49 EMC VMAX3 Service Level Objectives and SnapVX for Oracle 12c
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Chapter 7 Use Case 3: Business Continuity for
Oracle Database
This chapter presents the following topics:
Overview ... 50 Test with SnapVX ... 50
Chapter 7: Use Case 3: Business Continuity for Oracle Database EMC Confidential
Overview
This test case demonstrates how to create snapshots with the VMAX3TimeFinder SnapVX feature. SnapVX can be used to bolster a customer’s existing backup strategies and test/dev environment provisioning. This use case shows how we created SnapVX snapshots with a production database.
Test with SnapVX
The test describes taking snapshots for the Oracle database platinum SLO LUNs while the OLTP workload is also running. Key procedures are included on how to use the GUI to create snapshots. We also show how to create snapshots regularly using a command line in the OS job schedulers.
As in a production OLTP system, we chose a nonpeak period to create our snapshot. In this case, the workload on the OLTP system was at about 50% of peak performance when we created snapshots. The test verifies a near-zero performance impact for the workload when the snapshots were created.
The test procedures are designed to validate:
The process of SnapVX snapshots creation, including the use of Unisphere and script (create snapshots regularly).
The source Oracle database production workload is not impacted when multiple SnapVX snapshots are created.
This is how we validated the performance of the database:
1. Ran multiple SLOB concurrent users for one hour to set up a baseline, with 75% sessions running queries and 25% sessions running UPDATE SQL statements.
2. Ran the baseline workload again, scheduling snapshot creation every 10 minutes.
3. After the workload finished, six snapshots were created. We compared the database performance before and after snapshot creation.
We created the SnapVX snapshots by following these steps:
1. Log in to Unisphere, then click Data Protection and select TimeFinder, as shown in Figure 30. Test scenario Test objectives Test procedures Create an on- demand backup
EMC Confidential Chapter 7: Use Case 3: Business Continuity for Oracle Database
51 EMC VMAX3 Service Level Objectives and SnapVX for Oracle 12c
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Figure 30. Select the TimeFinder menu
2. Click TimeFinder/SnapVX, as shown in Figure 31.
Figure 31. Click TimeFinder/SnapVX
3. Click Create Snapshot. Select Storage Group Name and enter the name for the new snapshot. We entered SNAP_OLTP_RAC as shown in Figure 32. Click Show Advanced to set more parameters.
Figure 32. Create a snapshot
4. Set an expiration time in the screen that appears. Click Run Now to create a snapshot. The amount of time the snapshot creation takes is recorded, as shown in Figure 33.
Chapter 7: Use Case 3: Business Continuity for Oracle Database EMC Confidential
Figure 33. Set expiration days
5. Locate the successfully created SnapVX in the dashboard, as shown in Figure 34.
Figure 34. Snapshot created
To create multiple snapshots regularly, we scheduled the creation of regular snapshots with the following steps:
1. Log in to the server on which the Solution Enabler (SE) is installed. In our environment, we installed the SE in Windows 2008.
2. Create a command script with the name oraclesnap.cmd and edit the command to the following:
symsnapvx -sid 0544 -sg OLTPRAC -name SNAP_OLTPRAC establish -ttl -delta 1 -nop”
(The meaning of the command is: “create a snapshot named SNAP_OLTPRAC from OLTPRAC and set one-day expiration on it”.)
3. Open a Task Scheduler and create a task, as shown in Figure 35. Select Run whether user is logged on or not.
EMC Confidential Chapter 7: Use Case 3: Business Continuity for Oracle Database
53 EMC VMAX3 Service Level Objectives and SnapVX for Oracle 12c
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Figure 35. Create a task
4. Edit the trigger time to set the scheduler to run. For example, we selected 6 minutes to create a snapshot every six minutes, as shown in Figure 36.
Figure 36. Edit the scheduler trigger time
5. In the Edit Action window, select Start a program, then browse to the scripts we created in step 2, as shown in Figure 37.
Chapter 7: Use Case 3: Business Continuity for Oracle Database EMC Confidential
Figure 37. Edit the action
6. In Unisphere, verify that the SnapVX snaps were created every six minutes, as shown in Figure 38.
Figure 38. Find the new SnapVX snaps in Unisphere
EMC Confidential Chapter 7: Use Case 3: Business Continuity for Oracle Database
55 EMC VMAX3 Service Level Objectives and SnapVX for Oracle 12c
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To calculate the workload, we used the performance statistics from the AWR reports as shown in Figure 39, just as we did in Use Case #1 and Use Case #2. Figure 39 shows the OLTP baseline at non-peak time.
Figure 39. Average response time for OLTP baseline at non-peak time - AWR report
Table 14 shows the OLTP workload performance data comparing the OLTP baseline at non-peak time to the performance statistics of running an OLTP workload and
creating snapshots at the same time.
Table 14. OLTP workload performance comparison before and after snapshots creation
Performance metric
Performance data OLTP baseline at non-peak time
OLTP workload running and snapshot creation
Read IOPS 37,451 36,032
Write IOPS 9,305 8,949
Aggregate IOPS (write + read) 46,756 44,981
Redo throughput (MB/s) 8 7
LGWR response time (ms) 1.41 1.51
Physical read response time for single block (ms)
0.69 0.79
Physical read response time for multi-noncontiguous blocks (ms)
1.86 2.21
From the test results, as compared to the OLTP baseline at non-peak time, the total IOPS with read and write decreased about 3.8% ((46,756 - 44,981) / 46,756), which was negligible. The performance for OLTP workload was not impacted by the creation of six snapshots.
Test results
Summary of use case