If this is your first visit, be sure to check out the FAQ by clicking the link above. You may have to register before you can post: click the register link above to proceed. To start viewing messages, select the forum that you want to visit from the selection below. |
|
|
Thread Tools | Display Modes |
#1
|
|||
|
|||
Perfect Storage solution for small Versant Database?
Hello everyone,
we are currently looking to solve one of our Borland CaliberRM Server's major bottlenecks, namely our IO-Subsystem. We are using a dual Xeon Server with lot's of ram and overall we never see -high- a cpu usage, but pretty often long write wait times / disk queues. Operating System is Windows 2003, the actual database backend is a versant database with ~5gb size. The Server itself is currently serving the database from a Raid-10, but our old Raid-5 had the same issues. We recently got the chance to attach a test server to a NetApp Filer (FAS 3020, 2x14hdds, connected via Fibre Channel) and we suddenly saw a -good- increase in responsiveness and overall performance of the server. We'll have the next couple days to do more thorough benchmarks on the NetApp System, but I was wondering whether someone has experience with other solutions (SSD, ..?) in an environment where the database consists of one big chunk (3 x 2gb volume files, unsplittable). We've tried various performance tweaks on the OS-Level, as well as had some versant expert look at the database indices etc and -software- wise we're in perfect state, but nevertheless have really severe IO problems (LOT's of reading and writing activites - each of very small size). Any ideas, suggestions, hints? Best regards and thanks in advance, -Joerg Battermann |
#2
|
|||
|
|||
Perfect Storage solution for small Versant Database?
|
#3
|
|||
|
|||
Perfect Storage solution for small Versant Database?
|
#5
|
|||
|
|||
Perfect Storage solution for small Versant Database?
Joerg Battermann wrote:
Thanks Bill & Faeandar, I did some more Tests on an FAS 3020 yesterday and the results were more or less dissappointing (compared to the normal Raid). We had some improvements when the user concurrency increased, but somehow the overall increase wasn't astonishing. We ran some syntetic tests using iometer using configurations similiar to typical versant read/writes (16k block size etc) and the raid outran the iscsi attached netapp by far. In our original/first NetApp tests, we had the NetApp Filer cluster attached 'locally' via fibre-channel in contrast to gbe now, but our NetApp rep. said gbe would be "sufficient"... is this true? What we are seeing on the performance monitor/iometer logs is that the cpu-usage is very low (15-30%) while IOPS with 16k max out at around 10.000 with the NetApp installation 160 MB/sec is *excellent* performance from a Gigabit Ethernet connection (since it maxes out at only about 120 MB/sec in each direction) - suggesting that the NetApp box is handling almost all reads and writes in its cache (unless your workload is sufficiently parallel that it can involve enough disks concurrently to generate that kind of bandwidth with only 16 KB transfers - unless, of course, those transfers are sequential rather than random, which presumably wouldn't really reflect your Versant workload very well). Presumably your Fibre Channel link was 2 Gb or 4 Gb to have out-performed it significantly. (raid gives us about twice the IOPS). That's not bad either (again, assuming that the transfers weren't sequential). In case someone knows some vendors for such battery-backup'ed NVRAM cards, I'd be really grateful if you could post them here too. (Our CaliberRM installation currently -hinders- our engineers instead of helping them and everyone's getting a tendency to let CaliberRM go, which isn't really an option... but letting the users wait a couple minutes after doing the simplest operations is a no-go) I've also contacted a SSD/Texas Memory dealer here in Germany, hoping that a sd-ram driven storage device will further improve performance... For relatively small (few GB) sizes you might be able to find something at a reasonable price. You didn't say whether you were running 64-bit versions of Windows and Versant: if not, doing so (with, say, at least 8 GB of RAM on the server) might also be effective (i.e., you might want to compare the cost of this to that of SSD or NVRAM). - bill |
#6
|
|||
|
|||
Perfect Storage solution for small Versant Database?
Bill Todd wrote:
.... I've also contacted a SSD/Texas Memory dealer here in Germany, hoping that a sd-ram driven storage device will further improve performance... For relatively small (few GB) sizes you might be able to find something at a reasonable price. You didn't say whether you were running 64-bit versions of Windows and Versant: if not, doing so (with, say, at least 8 GB of RAM on the server) might also be effective (i.e., you might want to compare the cost of this to that of SSD or NVRAM). Duh - I forgot to ask what might be the most obvious question of all: is your current RAID controller maxed out with controller NVRAM? Your database is small enough that using your current (or a replacement) RAID controller with a few GB of (mirrored) controller NVRAM might be the least expensive solution (and would also probably require the least change to your current set-up). - bill |
#7
|
|||
|
|||
Perfect Storage solution for small Versant Database?
Bill,
CaliberRM is currently 32bit only and so is the Versant-Version they are using (and supporting). We know that Caliber can only handly 2gb properly (that's what Borland told us). The database itself is currently 4.4.gb with a growth of about 100-250mb/month. Our Raid-Controller supports up to 256mb of ram and that's what we are having installed on it. I had look for a raid-controller that allows more ram 2 weeks are so ago, but never found anything that allowed e.g. 8gb or even 16 :-/ Do you know any controllers that do allow more than that? -j Bill Todd wrote: Bill Todd wrote: ... I've also contacted a SSD/Texas Memory dealer here in Germany, hoping that a sd-ram driven storage device will further improve performance... For relatively small (few GB) sizes you might be able to find something at a reasonable price. You didn't say whether you were running 64-bit versions of Windows and Versant: if not, doing so (with, say, at least 8 GB of RAM on the server) might also be effective (i.e., you might want to compare the cost of this to that of SSD or NVRAM). Duh - I forgot to ask what might be the most obvious question of all: is your current RAID controller maxed out with controller NVRAM? Your database is small enough that using your current (or a replacement) RAID controller with a few GB of (mirrored) controller NVRAM might be the least expensive solution (and would also probably require the least change to your current set-up). - bill |
#8
|
|||
|
|||
Perfect Storage solution for small Versant Database?
If you really want to see a performance Jump, bring in an EMC CX3 and
do raid 1/0. It will out perform the NetApp 3050 at FCP in everyway. You will see a performance gain in a magnitude of 3. Remember that Ontap is Raid 4 which is great for NAS because you can not saturate the backend. FCP requires a much more robust raid type and backend then what NetApp delivers. Also remember that Ontap is a software Raid not a hardware Raid. That alone is going to have its own performance implications. Joerg Battermann wrote: Bill, CaliberRM is currently 32bit only and so is the Versant-Version they are using (and supporting). We know that Caliber can only handly 2gb properly (that's what Borland told us). The database itself is currently 4.4.gb with a growth of about 100-250mb/month. Our Raid-Controller supports up to 256mb of ram and that's what we are having installed on it. I had look for a raid-controller that allows more ram 2 weeks are so ago, but never found anything that allowed e.g. 8gb or even 16 :-/ Do you know any controllers that do allow more than that? -j Bill Todd wrote: Bill Todd wrote: ... I've also contacted a SSD/Texas Memory dealer here in Germany, hoping that a sd-ram driven storage device will further improve performance... For relatively small (few GB) sizes you might be able to find something at a reasonable price. You didn't say whether you were running 64-bit versions of Windows and Versant: if not, doing so (with, say, at least 8 GB of RAM on the server) might also be effective (i.e., you might want to compare the cost of this to that of SSD or NVRAM). Duh - I forgot to ask what might be the most obvious question of all: is your current RAID controller maxed out with controller NVRAM? Your database is small enough that using your current (or a replacement) RAID controller with a few GB of (mirrored) controller NVRAM might be the least expensive solution (and would also probably require the least change to your current set-up). - bill |
Thread Tools | |
Display Modes | |
|
|
Similar Threads | ||||
Thread | Thread Starter | Forum | Replies | Last Post |
Best storage solution small business | jawdoc | Storage & Hardrives | 6 | June 22nd 05 08:25 AM |
Running SQL database off of SAN -- is it feasible ? | Larry David | Storage & Hardrives | 19 | March 18th 05 08:41 PM |
Running SQL database off of SAN -- Is it feasible? | Larry David | Storage (alternative) | 8 | March 15th 05 06:25 PM |
Internet Song Database Problems and Solutions | MS | Cdr | 1 | December 26th 03 07:16 PM |
Terabyte Storage By Real-Storage | Real-Storage | Storage & Hardrives | 2 | October 23rd 03 04:18 PM |