Oracles Results With Charon Vax

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Charon-VAX in Charon-VAX in

Rdb Rdb EngineeringEngineering

Norman LastovicaOracle Rdb Engineering

Oracle New England Development [email protected]

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Problem Overview

• Needed to reduce computer lab footprint– Floor space, power & cooling

• Very old hardware maintenance headache– Unreliable & difficult to repair– VAX computers over 15 years old

Some star Couplers, HSJs, disks even older

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Problem Overview

• Performance of CPU, memory, Ethernet, disks, controllers, & busses lag behind Alpha & I64

• Need multiple VAX environments for building, testing, debugging & support for Rdb product family

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Charon-VAX Solution

• Replace approximately 12 large VAX systems (6000 & 7000 class) in several clusters with Charon-VAX emulators

– Consolidate/simplify existing systems & clusters

• Migrate primarily to SAN-based storage

• Sub-goal of improved performance & reliability for users (at least no reduction)

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Remove VAX Hardware?

“Oracle Corporation supports VAX versions of Oracle Rdb and Oracle CODASYL DBMS and their related products running on CHARON-VAX provided that any problems reported can be reproduced by Oracle Support on an actual VAX.”

“HP Services supports HP OpenVMS software on the CHARON-VAX and CHARON-AXP emulators running on HP systems only. Existing software service contracts are valid on supported OpenVMS VAX and OpenVMS Alpha AXP applications running on the appropriate emulator. HP fixes software problems if they are also seen in the comparable VAX or Alpha AXP environment.”

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Extensive Testing

• Before announcing support for Rdb on Charon-VAX– Extensive Rdb & DBMS Regression tests– Various Performance tests– Consultations with HP & SRI

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Performance

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Prime Number Generation

0

5

10

15

20

Seconds

VAX 6650 Charon-VAX

• C program from Internet• Single-user• CPU intensive• Dell laptop host system

– Single 2GHz Intel CPU– …at 35,000 feet

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More Prime Number Generation

0

50

100

150

200

250

300

350

400

Seconds

VAX 6650 Charon 6630

• C program from Internet• Single-user• CPU intensive• HP BL25p host

– Dual 2.6GHz dual-core AMD

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Random Floating Point Additions

0

10

20

30

40

50

60

70

80

Seconds


• Update random floating point numbers in 1MB global section

• Single-user• HP BL25p host

– Dual 2.6GHz dual-core AMD

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1552

58

12

1060

0

500

1000

1500

2000

microseconds

Charon-6630 Hardware 6650

Charon-6630

Hardware 6650

Lock Request LatenciesLocal & Remote

•HP BL25p host–Dual 2.6GHz dual-core AMD

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DBMS Regression Test

0

10

20

30

40

50

60

70

CPU Elapsed

VAX 6550 Charon-VAX

• Sun V65 host– Dual 3.06GHz Intel with HT– MSCP served disks via

Ethernet

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Rdb Database Populate

0

5

10

15

20

Seconds

VAX 6650 Charon-VAX

• VAX 6650– HSJ storage

• HP DL 585 host– Quad 2.4GHz AMD– Single IDE disk

• Single user store data into database

• Average for 100 txn

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Single User OLTP

0

0.5

1

1.5

2

Seconds

VAX 6650 Charon-VAX

• Single user• Random DB update• Average for 1,000 txn• VAX 6650

– HSJ storage

• HP DL 585 host– Quad 2.4GHz AMD– Single IDE disk

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Synchronous Random 5-block IO

0

50

100

150

200

250

300

350

IO/Sec


• $IOT /COUNT=2000 /QUE=1 /SIZE=5 SYS$SYSDEVICE

• CI HSJ40 on VAX 6650• Fibre EVA3000 on

Charon 6630

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Queue of Random 5-block IO

0

50

100

150

200

250

300

350

400

IO/Sec


• $IOT /COUNT=2000 /QUE=8 /SIZE=5 SYS$SYSDEVICE

• CI HSJ40 on VAX 6650• Fibre EVA3000 on

Charon 6630

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Queue of Random 5-block IO

0

2000

4000

6000

8000

10000

IO/Sec


• $IOT /COUNT=7500 /QUE=8 /SIZE=5 RDB$TEST_SYS1:

• Fibre EVA3000 on Charon 6630

• Software Raid set of 10 disks on CI HSJ40s on VAX 6650

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Create and Sort File of Random Records

00:00.0

00:43.2

01:26.4

02:09.6

02:52.8

03:36.0

Create Sort

Elapsed Time


1,000,000 records / 256,167 blocks

00:00.0

00:43.2

01:26.4

02:09.6

02:52.8

03:36.0

Create Sort

CPU Time


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What Host System To Pick?

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HP ProLiant BL25p Server Blade

• 1.7in (4.3cm) x 10.3in (26.2cm) x 28in (71cm)• 21 lb (9.5 kg)• Two Dual-Core AMD Opteron™ (2.6 GHz)• 6GB PC3200 DDR SDRAM at 400 MHz• 4 Gigabit NIC ports• Dual Port 2-Gb Fibre Channel Adapter • Internal HP 36GB U320 15K disk

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Why BL25p?

• Two dual-core processors = 4 effective CPUs– Run CHARON-VAX/6630 Plus for Windows– Windows Server 2003 Standard Edition

Only 4GB memory of our 6GB usable due to limit in Standard Edition (larger limits in “higher” Editions) – whoops

• More cost & space effective than 4p DL585– Very near same peak performance (2.6GHz dual-core vs.

2.8GHz single-core)

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Why BL25p?

• Up to 8 BL25p servers in single 10.5” tall enclosure– Using existing rack space = no additional floor space

• Remote management capable– Software KVM switch console / ILO

• Alternately: BL35p – 2 NIC ports, two 2.4GHz dual-core, 5k or 10k internal disks - Same price per server - Up to 16 per enclosure

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Blade Enclosure

10.5 inches high19 inch rack mount8 BL25p or 16 BL35p

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How to Deploy?

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Phased Implementation Plan

1. Replace 3 test clusters (total of 8 nodes) with single 2 node cluster

• Install and test and experiment with new hardware and then migrate workload and shutdown old systems

• Work out installation and configuration issues to avoid impacting development cluster or test environments

2. Replace 3 VAX nodes in development cluster

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Best of Intentions

• Multiple UPS failures in a single day

• 2 VAX systems in development cluster suffer serious hardware damage – multiple power supplies failed

• Leads to Accelerated Charon-VAX deployment

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Original Development Cluster Configuration

2 I64 rx4640 V8.2-1 2 Alpha V8.2

EVA5000

2Gb San

EthernetsDECnet,TCP/IP,SCS

2 VAX 6650 V7.3

2 CI Rails

2 Star CouplersHSJ40s

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New Development Cluster Configuration

2 I64 rx4640 2 Alpha 3 BL25p / Charon-6630

EVA5000

2Gb SanEthernetsDECnet,TCP/IP,SCS

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Test Cluster Configuration

2 BL25p / Charon-6630

EVA5000

2Gb SanEthernetsDECnet,TCP/IP,SCS

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Host Detail Configuration

6 BL25p / Charon-6630

EVA5000•Shared “DUA” disks per cluster•VMS system & data disks•“Raw” LUNs on SAN presented to Windows

Local windows system disk & page / swap container file per host for VMS

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VAX Disks on SAN

• Charon presents raw SAN LUN as MSCP DUA device• VAX/VMS sees it as “DUAx:” just like from HSJ• If needed - must be MSCP served from VAX to other

Alpha/I64 nodes –can not access LUN directly because it appears as “DGA” device

• Multiple Charon-VAX systems in cluster access same SAN LUN with same DUA name

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Memory Configuration

• Various 128MB, 256MB & 512MB on 76x0, 66x0, 65x0, 64x0 test and development systems

• 1GB on our Charon-6630– Can be increased to 2GB with enough host system memory

• Perhaps allow VMS processes larger caches and/or working sets to reduce paging & IO

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Disk Configuration

• Local host Windows system disk– Could alternately have been on SAN

• VAX system disk on EVA5000 disk unit shared between multiple Charon hosts in Cluster

• VAX system page/swap disk is container file on local host disk

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Disk Performance

• Access to VAX system disk on SAN roughly 2 to 50 times faster than CI based HSJ storage

• MSCP served disks from Alpha about equal from Charon-6630 (via NI) as hardware VAX (via CI)

• Once new configuration proves reliable, CI-related hardware will be retired

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System Performance

• Single Charon-6630 roughly 3 times faster than hardware 6650– On our host, Charon-66x0 CPU runs around 3 to 6 times

faster than hardware 66x0 CPU

• Less CPUs should result in less inter-processor contention (ie, MPSYNCH time)

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Application Performance

• First Rdb regression test suite run time reduced from about 12 hours to about 8 hours – 33% increase

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Relatively Simple Deployment

• Install & configure Windows Server 2003 Standard Edition– Install windows updates / patches, anti-virus, Charon– Disable documented windows services– Configure prototype Charon-VAX emulator template files

• Replicate Windows disk to other hosts

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Relatively Simple Deployment

• Create VAX disk LUNs on SAN1. Make visible to existing Alpha or I64 system in cluster

2. BACKUP/IMAGE existing VAX disks to new LUNs

3. Make LUNs visible to PC host servers

4. Shutdown VAX systems cluster-wide, dismount CI disks on remaining nodes

5. Start Charon-VAX and boot from LUN on multiple hosts

6. Mount new disks (served via MSCP to cluster from Charon-VAX nodes) on remaining nodes

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Watch Out For…

• Read all documentation before you embark– Charon-VAX, Windows Server 2003

• Difficult to work with raw LUNs from SAN to Windows for VMS cluster disks

• Disk unit numbers presented to cluster & disk allocation classes

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Watch Out For…

• Boot options & saving in ROM file

• Windows Server 2003 Standard Edition limits 4p & 4GB– Other “editions” offer higher limits

• Users concerned that things may be broken because they run so fast!

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Questions & Comments?

Technology

Oracles Results With Charon Vax