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BP 2000 Oracle On Nutanix

The document outlines best practices for deploying Oracle Database on the Nutanix platform, emphasizing simplicity, performance, and scalability. It covers hardware recommendations, Nutanix configuration, Oracle guest VM settings, and disaster recovery strategies to optimize Oracle Database management. The Nutanix Database Service (NDB) is highlighted for its automation capabilities, streamlining database provisioning and maintenance across hybrid environments.

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0% found this document useful (0 votes)
25 views28 pages

BP 2000 Oracle On Nutanix

The document outlines best practices for deploying Oracle Database on the Nutanix platform, emphasizing simplicity, performance, and scalability. It covers hardware recommendations, Nutanix configuration, Oracle guest VM settings, and disaster recovery strategies to optimize Oracle Database management. The Nutanix Database Service (NDB) is highlighted for its automation capabilities, streamlining database provisioning and maintenance across hybrid environments.

Uploaded by

Ange KAKOU
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
You are on page 1/ 28

v5.

9 | May 2024 | BP-2000

SOLUTIONS DOCUMENT

Oracle on Nutanix Best


Practices
Legal
© 2024 Nutanix, Inc. All rights reserved. Nutanix, the Enterprise Cloud Platform, the
Nutanix logo and the other Nutanix products, features, and/or programs mentioned
herein are registered trademarks or trademarks of Nutanix, Inc. in the United States
and other countries. All other brand and product names mentioned herein are for
identification purposes only and are the property of their respective holder(s), and
Nutanix may not be associated with, or sponsored or endorsed by such holder(s). This
document is provided for informational purposes only and is presented "as is" with no
warranties of any kind, whether implied, statutory or otherwise.
Nutanix, Inc.
1740 Technology Drive, Suite 150
San Jose, CA 95110
Oracle on Nutanix Best Practices

Contents

1. Executive Summary................................................................................. 5

2. Nutanix Database Service....................................................................... 8

3. Oracle on Nutanix.................................................................................... 9

4. Hardware Best Practices.......................................................................11


Nutanix Node Type .......................................................................................................................... 11
Processor ..........................................................................................................................................11
Memory.............................................................................................................................................. 12
Storage.............................................................................................................................................. 12
Networking......................................................................................................................................... 12

5. Nutanix Configuration........................................................................... 13
Controller VM Settings...................................................................................................................... 13
Cluster Resilience ............................................................................................................................ 13
Storage Container Configuration...................................................................................................... 14

6. Oracle Guest VM Configuration........................................................... 15


Database Settings for Oracle Single Instance and Real Application Clusters..................................16
Oracle Automatic Storage Management Settings............................................................................ 16
vDisk Configuration........................................................................................................................... 19
ESXi Settings.................................................................................................................................... 20
Guest VM Affinity and High Availability Admission Control.............................................................. 20
In-Guest Configuration Specifications...............................................................................................21
Volume Management for Oracle vDisks........................................................................................... 22

7. Disaster Recovery and Backup............................................................ 24


Nutanix Replication........................................................................................................................... 24
Oracle Replication............................................................................................................................. 24
Choosing a Replication Technology..................................................................................................24
Backup............................................................................................................................................... 25
8. Database Maintenance.......................................................................... 26
Database Version Upgrade...............................................................................................................26

9. Conclusion.............................................................................................. 27

About Nutanix.............................................................................................28
Oracle on Nutanix Best Practices

1. Executive Summary
Nutanix provides a complete datacenter infrastructure solution for your production and
development Oracle Database environments, eliminating the complexity of traditional IT
infrastructure. Nutanix delivers predictable performance, linear scalability, and web-scale
cost efficiency for your transactional and analytical Oracle Database environments. With
powerful self-healing, data protection, and disaster recovery capabilities, Nutanix keeps
your applications running and your critical data protected on VMware vSphere or Nutanix
AHV. As a member of the Oracle PartnerNetwork (OPN) program, Nutanix is committed
to your success.
Nutanix reduces operational costs by simplifying daily database management tasks
with Nutanix Database Service (NDB). NDB streamlines and simplifies Oracle Database
administration, helping you drive efficiency, agility, cost-effectiveness, and scalability.
With one-click provisioning, patching, and cloning, NDB provides simplicity, security, and
standardization on-premises and across clouds.
This document provides design, configuration, and optimization guidelines for a single
instance of Oracle Database and Oracle Real Application Clusters (RAC) running on
Nutanix. In this document, we cover the following topics:
• Overview of Nutanix AOS and Nutanix Database Service
• Linux and Windows OS best practices for Oracle on Nutanix
• Nutanix storage configuration
• In-guest configuration
Readers should be familiar with the following concepts:
• Oracle Database administration
• Nutanix cluster administration (hypervisor, networking, storage)
• Linux and Windows OS (guest OS that Oracle Database runs on)
Table: Document Version History

© 2024 Nutanix, Inc. All rights reserved | 5


Oracle on Nutanix Best Practices

Version Number Published Notes


1.0 September 2014 Original publication.
2.0 February 2017 Updated with current Nutanix
platform information.
2.1 May 2017 Updated provisioning
recommendations and noted
VMware ESXi 6.0.0 support for
adding disks online in Oracle
RAC environments.
2.2 January 2018 Updated the platform overview
and the Nutanix Platform
Guidance section.
3.0 November 2018 Updated product information
and the Best Practices section.
3.1 December 2018 Updated the Best Practices
section.
3.2 March 2019 Added the Nutanix Era
section and updated the OLTP
Scenario Detail and OLAP
Scenario Detail tables.
4.0 June 2019 Major updates throughout.
4.1 April 2020 Updated the Nutanix
Enterprise Cloud Overview
section and added iSCSI
configuration settings.
4.2 September 2020 Updated the Nutanix overview
and ASM Settings sections.
5.0 April 2021 Consolidated Oracle guides
and updated content.
5.1 August 2021 Minor updates to the
Oracle Automatic Storage
Management (ASM) Settings
and vDisk Configuration
sections.

© 2024 Nutanix, Inc. All rights reserved | 6


Oracle on Nutanix Best Practices

Version Number Published Notes


5.2 November 2021 Updated the Volume
Management for Oracle vDisks
section.
5.3 March 2022 Minor update to the Volume
Management for Oracle vDisks
section.
5.4 August 2022 Updated Oracle Guest VM
Configuration section and
added other minor updates
throughout.
5.5 February 2023 Minor updates to the vDisk
Configuration and Volume
Management for Oracle vDisks
sections.
5.6 June 2023 Updated the Nutanix Database
Service section.
5.7 July 2023 Updated the Nutanix
Replication section.
5.8 December 2023 Added AHV memory
overcommitment guidance
to the Oracle Guest VM
Configuration section.
5.9 May 2024 Updated the In-Guest
Configuration Specifications
section.

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Oracle on Nutanix Best Practices

2. Nutanix Database Service


Nutanix Database Service (NDB) simplifies database management across hybrid
multicloud environments for database engines like PostgreSQL, MySQL, Microsoft
SQL Server, and Oracle Database, with powerful automation for provisioning, scaling,
patching, protecting, and cloning database instances. NDB helps you deliver database
as a service (DBaaS) and an easy-to-use self-service database experience on-premises
and in the public cloud to developers for both new and existing databases.
This document covers the deployment best practices for databases running on the
Nutanix Cloud Platform. For more recommendations, implementation details, and storage
configurations specific to deploying databases with NDB, see the Nutanix Database
Service Administration Guide and the Nutanix Validated Design for Databases.
NDB applies the best practices described in this document for Oracle deployments.

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Oracle on Nutanix Best Practices

3. Oracle on Nutanix
Digital transformation demands that IT services become more agile, shorten application
deployment time, and increase scalability. Designed to run any application, Nutanix
software converges storage and compute, eliminating the complexity of separate
standalone storage solutions. Nutanix supports VMware vSphere, Microsoft Hyper-V, and
Nutanix AHV, allowing you to choose the right hypervisor for your needs.
Using the advanced storage functionality of Nutanix Volumes, your workloads benefit
from all the foundational Nutanix features, such as backup and recovery, disaster
recovery, snapshots, clones, and high performance.
Running Oracle on Nutanix offers several advantages:
Simplicity
You can deploy your database in minutes with NDB, which means a shorter time to
production. NDB also simplifies management with a single management pane and
one-click life cycle management that includes database patching. With NDB, you
don't have to worry about storage area network (SAN) management tasks such as
multipathing, zoning, or masking.
Fault-tolerant platform
Nutanix uses high availability and data redundancy to withstand software and
hardware failures, which means that your Oracle Database deployment stays
running even if the underlying hardware has issues.
Enterprise-grade performance
Nutanix provides I/O latency of less than a millisecond and predictable
performance while supporting a wide range of transactional and analytical
database workloads, including Oracle Automatic Storage Management (ASM) and
Oracle RAC.
Scalability
With the Nutanix solution, you can start small and scale performance and capacity
nondisruptively as your needs grow.

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Oracle on Nutanix Best Practices

Enterprise-grade disaster recovery


In addition to Oracle's native data protection capabilities, Nutanix offers integrated
snapshots, remote replication, and metro-level availability to protect the data.

© 2024 Nutanix, Inc. All rights reserved | 10


Oracle on Nutanix Best Practices

4. Hardware Best Practices


Select hardware that meets your compute, storage, and networking requirements.

Nutanix Node Type


The Nutanix Cloud Platform OS runs on commodity servers from a wide variety of
hardware vendors, and you can use the Acropolis Operating System (AOS) in two
different modes: fully hyperconverged (HCI) or storage only. The following table
describes the node types.
Table: Operating Modes of a Nutanix Node
Node Type Guest VMs Storage Purpose
HCI Yes Yes General purpose
nodes
Storage only No Yes Add storage to a
cluster

HCI nodes host storage services and guest VMs running Oracle. Storage-only nodes are
nonschedulable, so they only host storage services (no guest VMs), which can be useful
from an Oracle licensing perspective. We designed storage-only nodes to expand the
storage capacity of an existing Nutanix cluster.

Processor
Select a processor with a high clock speed and 12 or more cores per socket on dual-
socket servers. We recommend that you select at least a 2.9 GHz CPU (with SPEC 55
or greater per core on the SPEC CPU 2017 benchmark) for production Oracle Database
instances.

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Oracle on Nutanix Best Practices

Memory
Use a balanced memory configuration. A balanced memory configuration delivers the
highest bandwidth between the processor and memory and the best performance for
CPU-intensive applications. The number of DIMMs required for balanced memory varies
by model.

Storage
Use all-flash storage for Oracle Database instances. You can reduce long-term storage
costs for backups and archived data by using Nutanix Objects or Nutanix Files on a
separate hybrid storage cluster for cost efficiency.

Networking
In a cloud architecture, Ethernet handles the data previously handled by a SAN. High-
performance networking is the key to good Oracle Database performance on Nutanix.
Networking best practices include the following:
• Use redundant 25 GbE or faster uplinks from each Nutanix node.
• Enable LACP in an active-active configuration.
• Connect all the nodes in a Nutanix cluster to the same pair of switches.
• Use a dedicated VLAN for Oracle RAC Cache Fusion (heartbeat) networks on each
Nutanix node.
For more information on networking, see the following documents:
• Physical Networking
• Nutanix AHV Networking
• VMware vSphere Networking

© 2024 Nutanix, Inc. All rights reserved | 12


Oracle on Nutanix Best Practices

5. Nutanix Configuration
This section provides recommendations for configuring the Controller VM (CVM), cluster
resilience, and storage containers for Oracle deployments.

Controller VM Settings
Nutanix Foundation provisions CVMs during the Nutanix cluster installation process. The
number of vCPUs allocated to a CVM is based on the number of cores per socket in the
server hardware.
Table: Recommended CVM vCPU and Memory Settings
Parameter Default Heavy Oracle Workload
vCPU 12 16
Memory 32 GB 64 GB

All vCPUs for a CVM must fit in a single socket; if you have more than 12 cores per
socket, you can increase the number of vCPUs assigned to the CVM. For heavy I/O
workloads, increase the CVM memory to 64 GB to provide metadata caching space and
reduce latency.

Cluster Resilience
Nutanix AOS supports two levels of fault tolerance (FT). Clusters with three or four nodes
are FT1, and you can configure clusters with five or more nodes as FT1 or FT2. To
achieve application fault tolerance, ensure that the cluster has enough free memory and
vCPU capacity available for critical workloads to fail over to another node. With AHV, you
achieve application fault tolerance by enabling high-availability reservations. For more
information, see the VM High Availability in Acropolis section of the Prism Element Web
Console Guide. Replication factor 2 or 3 is defined per storage container.
Table: Minimum Number of Nodes Required for FT1 and FT2

© 2024 Nutanix, Inc. All rights reserved | 13


Oracle on Nutanix Best Practices

Resiliency Level Min. Cluster Nodes Node Failure Redundancy


FT1 3 n–1
FT2 5 n–2

* n = total number of nodes in cluster

Storage Container Configuration


Create a storage container with replication factor 2 (FT1) or 3 (FT2 clusters only) with
inline compression enabled. When you configure the file system, use an allocation size of
1 MiB on Linux and 64 KiB or larger on Windows for the best performance. The following
table details the recommended Nutanix storage configuration.
Table: Recommended Storage Container Configuration
Nutanix Feature Property Comments
Container Create one Standard practice for Oracle
VM and Oracle data
Container compression Enable, delay 0 Standard practice for space
savings
Container erasure coding Disable Not recommended
Container deduplication Disable Not recommended

© 2024 Nutanix, Inc. All rights reserved | 14


Oracle on Nutanix Best Practices

6. Oracle Guest VM Configuration


When you deploy an Oracle Database server VM on Nutanix, start with the following
guidelines:
• Don't overcommit CPUs on the node running the database server VM.
• On Nutanix AHV, don't overcommit memory for Oracle Database VMs.
• On ESXi, lock Oracle Database VM memory at a minimum reserve sufficient to cover
both the system global area (SGA) HugePages and the program global area (PGA).
• Don't set the AOS parameter num_vnuma_nodes (available in the Acropolis
command-line interface).
• Configure HugePages to accommodate the combined SGAs of all databases running
on the VM.
NDB automatically provisions Oracle Database VMs according to these best practice
guidelines. NDB considers compute, storage, networking, and Oracle Database
parameters and offers a variety of Oracle Database and OS versions.
Most Oracle Database server VMs use multiple network interfaces. On ESXi, we
recommend that you use a VMXNET3 (VMXNET Generation 3), which is a virtual
network adapter designed to deliver high performance in VMs running on vSphere. On
AHV, the best adapter type is automatically selected when you add a NIC.
Table: Common Network Setup for Oracle
vNIC Purpose
eth0 guest-VM VLAN
eth1 Oracle RAC heartbeat and Cache Fusion
eth2 iSCSI (ESXi only)
eth3 SCAN IPs and SCAN Virtual IP

© 2024 Nutanix, Inc. All rights reserved | 15


Oracle on Nutanix Best Practices

Database Settings for Oracle Single Instance and Real Application


Clusters
The following table shows the recommended settings for single-instance Oracle
Database and Oracle RAC configurations.
Table: Recommended Oracle Instance Parameters
Setting Value Purpose
filesystemio_options setall This parameter allows direct I/
O and async I/O when using
a file system such as ext4
or XFS. It is not required
when using Oracle Automatic
Storage Management (ASM).
parallel_threads_per_cpu 1 Degree of parallelism. On
Nutanix, it is 1 per vCPU.

Oracle Automatic Storage Management Settings


Oracle Automatic Storage Management (ASM) is a volume manager and file system for
Oracle Database files that supports single-instance Oracle Database and Oracle RAC
configurations on Linux and Windows. Oracle ASM is Oracle's recommended storage
management solution and provides an alternative to conventional volume managers, file
systems, and raw devices. Oracle ASM uses disk groups to store data files; an Oracle
ASM disk group is a collection of disks that Oracle ASM manages as a unit. Within a
disk group, Oracle ASM exposes a file system interface for Oracle Database files. The
content of files stored in a disk group is evenly distributed to eliminate hot spots and
provide uniform performance (comparable to the performance of raw devices) across the
disks.
Nutanix supports Oracle ASM disks on Linux and Windows. On Linux, you can use udev
devices, ASMLib devices, or ASMFD (ASM Filter Driver) devices.
• Udev (userspace /dev) is a device manager for the Linux kernel. Udev primarily
manages device nodes in the /dev directory and handles all user space events raised
when you add hardware to or remove hardware from the system.

© 2024 Nutanix, Inc. All rights reserved | 16


Oracle on Nutanix Best Practices

• ASMLib simplifies the configuration and management of block disk devices by


eliminating the need to rebind block disk devices used with Oracle ASM each time the
system restarts. With Oracle ASMLib, you define the range of disks you want to make
available as Oracle ASM disks. Oracle ASMLib maintains permissions and disk labels
that are persistent on the storage device so that the label is available even after an
operating system upgrade.
Note: ASMLib is available with Oracle versions 11g and newer.

• ASMFD is a kernel module that resides in the I/O path of the Oracle ASM disks.
Oracle ASMFD simplifies the configuration and management of disk devices by
eliminating the need to rebind disk devices used with Oracle ASM each time you
restart the system. The ASMFD feature rejects write I/O requests that aren't issued
by Oracle software. This filter ensures that users with administrative privileges can't
inadvertently overwrite Oracle ASM disks, which prevents corruption in those disks
and files in the disk groups.
Nutanix performance testing shows that ASMFD and udev yield similar results, so you
can deploy whichever device you're most comfortable with on your Nutanix cluster.
For more information on how to deploy Oracle ASM, see Introducing Oracle Automatic
Storage Management.
Note: ASMLib wasn't part of this performance study.

The following table shows the recommended settings for all ASM disk groups. For
more information on setting these parameters, see the Automatic Storage Management
Administrator's Guide for your version of Oracle.
Table: Recommended Settings for Oracle ASM Disk Groups
Settings Values
ASM Allocation Unit (AU) size (AU_SIZE) 1 MB
ASM OCR disk group redundancy Normal/High
ASM DATA disk group redundancy External
ASM FRA disk group redundancy External

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Oracle on Nutanix Best Practices

Configure Linux for ASM on Nutanix


When a node leaves the cluster because of a reboot or network issue, the disk
timeout 200 isn't considered. Instead, the Oracle RAC uses misscount and reboottime
parameters (misscount – reboottime) to calculate short disk timeout (SDTO).
In this example, the misscount is 30 and reboottime is 3, so the disk timeout is 27
seconds. When a Nutanix node restarts, it can take more than 27 seconds to rehost
the vDisk, which can cause the Oracle RAC to miss the disk heartbeat. To configure an
Oracle VM on Nutanix to tolerate this time, you must increase the SCSI timeout in the
Oracle VM and increase the Oracle CSS misscount parameter.

Increase SCSI Timeout on the Oracle Server VM


Complete the following steps to increase the Oracle VM's SCSI timeout:
1. Make sure the SCSI timeout is 60 seconds for the ASM disk devices:
# cat /sys/block/<device-name>/device/timeout
2. If the timeout isn't at least 60 seconds, add the following line to /etc/udev/rules.d/50-
udev.rules:
ACTION=="add", SUBSYSTEMS=="scsi", ATTRS{vendor}=="NUTANIX ",
ATTRS{model}=="VDISK", RUN+="/bin/sh -c 'echo 60 >/sys$DEVPATH/device/
timeout'"

When you configure the timeout using udev rules, you make it persistent across
restarts.

Configure Oracle RAC misscount Parameter


Complete the following steps to configure the Oracle RAC misscount parameter:
1. Check the current settings for misscount and reboottime:
# $CRS_HOME/bin/crsctl get css misscount
-> Successful get misscount 30 for Cluster Synchronization Services.

# $CRS_HOME/bin/crsctl get css reboottime


-> Successful get reboottime 3 for Cluster Synchronization Services.

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Oracle on Nutanix Best Practices

2. If required, update the CSS misscount setting:


a. Shut down Oracle Clusterware or Grid Infrastructure except one node.
b. Sign in as the root user on the active node.
c. Set the CSS misscount interval to 60 seconds:
# $CRS_HOME/bin/crsctl set css misscount 60
d. Restart Oracle Clusterware or Grid Infrastructure.
e. Verify that you updated the setting:
# $CRS_HOME/bin/crsctl get css misscount
-> Successful get misscount 60 for Cluster Synchronization Services.

For more information on setting the misscount parameter, see the Oracle Clusterware
Administration and Deployment Guide.

vDisk Configuration
To achieve the best I/O performance when you run Oracle on Nutanix, follow these
recommendations:
• Use Oracle ASM or an OS volume manager to stripe performance-critical file systems
across four or more vDisks.
• On ESXi, place the vDisks in each stripe across multiple PVSCSI controllers.
• On ESXi, use a VMXNET3 adapter for iSCSI traffic and ensure that the iSCSI
interface is on the same subnet as the CVM.
• When using Volume Groups on AHV, create separate groups for database files and
redo logs, archive logs, backup files, and Oracle Cluster Ready Services (CRS) disks.
Table: Number of vDisks for Each Data Type
Number of vDisks Purpose
3 Boot, grid home, Oracle home
4–8 Database files and redo log files
4 Database archive log files
4 Database RMAN backup files
3 Oracle CRS voting disks, RAC only

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Oracle on Nutanix Best Practices

Note: iSCSI vDisks are automatically load-balanced across the Nutanix cluster.

ESXi Settings
The following table lists our recommended settings for Oracle Database VMs on ESXi.
Table: Recommended Settings for Oracle Database VMs on ESXi
Parameter Configuration
Network adapter VMXNET3
Storage adapter Minimum of 3 PVSCSI (OS + DB + redo), 4 for
larger or high-performance databases
OS and app disks Thin-provisioned, disk mode = dependent
Database (ASM) disks for standalone Thin-provisioned, disk mode = independent
persistent
Database (ASM) disks for RAC Thick-provisioned, eager-zeroed, disk mode
= independent persistent (VMware KB
1034165)
VMware tools Latest installed
VM memory Locked (preferred) or Memory Reservation
enabled
Advanced VM config: Disk.ENABLEUUID In the VMX file, set disk.EnableUUID=True for
the VM (VMware KB 52815)
Advanced VM config: Recommended value: disabled
ethernetX.coalescingScheme

Guest VM Affinity and High Availability Admission Control


Use AHV or ESXi affinity rules to control the placement of Oracle Database server VMs.
You can use affinity and antiaffinity rules to:
• Control the number of CPU cores available to Oracle.
• Keep the Oracle Database VM on the correct hardware (in a cluster with mixed
nodes).

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Oracle on Nutanix Best Practices

• Keep production VMs on separate physical hosts for the best performance.
• Make sure that two RAC VMs don't end up on the same physical host.
• Control VM placement to ensure performance under regular conditions and during a
high-availability event.
On ESXi, use admission control to ensure that sufficient resources are available to
provide failover protection. For more information, see vSphere HA Admission Control
Settings for Nutanix Environment.
Note: Use a percentage value for high availability admission control. When you use VMware vSphere,
obtain this percentage value by dividing 1 by the number of hosts per cluster.

In-Guest Configuration Specifications


Nutanix supports all Oracle-supported Linux kernels and Windows OS. Set Linux kernel
parameters according to Oracle documentation.
Table: In-Guest Nutanix-Specific Oracle Best Practices for Linux
Hypervisor Single Instance (SI) Configuration How to Set
and RAC
AHV, ESXi SI and RAC Enable blk_mq for See Linux on
supported Linux Nutanix AHV.
kernels.
AHV, ESXI SI and RAC Set See Linux on
max_sectors_kb=1024. Nutanix AHV.
AHV, ESXi RAC only Set CSS misscount. See Configure Linux
for ASM on Nutanix
section.
AHV, ESXi RAC only Set SCSI disk timeout See Configure Linux
to 60 sec via udev for ASM on Nutanix
rule. section.
ESXi SI and RAC If you use ASMlib
and iSCSI (volume
group), change iSCSI
discovery.

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Oracle on Nutanix Best Practices

Hypervisor Single Instance (SI) Configuration How to Set


and RAC
ESXi + PVSCSI SI and RAC Workloads with See VMware KB
intensive I/O article 2053145.
requirements might
require a greater
queue depth with the
PVSCSI adapter. For
more information on
how to increase the
PVSCSI device queue
depth, see VMware
KB article 2053145.
Test and validate
the solution before
changing the current
configuration.
AHV, ESXI RAC only On a Linux-based
Oracle VM, add
NOZEROCONF=yes
to the /etc/sysconfig/
network file.
ESXi RAC only This configuration
only applies to in-
guest iSCSI. If you
enable DM-multipath
on Linux and use
multipath devices
to configure Oracle
data disks, populate
multipath.conf with
"fast_io_fail_tmo 120".

Volume Management for Oracle vDisks


For the best I/O performance, we recommend that you use Oracle ASM. If you use more
than one file system, stripe each database file system over multiple vDisks. On Linux, we
recommend the following:

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Oracle on Nutanix Best Practices

• Use the Logical Volume Manager (LVM) to stripe the database file systems.
• Use an LVM-striped volume with an ext4 or XFS file system.
• Configure the physical extent size to 1,024 KB.

© 2024 Nutanix, Inc. All rights reserved | 23


Oracle on Nutanix Best Practices

7. Disaster Recovery and Backup


Nutanix provides a choice of replication methods: Use Oracle Database replication or
Nutanix storage replication, depending on your requirements.

Nutanix Replication
Nutanix offers multiple types of data replication:
• Metro Availability: synchronous replication (not supported for Volume Groups)
• Asynchronous replication: recovery point objective (RPO) of 60 minutes or more
• NearSync: RPO between 1 and 15 minutes
Metro Availability requires a maximum transmission latency of 5 ms. If the latency is
more than 5 ms, we recommend that you use asynchronous or NearSync replication. You
can add a third-site witness VM to automate Metro Availability failover.
For complete details on the available recovery point and recovery time objectives, see
the Nutanix Disaster Recovery Guide.

Oracle Replication
You can use Oracle replication options such as Data Guard and GoldenGate to replicate
Oracle databases on Nutanix.

Choosing a Replication Technology


The best replication technology to use depends on your requirements, but database
replication tools usually provide the fastest failover and most efficient replication
because they have highly granular insight into database changes. Nutanix asynchronous
replication might work well if you have network latency or batch or development
databases that don't have replication capabilities. You can use any of the following
technologies to help protect your Oracle databases.

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Oracle on Nutanix Best Practices

Backup
The best backup method depends on the size of the database, the data change rate,
and whether you can use an online or an offline backup. With NDB, you can choose
to use NDB's backup software or third-party backup software. Nutanix supports using
RMAN and third-party backup software including HYCU, Veeam, Commvault, and Veritas
to back up Oracle databases.
NDB provides an excellent method for managing application-consistent backups of
multiterabyte Oracle databases. NDB backs up mission-critical databases using a
combination of application-consistent snapshots and archive logs and provides an
excellent workflow for this process. For more information, see the Nutanix Database
Service Administration Guide.

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Oracle on Nutanix Best Practices

8. Database Maintenance
Oracle recommends that you apply security patches every quarter or whenever a
critical patch is available. NDB automates Oracle Patch Set Updates (PSU), which
uses automated workflows to reduce the time and effort required to patch multiple
Oracle Database servers with minimal downtime. For more information, see the Nutanix
Database Service Administration Guide.

Database Version Upgrade


NDB enables you to seamlessly perform out-of-place Oracle Database upgrades with
minimal or no downtime. This feature helps keep your Oracle server maintenance up to
date. For more information, see the Nutanix Database Service Administration Guide.

© 2024 Nutanix, Inc. All rights reserved | 26


Oracle on Nutanix Best Practices

9. Conclusion
Nutanix web-scale engineering streamlines Oracle Database deployments with high-
performance, low-latency storage, linear scalability, high availability, multicloud support,
and simplified management through NDB. Nutanix takes care of the underlying compute
and storage architecture so that you can focus on higher-value tasks, such as application
enhancements accelerating time to production.
Visit the Nutanix Community to engage with Nutanix experts and learn more about the
benefits of the Nutanix Cloud Platform for Oracle Database, Nutanix Database Service
for Oracle, and other business-critical applications. Contact Nutanix at [email protected]
to set up your own customized briefing that includes sizing, TCO analysis, data
protection, and disaster recovery design.

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Oracle on Nutanix Best Practices

About Nutanix
Nutanix offers a single platform to run all your apps and data across multiple clouds
while simplifying operations and reducing complexity. Trusted by companies worldwide,
Nutanix powers hybrid multicloud environments efficiently and cost effectively. This
enables companies to focus on successful business outcomes and new innovations.
Learn more at Nutanix.com.

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