NetApp Clustered Data ONTAP with Oracle Databases

Lab Validation
Report
NetApp Clustered Data ONTAP with Oracle
Databases
Easy, Dynamic, and Proven Solutions

By Vinny Choinski, Senior ESG Lab Analyst and Kerry Dolan, ESG Lab Analyst

January 2013

© 2013 by The Enterprise Strategy Group, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

Lab Validation: NetApp Clustered Data ONTAP with Oracle Databases 2

Contents
Introduction .................................................................................................................................................. 3
Background ............................................................................................................................................................... 3
NetApp Clustered Data ONTAP ................................................................................................................................ 4
Oracle Automatic Storage Management (ASM) ....................................................................................................... 4
Combining NetApp Clustered Data ONTAP and Oracle ASM or dNFS...................................................................... 4
ESG Lab Validation ........................................................................................................................................ 6
Getting Started ......................................................................................................................................................... 6
Non-disruptive Operation......................................................................................................................................... 9
Efficient Scale.......................................................................................................................................................... 11
ESG Lab Validation Highlights ..................................................................................................................... 14
Issues to Consider ....................................................................................................................................... 14
The Bigger Truth ......................................................................................................................................... 15
Appendix ..................................................................................................................................................... 16

ESG Lab Reports
The goal of ESG Lab reports is to educate IT professionals about data center technology products for
companies of all types and sizes. ESG Lab reports are not meant to replace the evaluation process that should
be conducted before making purchasing decisions, but rather to provide insight into these emerging
technologies. Our objective is to go over some of the more valuable features/functions of products, show how
they can be used to solve real customer problems and identify any areas needing improvement. ESG Lab's
expert third-party perspective is based on our own hands-on testing as well as on interviews with customers
who use these products in production environments. This ESG Lab report was sponsored by NetApp.

All trademark names are property of their respective companies. Information contained in this publication has been obtained by sources The Enterprise
Strategy Group (ESG) considers to be reliable but is not warranted by ESG. This publication may contain opinions of ESG, which are subject to change from
time to time. This publication is copyrighted by The Enterprise Strategy Group, Inc. Any reproduction or redistribution of this publication, in whole or in
part, whether in hard-copy format, electronically, or otherwise to persons not authorized to receive it, without the express consent of The Enterprise
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you have any questions, please contact ESG Client Relations at 508.482.0188.



Introduction
This ESG Lab Validation report documents the results of hands-on testing of NetApp clustered Data ONTAP in
Oracle database environments, with a focus on ease of management, non-disruptive operations, and efficient
scaling.

Background
Integrated computing solutions are created when two or more components or features of the infrastructure work
together to provide greater value for the end-user. ESG research respondents indicated that they believe that
simplified management, reduced time to deployment, and achievement of a better economic model through lower
TCO were all benefits of integrated computing platforms, with those three benefits being the most popular answers
(see Figure 1). ESG research further indicates that organizations that have already deployed integrated solutions are
more likely to report benefits across the board than potential adopters are, further validating the value of
integrated platforms.1
Figure 1. Benefits of Integrated Computing Platforms

What benefits do you believe an integrated computing platform offers your
organization? (Percent of respondents, N=471, multiple responses accepted)

Ease of management 44%

Faster deployment time 37%

Improved total cost of ownership (TCO) 35%

Less time and resources required for… 33%

Reduction in interoperability issues 28%

Improved application performance 28%

Improved service and support 28%

It is more straightforward to purchase from… 19%

Less training required 17%

0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50%

Source: Enterprise Strategy Group, 2012.

Operational benefits are the real drivers of integrated solutions. Features that work together can simplify
management and enable new capabilities. Today’s dynamic IT environments must be able to support continual
growth, high availability, and mobility of physical and virtual workloads. These requirements are often difficult to
execute and can complicate the deployment and management of infrastructure components. As a result,
integration and high-level orchestration are extremely beneficial and can dramatically reduce operational efforts
for smaller or less experienced IT staffs as well as large enterprises. Integration can make the whole greater than
the sum of the parts, and that means users win in the end.

1
Source: ESG Research Brief, Integrated Computing Trends, March 2011.



NetApp Clustered Data ONTAP
The latest version of NetApp’s unified SAN/NAS storage operating system was designed for the always-on
availability, on-demand flexibility, efficient operations, and seamless scalability that today’s dynamic and growing
business environments require. As organizations move toward a shared IT infrastructure model, they must be able
to scale easily and move data around to optimize performance and utilization, but without disruption or added
complexity.
Several key features of this release are designed to support non-disruptive operations, massive scalability, and
better management of large-scale deployments. These include:
 DataMotion for Volumes, software that enables non-disruptive movement of storage volumes within a
storage cluster. Hardware and software can be upgraded while the storage pool is active, and workloads
can be re-balanced (while clients and applications maintain data access) by moving volumes to less active
aggregates or nodes to avoid hotspots and improve service levels.
 Storage virtualization across as many as 24 nodes (12 high-availability controller pairs) that are managed as
a single logical storage pool and name space. This enables almost limitless scalability even for data intensive
environments.
 Support for multiple hardware and software generations in the same cluster for investment protection.

Oracle Automatic Storage Management (ASM)
ASM is a feature of the Oracle database that provides integrated cluster file system and volume management
capabilities on SAN storage. ASM virtualizes the database storage into disk groups and automates placement of
database files within those disk groups. It load balances I/O by distributing the contents of each data file evenly
across the storage pool, optimizing performance and utilization, and eliminating the need for downtime to
manually tune database I/O. DBAs can locate and alleviate I/O hot spots, add disks, and remove disks without
taking the database offline, and when data movement is complete, ASM automatically rebalances the load.
NFS and Oracle Direct NFS (dNFS) Environments
All features of NetApp clustered Data ONTAP are supported for NFS and Oracle dNFS environments. Oracle dNFS is
built into the database kernel (as ASM is for SAN storage), and provides faster access and better scalability with NFS
storage on NAS devices. With dNFS, Oracle databases gain faster performance than with a standard NFS driver,
since dNFS bypasses the operating system when generating requests and does not need user configuration or
tuning. In addition, it load balances across multiple network interfaces in a similar fashion to how ASM operates in
SAN environments.

Combining NetApp Clustered Data ONTAP and Oracle ASM or dNFS
When used in combination, these NetApp clustered Data ONTAP and Oracle ASM/dNFS features enable non-
disruptive data movement to optimize database performance and improve service levels. Clustered Data ONTAP
supports non-disruptive data movement between active aggregates and cluster nodes, while ASM or dNFS further
load balance across multiple volumes or nodes. The result is optimal read/write performance in high transaction
database environments.



Figure 2 shows an integrated SAN infrastructure. On the left side of the graphic, an Oracle Database instance with
ASM resides on Red Hat Linux. It is SAN-connected to a NetApp VServer, which is divided up into LUNs that reside in
volumes. These volumes can be moved non-disruptively between aggregates and nodes within a NetApp storage
cluster.
Figure 2. NetApp Oracle SAN Solution

Figure 3 shows an integrated NAS infrastructure. On the left side of the graphic, an Oracle Database instance with
dNFS resides on Red Hat Linux. It is NAS-connected to a NetApp VServer, which is divided up into NFS file exports
that reside in volumes. These volumes can also be moved non-disruptively between aggregates and nodes within a
NetApp storage cluster

Figure 3. NetApp Oracle NAS Solution



ESG Lab Validation
ESG Lab performed hands-on evaluation and testing of the clustered Data ONTAP with Oracle 11g solution at the
NetApp Research Triangle Park facility, in RTP, North Carolina. Testing was designed to demonstrate ease of setup
and management via the OnCommand user interface; how DataMotion features can be leveraged to architect a
solution that provides non-disruptive operation; and how all the features of both the NetApp storage and the
Oracle database can be combined to create an environment that scales efficiently.

Getting Started
ESG Lab began its exploration of the solution with a review of the environment leveraged for the subsequent
testing. As shown in Figure 4, the test bed was configured with a SAN- and NAS-attached NetApp storage device as
shown on the right. An Oracle 11g database was deployed in a Linux server, as shown in the middle of the figure.
On the left side of Figure 4 is the LAN-connected OLTP workload host. The storage component consisted of six FAS
devices, four FAS3270, and two FAS6240 nodes. The SAN was composed of two Brocade 16 port switches. For
servers we used Linux Red Hat for the Oracle database and Windows 2008 to run the OLTP workload.

ESG Lab Testing
ESG Lab used the OnCommand user interface to connect to and inventory the storage components of the test bed.
A review of the configuration was conducted including NetApp deployment procedures and terminology. The Lab
confirmed the setup of any preconfigured components and completed any final configuration tasks. The
provisioning of storage to the Oracle database was confirmed by connecting to the Linux host and finally, the OLTP
workloads generator was explored via a remote connection to the Windows host.
Figure 4. Clustered Data ONTAP and Oracle 11g with ASM Test Bed



ESG Lab conducted a detailed review of the clustered Data ONTAP configuration and completed the final
configuration of components for each phase of configuration. Figure 5 shows the OnCommand view of the critical
components for the validation test environment. Starting on the left, Figure 5 shows cluster node information—the
cluster name TESO is displayed in the upper left of the first pane. Configured within the cluster are the six FAS
devices described in the test bed Figure 3. They are assigned the names TESO-01 through TESO-O4 and TESO-17
and TESO-18. Each cluster node has an aggregate created on it and labeled to reflect its node location (e.g.,
aggr_data_N1 is on TESO-01). Next, as shown in the middle pane of Figure 5, are the volumes that were created for
the test environment.

Figure 5. Storage and Cluster Layout

The volumes were created and labeled to show their original location whereas volume asmdata2 was initially
created on aggregate aggr_data_N2. Next, LUNs were created for the actual Oracle database data. The LUNs are
shown in the far right pane in Figure 5. The LUNs are named data1 through data4, data17, and data18.
Finally, in order to abstract their aggregate location, the LUNs were provisioned to the Linux Oracle host through a
VServer or virtual cluster server named sanrac.



In order to conduct subsequent operations and scale testing, ESG Lab leveraged the Move Volume feature from the
OnCommand user interface, as shown in Figure 6. In Figure 6 we see the volume asmdata03 being moved from
aggr_data_N1 to aggr_data_N3.
Figure 6. Volume Move

Why This Matters
IT professionals operate with constrained resources of many kinds, and time is often a key one. Installing,
configuring, and managing efficient and flexible scale-out storage solutions can be extremely complex and time-
consuming. It is a rarity for IT staff members to have the luxury of spare time to re-learn or muddle their way
through complex, unintuitive storage management tools or to fully qualify the interpretability of business
applications and compute infrastructures.
ESG Lab confirmed that creating and managing resources with the NetApp OnCommand user interface was
straightforward and easy. The simple concepts of applying aggregate RAID sets, volumes, and LUNs to clustered
Data ONTAP environments make management easy for both current NetApp users moving from an older version of
ONTAP as well as the storage administrator new to NetApp. The easy interface combined with NetApp verified
architecture and best practice guides accelerate deployment, ultimately saving time and money by reducing
operating expenses.



Non-disruptive Operation
Non-disruptive operation is the ability to move the physical location of storage while maintaining end-user access
to the application that lives on that storage. For this validation, the application is an Oracle 11g database with
simulated online transaction end-user activity. The storage is a multi-node NetApp cluster running version 8.1.1 of
clustered Data ONTAP and consisting of four FAS3270 nodes for this phase of validation.

ESG Lab Testing
ESG Lab tested the ability of the solution to deliver non-disruptive operation by running the OLTP workload and
observing continued access as the volumes and LUN locations were moved in the environment. As shown in Figure
7, CPU utilization was measured before, during, and after distributing database LUNs across all four nodes.
Figure 7. Two to Four Node Cluster Scale-out CPU Utilization

NetApp Cluster, Node Scale-out, CPU Utilization
(Oracle OLTP 100 User Work Load with FC Storage)
100%

90%

80%

70%
CPU Utilization

60%

50%

40%

30%

20%

10%

0%
Before During After
FAS3270_ 1 FAS3270_ 2 FAS3270_3 FAS3270_4

What the Numbers Mean
 The left (Before) side of Figure 7 shows the CPU utilization of the cluster with the OLTP workload and with
all LUNs provisioned on (FAS3270_1 and FAS3270_2).
 The middle (During) of Figure 7 shows the CPU utilization during the actual volume move. The workload
remains running with its load and the overhead of the volume move distributed across all four nodes.
 The right (After) side of Figure 7 shows a much more distributed and well under 10% CPU utilization for the
OLTP workload with the volume move complete and the LUNs provisioned across all filers.



ESG Lab then explored the performance characteristics of the environment during the non-disruptive scale-out
procedure. As shown in Figure 8, the transactions per minute and response times of the OLTP workload were
examined as the environment was scaled from two to four nodes.
Figure 8. Two to Four Node Cluster Scale-out Throughput and Response Times

NetApp Cluster, Node Scale-out, Transactions and Response Times
(Oracle OLTP 100 User Work Load with FC Storage)
20,000 5.0

17,500

Average Response Time (sec)
4.0
15,000
Transactions/min

12,500 3.0
10,000

7,500 2.0

5,000
1.0
2,500

0 0.0
Before During After

Transactions/min Average Response Time

 Figure 8 shows that the number of transactions per minute improved with the addition of a second pair of
FAS3270 nodes.
 Figure 8 also shows a significant reduction in application response time with all four nodes active. The
reduction in response time equates to a faster user experience.
 There is a slight dip in the number of transactions and an increase in response time during the actual
volume move but the application remains accessible to users during this process.

Why This Matters
Service interruptions can have a major impact on business productivity, especially for infrastructures supporting
mission-critical applications or highly virtualized environments. Most environments are designed with redundancy
to protect against and survive common hardware failures, but sometimes interruptions are caused by routine
maintenance or configuration changes. Simple equipment upgrades, firmware updates, and hardware refreshes,
though typically planned, can require equipment be taken out of service and often take longer than expected.
Today, IT’s customers are more mobile and global than ever before and as such expect their applications and data
to be available 24x7. Interruptions, whether planned or unplanned, can have a major impact to the bottom line of
the business. ESG Lab tested the ability of clustered Data ONTAP to seamlessly move data volumes between
aggregates and filers while maintaining database access and keeping applications available to the business. The
solution can help keep businesses running along smoothly while providing peace of mind to the administrators who
have to manage it.



Efficient Scale
Efficient scale is the process of demonstrating how clustered Data ONTAP DataMotion for Volumes combined with
Oracle ASM features can seamlessly and non-disruptively scale database environments to support a growing
number of concurrent users. An OLTP workload that simulates a computing environment where users execute
transactions against a database is used as the test harness. The workload is centered on order-entry transactions
for industries that manage, sell, or distribute products or services. The workload used in this validation was
configured to show linear scalability; it was not intended to push the performance boundaries of the solution.

ESG Lab Testing
ESG Lab tested efficient scale by increasing the number of database users from 100 to 300 in hundred-user
increments for two, four, and six node cluster configurations while measuring the performance. As shown in Figure
9, the number of transactions per minute was measured as the database storage was distributed across nodes.
Figure 9 shows how performance increased for the environment as cluster nodes were added and storage volumes
were spread across the nodes.

Figure 9. Two, Four, and Six Node Cluster Transactions per Minute



Next, as shown in Figure 10, ESG Lab analyzed response time using the same scale methodology applied during
throughput testing. In Figure 10, we see the response times as the volume distribution is scaled from two to six
nodes.

Figure 10. Two, Four, and Six Node Cluster Response Times

 Figure 10 shows that the response times exceed two seconds as the number of users is increased to 300 in
the 2 node cluster configuration.
 As the workload is distributed across more nodes, the response time decreases. In the four-node
configuration, the response time is between 1 and 1.5 seconds.
 As the final six-node configuration is deployed, the response time drops to well under .5 seconds.



Finally, as shown in Figure 11, ESG Lab audited NetApp workload testing results with NFS storage and dNFS on the
Oracle host.
Figure 11. Four Node Cluster, Scale Up Users, Throughput and Response Times

 The cluster configuration in this test was similar to that of the six-node FC configuration.
 Transactions per minute were approximately equal for both the NAS and SAN configuration.
 Response times in the NAS configuration were faster than that of the SAN configuration.

Why This Matters
Resource contention and configuration constraints are daily occurrences in today’s dynamic data centers. They can
cause performance and availability problems that threaten IT’s ability to deliver on application service level
agreements. Business-critical applications can grow quickly in both capacity and user workload. Performance
degradation can arise from oversubscribed or misconfigured arrays as application attributes change. This can
quickly impact end-user productivity especially in rigid, inflexible architectures.
ESG Lab validated that, by abstracting the environment at both the storage and application level using clustered
Data ONTAP and Oracle 11g with ASM or dNFS, we could dynamically change and scale the environment to
improve performance during this process. This flexibility can help avoid CAPEX expenditures for dedicated
appliances that would be only fractionally utilized during the majority of the year by enabling hot applications to be
distributed across multiple filers or moved to higher performance models during times of higher utilization, such as
month-end or year-end processing, and then be moved back when the load returns to normal.



ESG Lab Validation Highlights
 ESG Lab was pleased to find the solution extremely easy to configure and manage. The OnCommand user
interface made it really easy to conduct the tasks at hand and the concepts were intuitive and familiar.
 Leveraging best practice and reference architecture recommendations, the Lab was able to configure a
solution that allowed non-disruptive movement of data volumes between storage cluster members, an
architecture that demonstrated its ability to eliminate service interruptions during simple maintenance
tasks through complex configuration changes.
 With clustered Data ONTAP and Oracle 11g with ASM, ESG Lab was able to seamlessly dial up and dial back
performance as application workload requirements changed. The solution enables a very granular approach
to performance tuning, allowing Oracle ASM data volumes to be mapped to specific NetApp volumes on
specific aggregates when performance requirements demand such resources.
 ESG Lab also validated that clustered Data ONTAP is a viable solution for Oracle Databases with NAS storage,
leveraging Oracle dNFS for load balancing and additional performance.
 ESG Lab was pleased to see cluster support for different filer models. This allows different FAS models with
different workloads to be managed through a single cluster interface and consolidates the management
process.

Issues to Consider
 With the tested version of clustered Data ONTAP, members must be added in HA pairs. Proper planning
must be considered to maintain desired performance metrics when selecting the HA pair for a cluster
configuration.
 Proper planning is essential when designing the Oracle ASM disk group. Greater distribution of data files at
the ASM layer enables greater performance parallelisms as backend storage resources are added to the
environment. However, performance must be balanced with reliable recovery. For proper disk layout in
8.1.1. ASM environments, NetApp strongly recommends users implement the design elements found in the
NetApp solution guide.



The Bigger Truth
Business doesn’t want to wait for IT anymore. In the “old days,” business managers waited patiently while IT
created or upgraded infrastructure components to deliver a particular feature or function. But today, they are laser-
focused on productivity, revenue generation, and time to market, so delays and downtime are frowned upon. This
is something of a dilemma for IT because the better and faster IT delivers services, the higher the expectations
become. Once business managers experience the flexibility and agility benefits of technologies such as virtualization
and cloud infrastructures, they assume that in all circumstances, IT can eliminate wait times for technology
upgrades and can keep applications and data up and running around the clock.
What business managers are not aware of are the innovations that vendors are building into their technology
solutions to generate this agility and flexibility and make it appear seamless. All they know is that systems don’t
slow down during the holiday rush any more, that quarterly financial reporting doesn’t bump their applications to
lower service levels, and that IT no longer has to answer, “Sure we can make it faster, but only if we take the system
down for a couple of days.”
As ESG Lab discovered during this testing, the combination of NetApp clustered Data ONTAP and DataMotion
features with Oracle ASM creates an environment in which business-critical databases can deliver optimal
performance and scalability without disruption or downtime. ONTAP was simple to manage, and ESG Lab was able
to scale-out and load balance the storage cluster to improve transactions per minute and response time. We were
able to accomplish this with neither downtime nor any perceptible impact on performance during the data
migration.
Certainly, this integrated technology solution is of great value to the business in terms of productivity and agility. At
the same time, it benefits IT. In today’s cloud-focused architectures, silos of components become difficult to
orchestrate. Having prequalified solution functionality such as this available without IT teams designing, testing,
and qualifying it on their own saves time and money.
With NetApp and Oracle, IT can deliver the desired result without the interruption— just like the business has come
to expect.



Appendix
Table 1. ESG Lab Test Bed

Storage
Data ONTAP version 8.1.1
(4) FAS3270 Filers
(64) 400GB 10k SAS Drives
Data ONTAP version 8.1.1
(2) FAS6240 Filers
(26) 550GB 15k SAS Drives
Servers
Model: RX300 S5
2U dual socket rack server
(2) Fujitsu Primergy Servers
CPU: Intel Xeon E5-2600 product family
RAM: 128GB
SAN
Model: 300
(2) Brocade 16 Port Switches Fabric OS: 6.3.0d
Firmware: 2.16.4.2
Applications and Operating Systems
Version: 11g
Oracle Database Automatic Storage Management
Redundancy: External
Windows Version: 2008 R2
Type: Red Hat Enterprise
Linux
Version: 5.6


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NetApp Clustered Data ONTAP with Oracle Databases

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