Kerry Osborne's Oracle Blog

I got a look a new prototype for the next generation Exadata last week while doing some work with a company in Europe. Apparently there is a big push to be environmentally friendly there now and so Oracle is trying to come up with a model that uses less power and is biodegradable. The word on the street is that it won’t be available until after release 2 of the 12c database.

The new model has a few drawbacks though. For one thing, it only lasts a few weeks before you must either replace it or higher some rocket surgeon consultants to come in and tune it. From the early version of the prototype I saw, it does appear to be smaller and more tasty than previous models though.

That’s a picture of the lead designer (JP) showing off the prototype. The code name for the project is “Exanana” by the way. The new model should be available in select supermarkets after lunch (err launch).  Here’s another picture of JP and one of the other designers (Paul) hamming it up for the camera.

I probably should have saved this post for April 1st!

I know no one really likes the term “tuning” these days, but it’s a short catchy word that gets the idea across. So I’ll just stick with it for the title of this post.

Note that this is one of those posts that’s not really supposed to be about how to solve a particular problem. It’s really just a story about a distraction that I ran into and I how I thought about getting around the issue and then ultimately resolving the root cause. Maybe you will find it instructive to see the process.

So I have this script that I use occasionally (paramon.sql) to see what parallel query slaves are doing. Unfortunately the script doesn’t have a header in it, but I’m pretty sure I lifted it from Randolf Geist. I can’t find it on his blog anywhere, but it looks like his style of writing SQL, and PX Query is something he’s written a lot about, so I’m pretty sure that’s where I got it. (Update: see Jonathan Lewis’s comment below attributing the script to Andy Brooker) Anyway, the script has worked great for me in the past but I recently noticed that it was really sluggish on a couple of 11gR2 DB’s running on Exadata. Here’s an example:

-bash-3.2$ !sql
sqlp

SQL*Plus: Release 11.2.0.3.0 Production on Mon Jan 14 12:23:15 2013

Copyright (c) 1982, 2011, Oracle.  All rights reserved.


Connected to:
Oracle Database 11g Enterprise Edition Release 11.2.0.3.0 - 64bit Production
With the Partitioning, Real Application Clusters, Automatic Storage Management, OLAP,
Data Mining and Real Application Testing options


INSTANCE_NAME    STARTUP_TIME               CURRENT_TIME                  DAYS    SECONDS
---------------- -------------------------- -------------------------- ------- ----------
dbm1             09-JAN-2013 03:25          14-JAN-2013 12:23             5.37     464246

SYS@dbm1> set SQLPROMPT "11.2.0.3> "
11.2.0.3>
11.2.0.3> @paramon
Enter value for status: 

 Node Name Status       Pid   Sid Parent OSUSER                         Schema     CHILD_WAIT                     PARENT_WAIT
----- ---- ---------- ----- ----- ------ ------------------------------ ---------- ------------------------------ ------------------------------
      P000 AVAILABLE     35
      P001 AVAILABLE     36
      P002 AVAILABLE     37
      P003 AVAILABLE     38
      P004 AVAILABLE     39
      P005 AVAILABLE     40
      P006 AVAILABLE     41
      P007 AVAILABLE     42
      P008 AVAILABLE     43
      P009 AVAILABLE     44
      P010 AVAILABLE     45
      P011 AVAILABLE     46
      P012 AVAILABLE     47
      P013 AVAILABLE     48
      P014 AVAILABLE     49
      P015 AVAILABLE     50
      P016 AVAILABLE     51
      P017 AVAILABLE     52
      P018 AVAILABLE     53
      P019 AVAILABLE     54
      P020 AVAILABLE     55
      P021 AVAILABLE     56
      P022 AVAILABLE     57
      P023 AVAILABLE     58
      P024 AVAILABLE     59
      P025 AVAILABLE     60
      P026 AVAILABLE     61
      P027 AVAILABLE     62
      P028 AVAILABLE     63
      P029 AVAILABLE     64
      P030 AVAILABLE     65
      P031 AVAILABLE     66


32 rows selected.

Elapsed: 00:00:23.11

So on this 11g DB it took 23 seconds to run the query. On one of my 10g DB’s though the performance was stellar.

Continue reading ‘Tuning paramon.sql’ »

Just a quick note to let you know that I updated the presentations section of my blog. Most of the talks I’ve done over the last 3 years, including Hotsos Symposium, RMOUG Training Days, Oracle Open World, UKOUG Conference and Enkitec Extreme Exadata Expo (E4) are now on the site.

Just a quick note to point out that the official white paper version of the TCO study I talked about in a previous post (Exadata vs. IBM P-Series) is now available on the Oracle web site here:

Cost Comparison – Oracle Exadata Database Machine vs. IBM Power Systems

The most interesting part of the study (in my opinion) is the quotes from the participants that are using Exadata. These quotes provide some insight into how people feel about the platform after having systems in production for a while (note that all the interviews were done prior to the release of the X3-2). I should also point out that these customers are not typical Oracle reference customers. They were interviewed by a third party and promised anonymity as part of the study.

Here’s a link to a video of Mogens Norgaard discussing the upcoming OakTable World conference (click on the picture of Mogens below). Note that the name of the conference has been changed from Oracle Closed World to OakTable World.

Fellow Enkitecies Karl Arao and Tanel Poder will both be presenting at the event along with a bunch of other well known OakTable members. I may even do a 10-15 minute TED style talk at lunch time on Monday. Hope to see you there.