Oracle Databases On VMware Best Practices Guide
VMware Hybrid Cloud Best Practices Guide forOracle WorkloadsVersion 1.0May 2016 2016 VMware, Inc. All rights reserved.Page 1 of 81
2016 VMware, Inc. All rights reserved. This product is protected by U.S. and international copyright andintellectual property laws. This product is covered by one or more patents listed re is a registered trademark or trademark of VMware, Inc. in the United States and/or otherjurisdictions. All other marks and names mentioned herein may be trademarks of their respectivecompanies.VMware, Inc.3401 Hillview AvePalo Alto, CA 94304www.vmware.com 2016 VMware, Inc. All rights reserved.Page 2 of 81
VMware Hybrid Cloud Best Practices Guide for Oracle WorkloadsContents1.Introduction . 92.vSphere . 103.VMware Support for Oracle Databases on vSphere . 113.1 VMware Oracle Support Policy . 113.2 VMware Oracle Support Process. 124.Server Guidelines . 134.1 General Guidelines . 134.2 Hardware Assisted Virtualization . 154.3 Upgrading vSphere . 165.Virtual CPU Guidelines . 175.1 General Guidelines for Virtual CPU . 175.2 Right-Sizing Virtual CPU . 175.3 Hyperthreading. 185.4 NUMA and Virtual NUMA (vNUMA) . 196.Memory Guidelines . 226.1 General Guidelines for Memory . 226.2 ESXI Memory Management Mechanism . 226.3 Memory Reservations . 236.4 Huge Pages . 246.5 Oracle 12c Multitenant Feature. 257.Storage Guidelines . 267.1 General Guidelines . 267.2 Storage Virtualization Concepts. 277.3 Storage Protocol Capabilities. 297.4 Partition Alignment . 297.5 Deduplication and Compression Function on Storage Array . 307.6 Choosing Right Path Policy Connect to Storage Array . 307.7 Minimum Hub Between HBA/iSCSI to Storage Array . 307.8 VMDK Creation and vSphere Storage APIs - Array Integration . 317.9 VMware vSphere Flash Read Cache Creation . 317.10 VMware vSphere Virtual Volumes . 327.11 VMware Virtual SAN . 34 2016 VMware, Inc. All rights reserved.Page 3 of 81
VMware Hybrid Cloud Best Practices Guide for Oracle Workloads8.Networking Guidelines . 368.1 General Networking Guidelines . 368.2 Networking Best Practices . 368.3 Virtual Switches. 388.4 VMware NSX. 408.5 Networking for Oracle RAC . 409.Guest Operating System Guidelines . 439.1 Host Processes . 439.2 Oracle Installation Prerequisite Checklist . 439.3 Timekeeping in Virtual Machines . 4310.Database Guidelines. 4510.1 Database Layout Considerations . 4510.2 Example of Oracle Database Storage Layout on vSphere . 4711.Performance Monitoring on vSphere. 4811.1 ESXTOP/rESXTOP . 4811.2 Oracle Automatic Workload Repository . 5211.3 Linux Operating System sosreport. 5312.Backup and Recovery . 5412.1 Oracle Backup and Recovery Overview . 5412.2 Oracle Recovery Manager (RMAN) . 5412.3 vSphere Data Protection . 5412.4 Storage-Based Backup Tools . 5512.5 vSphere Virtual Volumes . 5612.6 Oracle Recovery Overview . 5713.High Availability . 5813.1 General HA Considerations . 5813.2 Oracle Real Application Cluster . 5913.3 Oracle RAC One Node . 6013.4 Non Oracle Clusterware . 6013.5 VMware vSphere Fault Tolerance . 6113.6 VMware vSphere Metro Storage Cluster . 6113.7 Virtual SAN . 6314.Disaster Recovery. 6414.1 General DR Considerations . 6414.2 Application-Based Replication . 64 2016 VMware, Inc. All rights reserved.Page 4 of 81
VMware Hybrid Cloud Best Practices Guide for Oracle Workloads14.3 VMware vSphere Replication . 6714.4 Array-Based Replication . 6814.5 VMware Site Recovery Manager . 6915.VMware Engineered Systems . 7115.1 EVO:RAIL . 7115.2 EVO:RACK. 7216.Summary . 7417.References . 7618.Acknowledgements . 77Appendix A: Virtual Machine Memory Settings . 78Appendix B: Performance Studies . 79Appendix C: Configuration Maximums . 80Appendix D: VMware Compatibility Guide . 81 2016 VMware, Inc. All rights reserved.Page 5 of 81
VMware Hybrid Cloud Best Practices Guide for Oracle WorkloadsList of FiguresFigure 1. VMware vSphere Oracle Support Process . 12Figure 2. Example of a 12 vCPU Wide Virtual Machine . 19Figure 3. Different Layers of Storage Technology . 27Figure 4. VMFS Multi-Writer Flag Supported/Unsupported Features . 32Figure 5. Virtual SAN Cluster Datastore . 34Figure 6. Virtual SAN Cluster for Oracle RAC . 35Figure 7. Example Network Layout of Oracle RAC Database on VMware . 37Figure 8. Standard Switch . 38Figure 9. Distributed Switch . 39Figure 10. Architecture Deploying VMware NSX . 40Figure 11. Jumbo Frame Network . 42Figure 12. Oracle Database Details (1 of 3) . 50Figure 13. Oracle Database Details (2 of 3) . 51Figure 14. Oracle Database Details (3 of 3) . 52Figure 15. Top 5 Timed Foreground Events Listing . 53Figure 16. vSphere Data Protection . 55Figure 18. Heartbeat and Status Signals . 58Figure 19. vSphere Fault Tolerance . 61Figure 20. vSphere Metro Storage Cluster . 62Figure 23. Oracle Data Guard Based Replication of Oracle Databases . 64Figure 24. VMware Continuent Features . 66Figure 26. vSphere Based Replication of Virtual Machine Containing Oracle Databases . 67Figure 27. Storage-Based Replication of Virtual Machine Containing Oracle Databases . 68Figure 28. Site Recovery Manager Components . 69Figure 29. EVO:RAIL Capabilities . 71Figure 30. EVO:RAIL Hardware System Details . 72Figure 31. EVO:RACK Configuration . 72Figure 32. EVO:RACK Model. 73Figure 33. Virtual Machine Memory Settings . 78 2016 VMware, Inc. All rights reserved.Page 6 of 81
VMware Hybrid Cloud Best Practices Guide for Oracle WorkloadsList of TablesTable 1. Host Systems Best Practices . 13Table 2. BIOS Settings Maximized for Performance . 14Table 3. Virtual CPU-Related Best Practices. 17Table 4. rESXTOP NUMA Metrics . 20Table 5. Memory-Related Best Practices . 22Table 6. Recommended Storage Best Practices . 26Table 7. VMFS and Raw Disk Mapping Trade-Offs . 28Table 8. Recommended Networking-Related Best Practices . 36Table 9. Recommendation for Host Processes . 43Table 10. Virtual Machine Timekeeping Best Practice Recommendation . 43Table 11. Performance Monitoring Recommendation . 48Table 12. ESX/ESXi Performance Counters . 48Table 13. High Availability Best Practice Recommendation . 59 2016 VMware, Inc. All rights reserved.Page 7 of 81
VMware Hybrid Cloud Best Practices Guide for Oracle Workloads 2016 VMware, Inc. All rights reserved.Page 8 of 81
VMware Hybrid Cloud Best Practices Guide for Oracle Workloads1.IntroductionThis Oracle Databases on VMware Best Practices Guide provides best practice guidelines for deployingOracle databases on VMware vSphere . The recommendations in this guide are not specific to anyparticular set of hardware, or size and scope of any particular Oracle database implementation. Theexamples and considerations provide guidance, but do not represent strict design requirements.The successful deployment of Oracle on vSphere 5.x/6.0 is not significantly different from deployingOracle on physical servers. DBAs can fully leverage their current skill set while also delivering the benefitsassociated with virtualization.In addition to this guide, VMware has created separate best practice documents for storage, networking,and performance.This document also includes information from two white papers, Performance Best Practices for VMwarevSphere 5.5 (https://www.vmware.com/pdf/Perf Best Practices vSphere5.5.pdf) and Performance BestPractices for VMware vSphere 6.0 PerfBestPractices-vSphere6-0.pdf)See Section 17, References for a list of other documents that can help you successfully deploy Oracle onvSphere. 2016 VMware, Inc. All rights reserved.Page 9 of 81
VMware Hybrid Cloud Best Practices Guide for Oracle Workloads2.vSphereVMware virtualization solutions provide numerous benefits to DBA administrators. VMware virtualizationcreates a layer of abstraction between the resources required by an application and operating system,and the underlying hardware that provides those resources. This abstraction layer provides value for thefollowing: Consolidation – VMware technology allows multiple application servers to be consolidated onto onephysical server, with little or no decrease in overall performance. Ease of provisioning – VMware virtualization encapsulates an application into an image that can beduplicated or moved, greatly reducing the cost of application provisioning and deployment. Manageability – Virtual machines can be moved from server to server with no downtime usingVMware vSphere vMotion , which simplifies common operations such as hardware maintenance,and reduces planned downtime. Availability – If an unplanned hardware failure occurs, VMware vSphere High Availability (HA) restartsaffected virtual machines on another host in a VMware cluster. With VMware HA you can reduceunplanned downtime and provide higher service levels to an application. VMware vSphere FaultTolerance (FT) features zero downtime and zero data loss, providing continuous availability in theface of server hardware failures for any application running in a virtual machine. 2016 VMware, Inc. All rights reserved.Page 10 of 81
VMware Hybrid Cloud Best Practices Guide for Oracle Workloads.VMware Support for Oracle Databases on vSphere3.Oracle has a support statement for VMware products (MyOracleSupport 249212.1). While there has beenmuch public discussion about Oracle’s perceived position on support for VMware virtualization,experience shows that Oracle Support upholds its commitment to customers, including those usingVMware virtualization in conjunction with Oracle products.VMware is also an Oracle customer. The E-Business Suite and Siebel implementations of VMware IT arevirtualized. VMware routinely submits and receives assistance with issues for Oracle running on VMwarevirtual infrastructure. The MyOracleSupport (MetaLink) Document ID 249212.1 provides the specifics ofOracle’s support commitment to VMware. Gartner, IDC, and others also have documents available totheir subscribers that specifically address this policy.The Understanding Oracle Certification, Support and Licensing for VMware Environments guide availableo
experience shows that Oracle Support upholds its commitment to customers, including those using VMware virtualization in conjunction with Oracle products. VMware is also an Oracle customer. The E-Business Suite and Siebel implementations of VMware IT are virtualized.
Deploying Oracle RAC Database 12c on RHEL 7 - Best Practices Oracle Databases on VMware RAC Deployment Guide VMware vSphere 6.0 Best Practices Guides VMware settings can affect the performance and scalability of your Oracle database. There is a wealth of information on VMware and Oracle performance in the VMware Best Practices guides.
2.7 VMware vCenter Support Assistant 22 2.8 VMware Continuent 23 2.9 VMware Hyper-Converged Infrastructure Kits 23 2.10 VMware Site Recovery Manager 23 2.11 VMware NSX 24 2.12 VMware NSX Advanced Load Balancer 28 2.13 VMware SD-WAN by VeloCloud 29 2.14 VMware Edge Network Intelligence 30 2.15 VMware NSX Firewall 30
Oracle e-Commerce Gateway, Oracle Business Intelligence System, Oracle Financial Analyzer, Oracle Reports, Oracle Strategic Enterprise Management, Oracle Financials, Oracle Internet Procurement, Oracle Supply Chain, Oracle Call Center, Oracle e-Commerce, Oracle Integration Products & Technologies, Oracle Marketing, Oracle Service,
Oracle is a registered trademark and Designer/2000, Developer/2000, Oracle7, Oracle8, Oracle Application Object Library, Oracle Applications, Oracle Alert, Oracle Financials, Oracle Workflow, SQL*Forms, SQL*Plus, SQL*Report, Oracle Data Browser, Oracle Forms, Oracle General Ledger, Oracle Human Resources, Oracle Manufacturing, Oracle Reports,
the VMware Hybrid Cloud Native VMware management tools extend on-prem services across VMware Hybrid Cloud vRealize adapters allow "first class citizen" status for VMware Cloud on AWS Leverage same in-house VMware tools and processes across VMware Hybrid Cloud Support the cloud agility strategy of the organisation without disruption
Oracle Database using Oracle Real Application Clusters (Oracle RAC) and Oracle Resource Management provided the first consolidation platform optimized for Oracle Database and is the MAA best practice for Oracle Database 11g. Oracle RAC enables multiple Oracle databases to be easily consolidated onto a single Oracle RAC cluster.
This document describes an installation example of Oracle Real Application Clusters (RAC) on the VMware vSphere platform, for Oracle DBAs planning to virtualize Oracle RAC on the VMware platform. . The following architecture diagram depicts the physical architecture of the Oracle RAC deployment environment on VMware vSphere 4.1. Figure 2 .
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