I’ve blogged about
SAP on HP-UX before, which includes a load of notes and whitepapers about Oracle on HP-UX.
This blog post is about Oracle storage on NetApp.
Here’s a NetApp whitepaper specifically for Oracle on HP-UX, when using NFS mounted partitions from a NetApp device.
You should pay particular attention to ensuring that you have the correct OS patches applied, plus the kernel settings related to NFS should be set. You should also note the section on direct I/O.
This is the HP whitepaper for NFS tuneables but it’s been moved into the new HP site. It looks like it’s possible to get a slightly older version for HP-UX 11iv2 from ManualShark.org here.
I’m currently seeing average Oracle sequential read times of about 5-8ms running over a single gigabit ethernet card.
If at all possible ensure that you test the new architecture before hand (TEST should be representative of PRD!).
Make sure you identify and reduce Oracle full tablescans if possible. Basically reduce I/O as much as possible.
Be prepared to bump up the buffer cache a little if you have the RAM (or the slots for the RAM).
Ensure that your Oracle partitions are seperate partitions and not shared with any other apps, so that you can change the mount point options specifically for Oracle.
Set the Oracle partitions file system block sizes according to Oracle/HP-UX best practice (again, see my other SAP on HP-UX post for more on this).
Most importantly, have your DB tuning team on standby, get those AWR snapshots running more frequently and make use of the ASH reports specifically for tuning SQL statements.
