Oracle Essentials, 4th Edition

Chapter 12. Oracle and Hardware Architecture

In Chapter 2, we discussed the architecture of the Oracle database, and in Chapter 7, we described how Oracle uses hardware resources. How hardware architectures are chosen and deployed can ultimately determine the specific scalability, performance tuning, management, and reliability options available to you. In fact, systems are sometimes badly configured without consideration of the proper balance of CPUs, memory, and I/O for projected workloads. This can limit options for database tuning if performance later becomes an issue.

Over the years, Oracle has developed new features to address specific platforms and, with Oracle Database 11g, continues this process by building on a commitment to grid computing and information appliance-like configurations. This chapter discusses the various hardware architectures to provide a basis for understanding how Oracle leverages each of these. It covers the following types of hardware systems and how Oracle takes advantage of the features inherent in each of the platforms:

• Uniprocessors (including multicores)

• Symmetric Multiprocessing (SMP) systems

• Clusters

• Non-Uniform Memory Access (NUMA) systems

• Grid computing

We’ll also discuss the use of different disk technologies and how to choose the hardware system that’s most appropriate for your purposes.

System Basics

Any discussion of hardware systems begins with a review of the components that make up a hardware platform and the impact these components have on ...