on Wednesday August 11 at high noon eastern time. Note that this is a change from the previous date.

A grand tour of Oracle Exadata, Part 2

After covering hardware components of Sun Oracle Database Machine in part 1, our grand tour continues with a look at the software side. With the prominent exceptions of the Exadata storage server software and the Oracle database itself, the software stack is based on well-known and widely used open source products.

Exadata’s Best Kept Secret: Storage Indexes

Although many electrons have been expended discussing Exadata’s features, storage indexes tend to figure last, with a vague mention of row elimination in heavily clustered data. Even Oracle’s Exadata software user guide devotes barely half a page to them. Unlike the better known smart scanning features though, storage indexes have an important advantage: rather than offloading workload to storage cells, they eliminate the need to do the I/O at all. Here are some sample statistics taken from an actual production system:

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