Business Suite R12 and RAC on VMware vSphere 5 ... FOR ORACLE E-
BUSINESS SUITE R12 AND .... Oracle Database 11g Release 2 Enterprise
Edition .
Enhanced Operational Agility and Scalability for Oracle EBusiness Suite R12 and RAC on VMware vSphere 5
Table of Contents
www.vce.com
VBLOCK™ SYSTEMS: ENHANCED OPERATIONAL AGILITY AND SCALABILITY FOR ORACLE E-BUSINESS SUITE R12 AND RAC ON VMWARE VSPHERE 5 Version 2.0 February 2013
© 2013 VCE Company, LLC. All Rights Reserved.
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Copyright 2013 VCE Company, LLC. All Rights Reserved. VCE believes the information in this publication is accurate as of its publication date. The information is subject to change without notice.
THE INFORMATION IN THIS PUBLICATION IS PROVIDED "AS IS." VCE MAKES NO REPRESENTATIONS OR WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND WITH RESPECT TO THE INFORMATION IN THIS PUBLICATION, AND SPECIFICALLY DISCLAIMS IMPLIED WARRANTIES OR MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.
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Contents Introduction ...............................................................................................................................5 Business case .........................................................................................................................5 Objectives ................................................................................................................................6 Key results ...............................................................................................................................6 Key benefits .............................................................................................................................6 Scope ......................................................................................................................................7 Audience .................................................................................................................................7 Feedback .................................................................................................................................8 Technology overview ............................................................................................................... 9 Vblock™ Systems .....................................................................................................................9 Vblock System 720 ...............................................................................................................9 Vblock System 320 ...............................................................................................................9 VMware vSphere 5 ................................................................................................................ 10 Oracle Database 11g Release 2 Enterprise Edition ............................................................... 11 Oracle Real Application Clusters ........................................................................................... 11 Oracle E-Business Suite Release 12 ..................................................................................... 11 EMC Ionix Unified Infrastructure Manager ............................................................................. 11 Solution architecture .............................................................................................................. 12 High-level architecture ........................................................................................................... 12 Physical topology ................................................................................................................... 13 Performance test environment ............................................................................................... 14 Scalability test environment ................................................................................................... 15 Hardware components ........................................................................................................... 16 Virtual machine configuration ................................................................................................. 16 Software components ............................................................................................................ 17 Storage layout ....................................................................................................................... 17 Storage pool 1 .................................................................................................................... 17 Storage pool 2 .................................................................................................................... 18 Storage mappings for Oracle database .............................................................................. 19 Performance and scalability testing ...................................................................................... 20 Test environment ................................................................................................................... 20 Workload description ............................................................................................................. 20 Performance testing............................................................................................................... 21 Test objectives ................................................................................................................... 21 Test methods...................................................................................................................... 21 Test results ......................................................................................................................... 22
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Scalability testing ................................................................................................................... 22 Test objective ..................................................................................................................... 22 Test methods...................................................................................................................... 23 Test results ......................................................................................................................... 24 Upgrading to vSphere 5.......................................................................................................... 25 Related documentation .......................................................................................................... 25 Preparing for the upgrade ...................................................................................................... 25 Upgrading vCenter Server ..................................................................................................... 26 Upgrading vSphere Client ...................................................................................................... 26 Upgrading hosts to ESXi 5 ..................................................................................................... 26 Upgrading virtual machine hardware version ......................................................................... 27 Post-upgrade tasks ................................................................................................................ 27 Migrating to vSphere 5 ........................................................................................................... 28 Setting up the source Oracle VM environment ....................................................................... 29 Installing vCenter Converter Standalone................................................................................ 29 Converting the virtual machines ............................................................................................. 30 Conclusion .............................................................................................................................. 34 Next steps ............................................................................................................................. 34 References .............................................................................................................................. 35 Oracle................................................................................................................................. 35 VMware .............................................................................................................................. 35
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Introduction Vblock™ Systems offer IT organizations the performance, agility, and scalability to effectively manage and allocate resources to meet the demands of even the most dynamic, data-intensive Oracle applications. In addition, Vblock Systems provide a predictable cost model by accelerating infrastructure consolidation in the form of virtual machines on a single host to shave off licensing costs tied to dependency on the number of servers and cores. Earlier testing of Oracle E-Business Suite (Oracle EBS) and Oracle Real Application Clusters (Oracle RAC) on Vblock Systems with VMware vSphere 4.1 demonstrated the performance and scalability benefits of virtualization. Refer to Oracle E-Business Suite and RAC Performance and Elasticity on Vblock Systems at www.vce.com/products/solutions/oracle. Results from that initial testing showed that virtualization on Vblock Systems provides customers with a high level of return on investment (ROI) and reduced total cost of ownership (TCO). Application response times for transactions in the physical and virtual environments were within a 5-10% range and scaling out Oracle EBS and RAC on Vblock Systems improved performance due to load balancing. The availability of VMware vSphere 5 brings significant enhancements to the virtual environment on Vblock Systems, such as support for faster scaling, additional virtual CPUs (vCPUs), and more virtual memory (vMem). To demonstrate the performance and scalability improvements enabled by vSphere 5, VCE conducted performance and scalability testing similar to the earlier testing. Performance test results showed only a 1% difference between physical and virtual environments, while scalability testing showed that near linear scalability could be achieved when scaling Oracle EBS and RAC in the virtual environment. This solution architecture describes how performance and scalability testing of Oracle EBS and RAC on a Vblock System with vSphere 5 was conducted and presents the test results.
Business case Customers want assurance that virtualizing their Oracle production systems and business applications will: Maximize the performance and quality of service of their Oracle applications. Meet the needs of business service-level agreements (SLA). Allow non-disruptive migration of applications and workloads to improve performance, facilitate maintenance, and enhance business continuity. Reduce time to market and lower total cost of ownership (TCO) while maintaining a high return on investment (ROI). This solution architecture will demonstrate that Vblock Systems with vSphere 5 provide a simplified, cost-effective IT infrastructure to run business-critical Oracle and mixed workloads in a highperformance converged infrastructure.
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Objectives Oracle EBS R12 was deployed on a virtualized Oracle RAC on a Vblock System with vSphere 5. Performance and scalability testing of this environment was conducted to demonstrate that: Vblock Systems maximize performance of Oracle EBS applications on vSphere 5 to allow faster deployment of new features to the business, minimize time-to-market, and deliver faster time to revenue. Vblock Systems with vSphere 5 make it easy to scale the virtual environment to support dataintensive and business-critical Oracle EBS workloads while maintaining performance levels. Existing VCE customers interested in improving the performance and increasing the scalability of their Oracle EBS deployments should consider upgrading to the latest technology from VMware on Vblock Systems. Customers currently deploying their Oracle EBS and RAC on an Oracle virtual machine (Oracle VM) can migrate to vSphere 5 on Vblock Systems to leverage its ability to deploy mixed workloads on a single system. This solution architecture includes the steps needed to demonstrate the ease, convenience, and low risk of upgrading or migrating to vSphere 5 on Vblock Systems.
Key results VCE conducted extensive performance and scalability testing of Oracle EBS applications in a virtual Oracle RAC environment on a Vblock System with vSphere 5. Key results were: Comparison of average application response times of Oracle EBS and RAC in the physical environment with average application response times in the virtual environment under similar workloads showed a 1 percent difference. Near linear scalability was achieved when additional virtual Oracle EBS and RAC nodes were added to the deployment. The number of transactions per second increased linearly while using fewer resources than before scaling out.
Key benefits Test results support these key benefits of virtualizing Oracle EBS and RAC on Vblock Systems with vSphere 5: Simplified deployment and management Standardized, prepackaged units of converged infrastructure on Vblock Systems accelerate deployment and simplify operation. Simple, automated virtual machine migration and conversion from Oracle VM and other thirdparty platforms to Vblock Systems using VMware vCenter Converter reduce risk and increase chances for a successful production cutover to vSphere 5. Virtualization on Vblock Systems allows deployment of more Oracle instances on less hardware to maximize licensing ROI.
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Operational agility Integrated, best-in-class components to support computing, networking, storage, security, virtualization, and management technologies on Vblock Systems make it easy to scale the virtualization environment to support the most data-intensive application workloads Provisioning of new pre-configured Oracle EBS environments takes only minutes using VMware vSphere templates Live migration of virtual machines from one physical server to another using VMware vMotion Converged infrastructure of Vblock Systems makes workload balancing simple and straightforward across all components. Performance and scalability The design of Vblock Systems makes it easy to scale the virtualization environment to support data-intensive application workloads while maintaining performance levels. Dynamic vertical and horizontal scaling of virtual machines accommodates growth, changing workloads, and scheduled maintenance demands. Load balancing data-intensive workloads by scaling out application and database nodes improves throughput.
Scope This solution architecture provides: Descriptions and diagrams of test components and architecture. Details on how the performance and scalability testing was conducted and the test results. Instructions for upgrading an existing vSphere 4.1 deployment to vSphere 5 on a Vblock System. Instructions for migrating an Oracle VM deployment to vSphere 5 on Vblock Systems.
Audience The primary audience for this solution architecture is technical, including CIOs, data center managers, Oracle architects, and Oracle Database Administrators (DBAs) in medium-sized and large enterprises. New customers interested in virtualizing or migrating their Oracle applications environment to vSphere 5 on Vblock Systems to improve quality of service and reduce baseline cost structure should read this paper. Current VCE customers interested in upgrading their Vblock Systems to vSphere 5 to leverage a more robust feature set will also benefit from reading this paper.
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Feedback To suggest documentation changes and provide feedback on this paper, send email to
[email protected]. Include the title of this paper and the name of the topic to which your feedback applies.
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Technology overview The VCE solution for virtualized Oracle EBS and RAC on Vblock Systems uses these major hardware and software components: Vblock Systems VMware vSphere 5 Oracle Database 11g Release 2 Enterprise Edition Oracle Real Application Clusters Oracle E-Business Suite Release 12 EMC Unified Infrastructure Manager
Vblock™ Systems The Vblock System from VCE is the world's most advanced converged infrastructure—one that optimizes infrastructure, lowers costs, secures the environment, simplifies management, speeds deployment, and promotes innovation. The Vblock System is designed as one architecture that spans the entire portfolio, includes best-in-class components, offers a single point of contact from initiation through support, and provides the industry's most robust range of configurations.
Vblock System 720 The Vblock System 720 is an enterprise, service provider class mission-critical system in the Vblock System 700 family, for the most demanding IT environments—supporting enterprise workloads and SLAs that run thousands of virtual machines and virtual desktops. It is architecturally designed to be modular, providing flexibility and choice of configurations based on demanding workloads. These workloads include business-critical enterprise resource planning (ERP), customer relationship management (CRM), and database, messaging, and collaboration services. The Vblock System 720 leverages the industry’s best director-class fabric switch, the most advanced fabric based blade server, and the most trusted storage platform. The Vblock System 720 delivers greater configuration choices, 2X performance and scale from prior generations, flexible storage options, denser compute, five 9s of availability, and converged network and support for a new virtualization platform that accelerates time to service and reduces operations costs.
Vblock System 320 The Vblock System 320 is an enterprise and service provider ready system in the Vblock System 300 family, designed to address a wide spectrum of virtual machines, users, and applications. It is ideally suited to achieve the scale required in both private and public cloud environments. The Vblock System 320 has been engineered for greater scalability and performance to support large enterprise deployments of mission-critical applications, cloud services, VDI, mixed workloads and application development and testing. The Vblock System 320 delivers greater configuration choices, 2X performance and scale from prior generations, flexible storage options, denser compute, five 9s of availability, and converged network and support for a new virtualization platform that accelerates time to service and reduces operations costs. Every Vblock System 320 is available with the marketleading EMC VNX storage arrays. © 2013 VCE Company, LLC. All Rights Reserved.
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For more information, go to www.vce.com.
VMware vSphere 5 Virtualization layers on Vblock Systems are provided by VMware vSphere, the industry-leading virtualization system for building cloud infrastructures. vSphere 5 enables customers to run businesscritical applications with confidence and respond to business needs faster. This table summarizes some of the features and functionality in vSphere 5: Functionality/feature
Description
VMware vCenter Server scalability
Faster high availability (HA) configuration times A 32-host, 3,200 virtual machine, high-availability enabled cluster can be configured nine times faster in vSphere 5.
Faster failover rates Able to fail over 60% more virtual machines within the same period
Lower management operational latencies Higher management operations throughput (ops/min) Up to 120% improvement, depending on the intensity of the operations
Compute
32-way vCPU scalability Virtual machines can support vMem up to 1 TB. With this support, Tier 1 applications consuming large amounts of memory, such as in-memory databases, can be virtualized.
Storage
vSphere Storage I/O Control (SIOC) supports NFS. You can set storage quality of service priorities per virtual machine, enabling better access to storage resources for high-priority applications.
Network
vSphere Network I/O Control (NIOC) gives a higher granularity of network load balancing.
VMware vSphere vMotion
vSphere vMotion Multi–network adaptor enablement that contributes to an even faster vMotion
vSphere Storage vMotion Fast, live storage migration with I/O mirroring
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Oracle Database 11g Release 2 Enterprise Edition Oracle Database 11g Release 2 provides industry-leading performance, scalability, security, and reliability on a choice of clustered or single servers with a wide range of options to meet user needs. It provides the foundation for IT to successfully deliver more information with higher-quality service, reduce the risk of change within IT, and make efficient use of IT budgets. In Oracle 11g R2 Enterprise Edition, Oracle Automatic Storage Management (ASM) and Oracle Clusterware have been integrated into a single set of binaries and named Oracle Grid Infrastructure. This now provides all cluster and storage services required to run an Oracle RAC database.
Oracle Real Application Clusters Oracle RAC supports the transparent deployment of a single database across a cluster of servers, providing fault tolerance from hardware failures or planned outages. Available as an option with Oracle Database 11g, Oracle RAC is a cluster database with a shared cache architecture that overcomes the limitations of traditional shared-nothing and shared-disk approaches to provide a highly scalable and available database solution.
Oracle E-Business Suite Release 12 The Oracle EBS architecture is a framework for multitiered distributed computing. In the Oracle EBS model, services are distributed among multiple levels or tiers. A service is a process or a group of processes that exercises some business logic and provides a particular functionality. A tier is a grouping of services that can potentially span physical machines. In other words, a tier is a logical grouping of services that is not limited by physical nodes or machines. Each tier can consist of one or more nodes, and each node can accommodate more than one tier. For instance, the database server can reside on the same node as one or more servers in the application tier. Note:
For more details, refer to Oracle Applications Concepts [B10642-01].
EMC Ionix Unified Infrastructure Manager EMC Ionix Unified Infrastructure Manager/Provisioning (UIM/P) provides simplified management for Vblock Systems, including provisioning, configuration, change, and compliance management. UIM/P provides the functionality to package portions of the compute, storage, and network resources of Vblock Systems into infrastructure services. Once in a service, the resources can be reserved, deployed, allocated, and managed as a single entity through UIM/P.
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Solution architecture The testing described in this solution architecture was conducted in a virtualized Oracle environment created on a Vblock System 700 with VMware vSphere 5. To replicate a common customer environment, the virtual environment included Oracle EBS applications and a virtualized Oracle clustered database (Oracle and Oracle RAC).
High-level architecture This diagram shows the high-level architecture of the environment used to validate the solution:
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Physical topology This diagram shows the physical topology of the test environment:
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Performance test environment Performance testing involved measuring and comparing performance of Oracle EBS on Oracle RAC in the physical environment with performance in the virtual environment. This diagram illustrates the test environment for performance testing:
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Scalability test environment Scalability testing involved adding Oracle EBS application and Oracle RAC database nodes to the virtual environment, and then monitoring performance improvements. This diagram illustrates the scalability test environment:
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Hardware components A virtual Oracle RAC can be deployed on Vblock Systems that provide SAN connectivity. The testing described in this paper was performed on the Vblock System 700 model MX. This table lists the hardware components used to validate the solution: Component
Quantity
Configuration
UCS Blade B250-M2
8
12 x CPU cores, 192 GB memory per blade
3 used for physical environment tests 3 used for virtualized environment tests 2 additional used for scale-out tests
MDS 9148 Multilayer Fabric Switch
2
4 x 8 Gbps ports per switch
Symmetrix VMAX
1
172 x 450 GB (15K RPM) disks
VMAX FA ports
8
8 GB per port
Cisco ACE load balancer
1
--
UCS Blade B200-M1
3
For Oracle VM Server 8 x CPU cores, 96 GB memory per blade
Virtual machine configuration By default, vNUMA is enabled only for virtual machines with more than eight vCPUs. Although vNUMA can be enabled for smaller machines, it was not enabled for the virtual machines used in validation of this solution. This table describes the configuration of each virtual machine used to validate the solution: Virtual machine
Memory
No. of vCPUs
vNIC type
Virtual SCSI adapter
oel5u4-app1
65 GB RAM
8
VMXNET3
LSI Logic Parallel
oel5u4-app2
65 GB RAM
8
VMXNET3
LSI Logic Parallel
oel5u4-app3
65 GB RAM
8
VMXNET3
LSI Logic Parallel
*oel5u4-app4
65 GB RAM
8
VMXNET3
LSI Logic Parallel
oel5u4-rac1
98 GB RAM
6
VMXNET3
LSI Logic Parallel
oel5u4-rac2
98 GB RAM
6
VMXNET3
LSI Logic Parallel
oel5u4-rac3
98 GB RAM
6
VMXNET3
LSI Logic Parallel
oel5u4-rac4
98 GB RAM
6
VMXNET3
LSI Logic Parallel
oel5u4-rac5
98 GB RAM
6
VMXNET3
LSI Logic Parallel
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Software components This table lists the software components used to validate the solution: Platform
Role
Version
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.4
Operating system
RHEL 5 U4 (64-bit)
Oracle EBS 12.1
Application
12.1.1
Oracle 11g R2 Enterprise Edition
Database
11.2.0.2
Oracle 11g R2 RAC
Clusterware
11.2.0.2
VMware vSphere 4.x
Virtualization
4.1
VMware vSphere 5.x
Virtualization
5.0
Storage layout For performance testing, two VMAX thin storage pools comprising Fibre Channel (FC) disks were used. These disks were 600 GB 15K RPM.
Storage pool 1 Pool 1 (eBizR10) contained 20 50-GB RAID 1 data devices with 1TB of usable storage. This table lists the thin LUNs (TDEVs) created from this pool. Environment
LUNs
Virtual disks
Physical
Oracle DB online redo logs
3 x 100 GB
Virtual (provisioned as RDMs)
Oracle DB online redo logs
3 x 100 GB
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Storage pool 2 Pool 2 (eBizR5) contained 200 50-GB RAID 5 data devices with 10 TB of usable storage. This table lists the thin LUNs (TDEVs) created from this pool: Tier
Environment
LUNs
Virtual disks
Oracle DB
Physical
Oracle RAC voting/OCR disks
6 x 4 GB
Oracle archive log DG
1 x 536 GB
Oracle data DG
3 x 365 GB
Oracle temp space DG
1 x 256 GB
Oracle RAC voting/OCR disks
6 x 4 GB disks
Oracle archive log DG
Oracle RAC voting/OCR disks
Virtual (provisioned as RDMs)
Oracle data DG Oracle temp space DG RAC Oracle Application
Physical
Virtual (provisioned as VMDKs)
OS
1 x 100 GB
Application tier binary and shared application tier files
1 x 500 GB
OS
1 x 100 GB
Application tier binary and shared application tier files
1 x 500 GB
Note: DG = Automatic Storage Management Disk Group
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Storage mappings for Oracle database This illustration shows the storage mappings for the Oracle database:
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Performance and scalability testing Performance and scalability tests were conducted to demonstrate the enhanced functionality, agility, and other benefits of virtualizing Oracle EBS and RAC on Vblock Systems with vSphere 5.
Test environment This table describes how the test environment was set up: Step
Action
Notes
1
Install and configure a split-node Oracle EBS R12 (12.1.1) environment consisting of one application tier server and one Oracle 11g database tier server.
Refer to the appropriate Oracle documentation for instructions.
2
Create a two-node physical Oracle RAC.
Refer to the appropriate Oracle documentation for instructions.
3
Migrate the physical Oracle RAC to the virtual vSphere 5 environment.
Refer to Zero Downtime Bi-directional Physical to Virtual Migration for Oracle EBS R12 With RAC on Vblock Systems at www.vce.com/products/solutions/ oracle for instructions.
4
Clone the virtual Oracle EBS and RAC environment to the physical environment using EMC storage replication technology with Oracle Rapid Clone Technology.
Refer to Cloning Oracle Applications Release 12 with Rapid Clone (Doc ID 406982.1) for detailed information. You need an Oracle support account to view it.
Workload description The table below describes the customized Order to Cash (O2C) workflow used to generate a workload for the performance and scalability testing. This workload demonstrates the performance and scalability of Oracle applications and provides metrics for comparing the performance of Oracle applications on different system configurations. The transactions were scripted using HP LoadRunner and executed under predefined user loads. Each user executes the transactions as part of the O2C process. Step
Action
Description
1
Enter Order/ Create Sales Order
The cycle begins in the Order Management Module where an order is created with about four lines. This order is then booked and passed to Pick Release.
2
Pick Release
Pick Release finds and releases the order and creates a move order request. The process of transacting move orders creates a reservation against the source sub-inventory.
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Step
Action
Description
3
Ship Confirm
Ship Confirm confirms that items have shipped. Shipping execution confirms that the delivery lines associated with the delivery have shipped. Interface Trip Stop (ITS) creates a trip and related stops for all eligible deliveries that have not been assigned to a trip. The ITS process happens automatically when you Ship Confirm the order.
4
Workflow Background Process
The workflow background process, OM Order Line, must run to merge eligible order lines into Accounts Receivable (AR) as invoices. This creates an invoice from the Shipped/Closed order lines. In most production/customer environments, this process runs automatically as prescribed by business requirements. For this test, this process was manually submitted after the completion of ITS.
5
Receivables Query Invoice
An invoice is created based on the customer and the items that were ordered previously.
Performance testing Five load tests were performed in each environment: physical and virtual Oracle RAC. Application response times (in seconds) were averaged for each transaction in the load test. Then, the average application response times on the physical Oracle RAC were compared to the average application response times with the virtual Oracle RAC.
Test objectives The objectives of the testing were to: Compare performance of Oracle EBS in the physical environment with performance in the virtual environment. Demonstrate that running I/O-intensive, application-based workloads on Vblock Systems with vSphere 5 meets industry expectations.
Test methods Performance testing consisted of execution of Order Management transactions. To test performance with increased load, the number of concurrent users was incremented from 100 to 500.
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Test results This chart compares average application response times on the physical Oracle RAC with average transaction response times on the virtual Oracle RAC under similar workloads.
Major findings of the performance test were: Compared to the physical environment, average application response times in the virtual test environment increased slightly during testing with 500 concurrent users. A comparison of the average application response times in the virtual environment with average application response times in the physical environment under similar workloads showed a 1 percent difference.
Scalability testing To demonstrate the operational agility and scalability of applications in the vSphere 5 environment, performance under load was measured before and after scaling out the virtual Oracle environment.
Test objective The objective of the scalability testing was to demonstrate that the virtual environment provided by vSphere 5 on a Vblock System allows scaling out of Oracle EBS with Oracle RAC deployments to accommodate dynamic I/O-intensive workloads.
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Test methods To determine when to scale the Oracle RAC environment, Oracle Enterprise Manager (OEM) 11g R1 Grid Control and native system tools were used to monitor utilization on the Oracle RAC database nodes. When CPU and memory utilization reached 80 percent of available resources for the Oracle RAC nodes, one Oracle RAC node and one Oracle EBS node were added to the environment to provide sufficient resources for additional users to perform tasks within the Oracle EBS environment. Note: For detailed information about adding virtual nodes to Oracle EBS and RAC, refer to Zero Downtime Bi-directional Physical to Virtual Migration for Oracle EBS R12 With RAC on Vblock Systems at www.vce.com/products/solutions/oracle.
Scaling Oracle RAC Step
Action
1
Add a virtual Oracle RAC node to the cluster.
2
Add an Oracle RAC instance to the new node.
3
Register the instance with the listener on the new node.
Scaling the application tier Step
Action
1
Prepare the environment.
2
Configure the new application node.
3
Update profile options.
4
Verify the APPLCSF variable setting.
5
Update the SESSION_COOKIE_DOMAIN value in ICX_PARAMETERS.
6
Configure load balancing.
7
Configure parallel concurrent processing.
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Test results The testing showed that near linear scalability was achieved on Vblock Systems by adding additional nodes. After scaling out the environment, transactions per second (TPS) increased from 800 to 1430 with less resource utilization than before scaling because the load was evenly distributed to the newly added nodes. This chart shows TPS before and after scaling out the environment:
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Upgrading to vSphere 5 Customers who already have Oracle deployments on Vblock Systems with vSphere 4.1 may want to upgrade to leverage the performance and scalability enhancements in vSphere 5. For example, virtual machines on vSphere 5 can have up to 32 virtual CPUs and 1 TB of RAM to support even the largest applications. The following sections provide an overview of the procedures for a non-disruptive upgrade from vSphere 4.x to vSphere 5. In most cases, this upgrade is a straightforward process and can be completed in a matter of hours. The steps to upgrade are: 1. Prepare for the upgrade. 2. Upgrade vCenter Server. 3. Upgrade vSphere Client. 4. Upgrade hosts to ESXi 5. 5. Upgrade virtual machine hardware and VMware Tools. 6. Perform post-upgrade tasks.
Related documentation For detailed upgrade instructions, refer to the following documentation available on the VCE support portal (support.vce.com/): Vblock Systems Software and Firmware Upgrade Guide Vblock Systems Software and Firmware Upgrade Guide for VMware vSphere 5.0 Note: A username and password are required to access the VCE support portal.
Preparing for the upgrade 1. Use the VMware Compatibility Guide (www.vmware.com/resources/compatibility) to verify that the current hardware, storage, and network drivers are compatible with vSphere 5. 2. If the vSphere system includes VMware plugins, verify that they are supported by vCenter Server 5.
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Upgrading vCenter Server 1. Verify the following requirements for upgrading to vCenter Server 5 are met: Item
Requirement
vCenter Server logs
Minimum 450 MB additional storage
vCenter Server 5 appliance
7 GB of disk space and 8 GB RAM
vCenter 5 Client
1.5 GB disk storage per client
Microsoft SQL Server 2008 R2 Express Disk
Up to 2 GB free disk space to decompress the installation archive
Note: SQL Server 2008 is supported for the vCenter 5 internal database.
2. Back up your vCenter Server database and SSL certificates. 3. Stop the vCenter Server services. 4. Run the vCenter Host Agent Pre-Upgrade Checker, and resolve any issue that Pre-Upgrade Checker finds. 5. Make sure that no processes are running that use the ports that vCenter Server uses. 6. Run the vCenter Server upgrade.
Upgrading vSphere Client Note: The vSphere Client upgrade operation requires no downtime. Virtual machines do not need to be powered off.
1. (Optional) Use Add/Remove Programs from the Windows Control Panel to remove any previous vSphere Client. 2. Run the vSphere Client installer.
Upgrading hosts to ESXi 5 1. Make a backup of host profiles, configurations, and VMFS 4.x file systems. 2. Allocate additional required disk space for VMFS data stores with ESXi hosts. Note:
vSphere 5 requires an additional 50 MB of disk storage per VMFS data store to perform the upgrade.
3. If not enabled, enable Intel VT mode in the host’s BIOS. 4. Place the host or hosts in maintenance mode. Make sure virtual machines have been evacuated to available hosts. 5. If a fibre-attached SAN is connected to the ESXi hosts, detach the fibre before proceeding. Note:
Do not disable HBA cards in the BIOS.
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Upgrading virtual machine hardware version 1. Make a backup of the virtual machines. 2. Use Update Manager in vCenter to upgrade the virtual machines from version 7 to version 8. Note:
Do not use vmware-vmupgrade.exe to upgrade the virtual machines.
3. Upgrade the VMware Tools for all virtual machines.
Post-upgrade tasks 1. Apply upgrade licenses for vSphere 5. 2. Reconnect ESXi hosts to vCenter Server and to SAN fibre connections. 3. Execute the following command to convert LUN masking to the claim rule format: esxcli corestorage claimrule convert 4. Validate that the upgraded environment is fully operational and without errors.
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Migrating to vSphere 5 Customers using Oracle VM as their virtualization platform for Oracle EBS might want to migrate their deployments to Vblock Systems with vSphere 5 to maximize performance, scalability, and availability of their applications and take advantage of running mixed workloads on a single platform. Migrating from Oracle VM to Vblock Systems is quick, low cost, and low risk using VMware vCenter Converter Standalone 5. To demonstrate the ease of virtual machine migration and conversion, six virtual machines (two Oracle EBS application tier and four Oracle RAC) were migrated from a source Oracle VM environment to a destination vSphere 5 system on a Vblock System using VMware Converter Standalone. Converter Standalone provides an easy-to-use solution to automate the process of creating VMware virtual machines from physical machines (running Windows and Linux), other virtual machine formats, and third-party image formats. Through an intuitive wizard-driven interface and a centralized management console, Converter Standalone can quickly and reliably convert multiple local and remote physical machines without any disruptions or downtime. The diagram below shows the types of conversions that can be performed with Converter Standalone.
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Setting up the source Oracle VM environment To set up the source Oracle VM environment, the following components were installed and configured: Oracle 3.0.3 VM Server Oracle 3.0.3 VM Manager Oracle VM template images After verifying the source Oracle VM 3.0.3 environment was operational, the Oracle VM templates for Oracle 11gR2 RAC and Oracle R12 were deployed.
Installing vCenter Converter Standalone 1. Download VMware vCenter Converter Standalone 5 from: www.vmware.com/products/converter/ 2. In the Oracle VM source environment, change the XEN kernel to normal kernel configuration. 3. In the destination vCenter 5 environment, select OVM as the physical host source. 4. Modify the network name and IP address of the Oracle virtual machines from the Oracle VM network to allow both the source virtual machines and new destination virtual machines to coexist on the same network. Note:
If the VMware virtual machines have disks that are populated by using a backup of a physical host or by cold cloning, Converter Standalone prepares the image to run on VMware virtual hardware. If third-party virtualization software was used to create a virtual machine on an ESXi host, use Converter Standalone to reconfigure it. Any operating system installed on a multi-boot machine can be reconfigured if the virtual machine is imported to an ESXi host. Before reconfiguring a multi-boot machine, the boot.ini file must be changed.
5. Disable ports that block access to the source and destination virtual machine environments, as this will affect the conversion process. 6. Install Converter Standalone. Refer to the VMware vCenter Converter Standalone User's Guide for instructions.
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Converting the virtual machines 1. Start the Converter Standalone application. 2. Click Convert Machine in the application menu. The Source System page appears. 3. On the Source System page, select the source system to convert (192.168.106.152).
4. Click Next. The Destination System page appears. 5. On the Destination System page: a. Select VMware Infrastructure virtual machine from the Select destination type dropdown menu. b. Enter the IP address or host name and the credentials for authentication with the ESXi host or vCenter Server.
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6. Click Next. The Destination Virtual Machine page appears. 7. On the Destination Virtual Machine page, name the destination virtual machine. If the destination is a vCenter Server, select the destination folder. 8. Click Next. The Destination Location page appears. 9. On the Destination Location page: a. Select a data center object from the inventory to accommodate the destination virtual machine (hugo101.mord0r.vce). b. From the Datastore drop-down menu, select the data store to hold the destination virtual machine files (OVM Target on VMAX4149_dev_275). c. From the Virtual machine version drop-down menu, select the virtual hardware version for the destination virtual machine (Version 8).
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10. Click Next. The Options page appears.
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11. Use the Options page to configure the following conversion parameters based on the infrastructure and environment: a. Virtual hardware resources that the destination virtual machine uses. b. Network settings of the destination virtual machine c. Guest operating system d. Conversion process and behavior of the source and destination systems during and after conversion Refer to the VMware vCenter Converter Standalone User's Guide for detailed instructions. 12. Click Next. The Summary page appears. 13. Use the Summary page to verify the source and destination settings are correct.
14. Click Finish to submit the job. Converter Standalone validates the job parameters. If the validation succeeds, the conversion job appears in the Job View list in the main application window. If the validation fails, click Back and correct the invalid parameters as prompted. 15. Start the destination Oracle virtual machines and validate that the newly migrated Oracle environment is functional and stable. Refer to the VMware vCenter Converter Standalone User's Guide for more information. 16. Apply VMware best practices for Oracle and test the functionality of the migrated Oracle virtual machines in the vSphere 5 environment. Refer to Oracle Databases on VMware Best Practices Guide for detailed information.
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Conclusion Vblock Systems deliver enterprise-level functionality to address the needs of a vast array of businesscritical applications, such as Oracle EBS. Vblock Systems scale to match the performance needs of the largest and most data-intensive business applications, while the ability to migrate applications and workloads enhances business continuity. To demonstrate the performance, operational agility, and scalability benefits of virtualizing Oracle EBS and Oracle RAC on a Vblock System with VMware vSphere 5, VCE performed extensive dataintensive workload performance and scalability testing. Testing was conducted on a virtualized Oracle EBS R12 and Oracle RAC environment created on a Vblock System 700 with vSphere 5. Major findings of the performance and scalability tests were: Comparison of average application response times of Oracle EBS and RAC in the physical environment with average application response times in the virtual environment under similar workloads showed a 1 percent difference. Near linear scalability was achieved when additional virtual Oracle EBS and RAC nodes were added to the deployment. The number of transactions per second increased linearly while using fewer resources than before scaling out. To demonstrate the ease with which virtual machines can be migrated and converted using Converter Standalone, multiple virtual machines from a source Oracle VM environment were migrated to a destination vSphere 5 environment on a Vblock System. The virtual machines were migrated and converted to the vSphere 5 environment on a Vblock System quickly and easily without disruptions or downtime.
Next steps To learn more about this and other solutions, contact a VCE representative or go to www.vce.com.
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References Oracle My Oracle Support Notes http://support.oracle.com Cloning Oracle Applications Release 12 with Rapid Clone (Doc ID 406982.1, requires an Oracle support account to view) Using Oracle 11g Release 2 Real Application Clusters with Oracle E-Business Suite Release 12 (Doc ID 823587.1) Using Load Balancers with Oracle E-Business Suite Release 12 (Doc ID 380489.1) Configuration of Load Balancing and Transparent Application Failover (Doc ID 226880.1) How to Implement Load Balancing With RAC Configured System Using JDBC (Doc ID 247135.1) Using Cisco ACE Series Application Control Engine with Oracle E-Business Suite Release 12 (Doc ID 603325.1) Sharing the Application Tier File System in Oracle E-Business Suite Release 12 (Doc ID 384248) Oracle VM: Installation and Upgrade Guide for Release 3.0.3 http://docs.oracle.com/cd/E26996_01/E18548/E18548.pdf Oracle VM: User's Guide for Release 3.0.3 http://docs.oracle.com/cd/E26996_01/E18549/E18549.pdf
VMware VMware vCenter Converter Standalone User's Guide http://www.vmware.com/pdf/convsa_50_guide.pdf
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ABOUT VCE VCE, formed by Cisco and EMC with investments from VMware and Intel, accelerates the adoption of converged infrastructure and cloud-based computing models that dramatically reduce the cost of IT while improving time to market for our customers. VCE, through Vblock Systems, delivers the industry's only fully integrated and fully virtualized cloud infrastructure system. VCE solutions are available through an extensive partner network, and cover horizontal applications, vertical industry offerings, and application development environments, allowing customers to focus on business innovation instead of integrating, validating, and managing IT infrastructure. For more information, go to www.vce.com.
Copyright © 2013 VCE Company, LLC. All Rights Reserved. Vblock and the VCE logo are registered trademarks or trademarks of VCE Company, LLC and/or its affiliates in the United States or other countries. All other trademarks used herein are the property of their respective owners.
© 2013 VCE Company, LLC. All Rights Reserved.
