| Oracle® Database Administrator's Reference 10g Release 2 (10.2) for hp OpenVMS Part Number B25416-02 |
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| Oracle® Database Administrator's Reference 10g Release 2 (10.2) for hp OpenVMS Part Number B25416-02 |
|
|
View PDF |
This chapter describes how to configure an Oracle Database 10g installation to optimize its performance. This chapter contains the following sections:
Oracle Database 10g is a highly optimizable software product. Frequent tuning optimizes system performance and prevents bottlenecks. Although this chapter is written from the perspective of single-instance installations, most of the performance tuning tips provided here are also valid when using Oracle RAC.
See Also:
Oracle Real Application Clusters Concepts and Administration and Oracle Database Performance Tuning Guide and ReferencePerformance bottlenecks are often caused by the following factors:
Memory contention occurs when processes require more memory than is available. When this occurs, the system pages and swaps processes between memory and disk.
Disk I/O contention is caused by poor memory management, poor distribution of tablespaces and files across disks, or a combination of both factors.
Although the OpenVMS kernel usually allocates CPU resources effectively, many processes compete for CPU cycles, and this can cause contention. If you installed Oracle Database 10g in a multiprocessor environment, then there may be a different level of contention on each CPU.
Contention is also common for Oracle resources such as locks and latches.
Various tools are provided for gathering statistics, analyzing performance and tuning performance. Automatic Workload Repository takes snapshots of the system every 60 minutes. Active Session History collects samples of active sessions. New Time Model offers a unique way to store statistics and metrics. Automatic Database Diagnostic Monitor is a powerful self-diagnostic engine that analyzes the system, identifies the major problem in the system, and recommends corrective action. These tools include the V$ performance views and the STATSPACK scripts.
A variety of tools are provided for tuning SQL, such as SQL Tuning Advisor and SQL Access Advisor. These tools include the V$ performance views, the EXPLAIN PLAN command, the SQL TRACE facility, the TKPROF facility, the Autotrace report, and the STATSPACK scripts.
Start the memory tuning process by measuring paging and swapping space to determine how much memory is available. After you have determined the memory usage of the system, tune the Oracle buffer cache.
The Oracle buffer manager ensures that the more frequently accessed data is cached longer. If you monitor the buffer manager and tune the buffer cache, then you can have a significant influence on Oracle Database 10g performance. The optimal Oracle Database 10g buffer size for the system depends on the overall system load and the relative priority of Oracle over other applications.
This section contains the following topics:
Try to minimize swapping because it causes significant OpenVMS overhead. To check for swapping, enter the following command:
$ SHOW MEMORY/FILES
If the system is swapping and you must conserve memory, then:
Avoid running unnecessary system daemon processes or application processes.
Decrease the number of database buffers to free some memory.
See Also:
The operating system documentation for more information about the $ SHOW MEMORY command
The OpenVMS INSTALL utility Help for information about installing additional page and swap files
OpenVMS System Manager's Guide for information about managing page and swap files
Paging may not present as serious a problem as swapping, because an entire program does not have to be stored in memory to run. A small number of page-outs may not noticeably affect the performance of the system.
To detect excessive paging, run measurements during periods of fast response or idle time to compare against measurements from periods of slow response.
If the system consistently has excessive page-out activity, then consider the following solutions:
Install more memory.
Move some of the work to another system.
Decrease the number of database buffers to free some memory.
The OpenVMS system reads entire operating system blocks from the disk. If the database block size is smaller than the OpenVMS file system buffer size, then I/O bandwidth is inefficient. If you adjust the Oracle Database block size to be a multiple of the operating system block size, then you can increase performance by up to five percent.
The DB_BLOCK_SIZE initialization parameter sets the database block size across the database. To see the current value of the DB_BLOCK_SIZE parameter, or to create new tablespaces with a different size, enter the SHOW PARAMETER command in SQL*Plus.
Balance I/O evenly across all available disks to reduce disk access time. For smaller databases and databases that do not use RAID, ensure that different data files and tablespaces are distributed across the available disks.
To monitor disk performance, use the $ MONITOR DISK command.
The average value from $ MONITOR DISK/ITEM=QUEUE should not exceed 1.0. If it does or if the MAX value is high, then the system may experience an I/O bottleneck.
Oracle Database is designed to operate with all users and background processes operating at the same priority level. Changing priority levels causes unexpected effects on contention and response times. Oracle Database does not support changing the priority of user and background processes.
For example, if the log writer process (LGWR) gets a low priority, then it is not run frequently enough and LGWR becomes a bottleneck. In contrast, if LGWR has a high priority, then the response time for user processes may be poor.
The System Global Area (SGA) is the Oracle structure that is located in shared memory. It contains static data structures, locks, and data buffers. Sufficient shared memory must be available to each Oracle process to address the entire SGA.
Set the following initialization parameters to control the size of the SGA:
Alternatively, set the SGA_TARGET initialization parameter to enable Oracle to automatically tune the SGA size.
Exercise caution when setting values for these parameters. When values are set too high, too much of the physical memory is devoted to shared memory, resulting in poor performance.
Oracle Database installations configured with Shared Server require a higher setting for the SHARED_POOL_SIZE initialization parameter, or a custom configuration that uses the LARGE_POOL_SIZE initialization parameter. If you installed the database with Oracle Universal Installer, then the value of the SHARED_POOL_SIZE parameter is set automatically by Oracle Database Configuration Assistant. However, if you created a database manually, then increase the value of the SHARED_POOL_SIZE parameter in the parameter file by 1 KB for each concurrent user.
You can determine the SGA size in one of the following ways:
Enter the following SQL*Plus command to display the size of the SGA for a running database:
SQL> SHOW SGA
The result is shown in bytes.
Determine the size of the SGA when you start the database instance. The SGA size is displayed next to the heading Total System Global Area.
Install Oracle image as an OpenVMS resident image to increase the performance of Oracle. To install the ORACLE.EXE image resident, the following changes need to be made to OpenVMS and Oracle.
Note:
Make valid backups of all OpenVMS and Oracle software before any changes are implemented.Oracle recommends you to do initial testing in a non-production environment whenever possible. For queries, contact your local support organization.
The following system changes are recommended for improved Oracle performance:
SYSGEN
Increase the current size of the SYSGEN parameters: GH_RES_CODE, GH_RES_DATA, and GH_RSRVPGCNT. The size of the parameters GH_RES_CODE and GH_RSRVPGCNT need to be increased by 8192, and GH_RES_DATA to its current maximum value of 2048. This increase needs to accommodate the size of the image being installed resident.
Oracle recommends using AUTOGEN and the MODPARAMS.DAT file for making these changes. These values should be changed by making use of the ADD_parameter feature of AUTOGEN.
See Also:
Refer to:hp OpenVMS System Services Reference Manual for more information on SYSGEN and SYSGEN parameters
hp OpenVMS System Manager's Manual, Volume 2: Tuning, Monitoring, and Complex Systems for information about using AUTOGEN to adjust system parameters
Note:
These parameters are not dynamic. You must restart your system for the new values to take effect.You must also install the OpenVMS image SYS$LIBRARY:DSMTSHR.EXE with shared address space before the Oracle image is installed resident. OpenVMS installs this image by default, but not with shared address space.
There are two ways to implement this:
Run the INSTALL REPLACE command as shown:
$ INSTALL RELACE SYS$LIBRARY:DISMNTSHR.EXE/SHARED=ADDRESS
This command would need to be rerun after any system restart and before the Oracle image is installed (which typically occurs during execution of Oracle startup procedures).
Edit the file SYS$MANAGER:VMS$IMAGES_MASTER.DAT, which contains the list of installed images for OpenVMS, and add the /SHARED=ADDRESS qualifier for the DISMNTSHR.EXE entry in the file. This is done before running AUTOGEN to ensure that DISMNTSHR.EXE is installed with the /SHARED=ADDRESS option after a system restart or after running AUTOGEN. You may re-edit this file if it is included in a system patch or upgrade. Caution should be taken when editing this file, so that this is the only change made.
Oracle Command Procedures
Changes to the command procedure which links the ORACLE.EXE image and the procedure which installs that image need to be made for the Oracle image to be installed resident. These changes are shown below:
For ORA_ROOT:[000000]INSORACLE.COM
Old:
INSTALL CREATE ORA_ROOT:[BIN]ORACLE.EXE/OPEN/HEADER_RES/SHARE
New:
INSTALL CREATE ORA_ROOT:[BIN]ORACLE.EXE/OPEN/HEADER_RES/SHARE=ADDRESS/RESIDENT
