Full Stack

To use ASMlib or not to use ASMlib? That is the question. Or at least, that is a question that frequently crops up when I'm on consulting engagements with customers. I have personally changed my mind a couple of times on this exact question, and I'm currently sat with one leg on either side of [...]

This blog post is an introduction to a few posts that can be grouped together under the banner of 'System Architecture'. Specifically, I'm referring here to Oracle Database System Architecture, not system architecture in general nor 'Oracle architecture' in general, which is an ever-growing beast. In this series of posts, I will take at look [...]

This is a post about the importance of appropriately simplistic architectures. I frequently get involved with the creation of full-stack architectures, and in particular the architecture of the database platform. There are some golden rules when designing such systems, but one of the most important ones is to keep the design as simple as possible. [...]

Wow, it’s been a while since I wrote a post, sorry about that! I thought that I would take a brief break from the technical postings and espouse some opinion on something that has been bothering me for a while – ‘Best Practices.’ Best Practices have been around a long time, and started with very [...]

In my last blog entry I alluded to perhaps not being all that happy about Fibre Channel. Well, it’s true. I have been having a love/hate relationship with Fibre Channel for the last ten years or so, and we have now decided to get a divorce. I just can’t stand it any more! I first [...]

OK, this one might be contentious, but what the heck – somebody has to say it. Let’s start with a question: Raise your hand if you have a feeling, even a slight one, that storage arrays suck? Most DBAs and sysadmins that I speak to certainly have this feeling. They cannot understand why the performance [...]

I was recently looking into a storage-related performance problem at a customer site. The system was an Oracle 10.2.0.4/SLES 9 Linux system, Fibre Channel attached to an EMC DMX storage array. The DMX was replicated to a DR site using SRDF/S. The problem was only really visible during the overnight batch runs, so AWR reports [...]