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DBMS_RESOURCE_MANAGER.CALIBRATE_IO 11g R2
05.30.2010 Posted in 11g R1, 11g R2, Feature, Performance, RDBMS
This utility was introduced in Oracle 11.1, it is an excellent tool to understand if your actual workload is overloading your
disks or file systems. I/O is very important in an Oracle database so I really recommend to all DBAs the use of this great
utility to know the actual capacity of your hardware. Below you will find an example that could be used in both versions
11.1 and 11.2.
Basic Knowledge
from Oracle documentation:
The DBA can assess the I/O capability of the databases storage system by using the PL/SQL function
DBMS_RESOURCE_MANAGER.CALIBRATE_IO(). This routine issues a very I/O intensive read-only workload to the
databases files to assess the maximum IOPS (I/O requests per second) and MBPS (megabytes of I/O per second) that can
be sustained. This data can be reexamined at any time using the DBA table, DBA_RSRC_IO_CALIBRATE, that stores I/O
calibration results. The calibration should be performed when the database is idle and during off-peak hours to minimize
the heavy I/O workload from interfering with the regular workload and vice versa. I/O calibration can be used to
understand the performance of the storage subsystem and figure out whether I/O performance problems stem from the
database or the storage subsystem. Unlike various external I/O calibration tools, this tool uses the Oracle code stack and
issues I/O randomly rather than sequentially. The results, therefore, much more closely match the actual database
performance
How it works ?
Basically calling to the CALIBRATE_IO procedure in the DBMS_RESOURCE_MANAGER package. It drives some I/O to
the database files to test the throughput.
Why use this and not other vendor tool?
Because this tool uses Oracle database software libraries to drive the I/O; not some generic I/O generator. This capability is
very important, remember, you are testing the I/O for an Oracle database..
Calibrating (on 11g R2)
First of all, you need to have asynch I/O capability otherwise this will fail.
Step 1
SQL> show parameters options
filesystemio_options string ASYNCH
filesystemio_options = asynch
SQL> show parameters disk
disk_asynch_io = true
filesystemio_options = asynch
Step 2
Jos Valerio DBMS_RESOURCE_MANAGER.CALIBRATE_IO 1... http://jose-valerio.com.ar/blog/?p=682
1 of 4 08.07.2010 14:25
Before proceed you will need to eval if your tablespaces support ASYNC_IO.
SELECT name, asynch_io
FROM v$datafile f,v$iostat_file i
WHERE f.file# = i.file_no
AND filetype_name = Data File
/
SQL> /
/oracle/app/oracle/oradata/R2/system01.dbf ASYNC_ON
/oracle/app/oracle/oradata/R2/sysaux01.dbf ASYNC_ON
/oracle/app/oracle/oradata/R2/undotbs01.dbf ASYNC_ON
/oracle/app/oracle/oradata/R2/users01.dbf ASYNC_ON
/oracle/app/oracle/oradata/R2/timesten_01.dbf ASYNC_ON
/oracle/app/oracle/oradata/R2/goldengate.dbf ASYNC_ON
/oracle/app/oracle/oradata/R2/FLOW_1044720297807647.dbf ASYNC_ON
/oracle/app/oracle/oradata/R2/FLOW_1259909767198597.dbf ASYNC_ON
Even if the above query returns ASYNC_ON and you may not be able to run the calibrate process probably you will need to
check kernel settings to verify how many async slots have the system configured and how many are in use, to do this I did:
$ cat /proc/sys/fs/aio-max-nr -> To find out the maximum available async I/O slots
65536
$ cat /proc/sys/fs/aio-nr -> To find out how many are being used
32768
Step 3
Now you are ready to start the calibration process. CALIBRATE_IO accepts two parameters:
NUM_PHYSICAL_DISKS is the number of physical disks you have. Remember: this is the number for disks, not
LUNs.
MAX_LATENCY is the maximum latency for the disk access (in milliseconds)
vi calibrate_io.sql, add the following:
dbms_resource_manager.calibrate_io(
num_physical_disks IN PLS_INTEGER DEFAULT 1,
max_latency IN PLS_INTEGER DEFAULT 20,
max_iops OUT PLS_INTEGER,
max_mbps OUT PLS_INTEGER,
actual_latency OUT PLS_INTEGER);
SET SERVEROUTPUT ON
DECLARE
lat INTEGER;
iops INTEGER;
mbps INTEGER;
BEGIN
DBMS_RESOURCE_MANAGER.CALIBRATE_IO (, , iops, mbps, lat);
DBMS_RESOURCE_MANAGER.CALIBRATE_IO (1, 10, iops, mbps, lat); (1 Disk, 20 ms max latency)
DBMS_OUTPUT.PUT_LINE (max_iops = || iops);
DBMS_OUTPUT.PUT_LINE (latency = || lat);
dbms_output.put_line(max_mbps = || mbps);
end;
/
Step 4
Depending of your hardware the process could take 3 minutes or more to complete, while running you can query a fixed
view:
select * from v$io_calibration_status
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When calibration is complete it produces three OUT parameters, they are:
MAX_IOPS the maximum number of I/O Operations per second
MAX_MBPS the maximum Megabytes per second
ACTUAL_LATENCY the actual latency observed during the test
SQL> @calibrate_io
max_iops = 125
latency = 7
max_mbps = 44
PL/SQL procedure successfully completed.
Results were obtained running the calibration package on a personal laptop with the following characteristics:
Hardware: LAPTOP HP 550 4GB 160 GB internal Disk, Core 2 Duo
Software: Linux CentOS 64 Bits, 4 GB RAM
Of course your corporate hardware should be more fast.
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Jos Valerio DBMS_RESOURCE_MANAGER.CALIBRATE_IO 1... http://jose-valerio.com.ar/blog/?p=682
4 of 4 08.07.2010 14:25