OceanStor Dorado may be the next generation all-flash array (AFA) from Huawei. The Dorado uses five intelligent chips and a multitude of efficient algorithms to deliver 20 million input/output operations per second (IOPS), 100-microsecond latency, and hundreds of gigabytes of bandwidth. It more than satisfies the requirements of online transaction processing (OLTP) and online analytical processing (OLAP) in mainstream databases for the finance and carrier industries. In addition, OceanStor Dorado has adapted and enhanced algorithms for virtualization and supports ecosystem plug-ins for a variety of virtualization platforms to greatly improve VM efficiency and advance the all-flash era across industries.

Database acceleration is really a critical mainstream application that benefits greatly from the usage of OceanStor Dorado technology. Oracle may be the most typical database for large enterprises, holding the main element data of ERP systems. However, the info explosion in the 5G/AI era has greatly challenged Oracle performance and contains increased the operating costs of Oracle deployments.

Oracle Database Challenges

Storage performance from building-block expansion

Banks and large e-commerce companies process over 100 million daily transactions now. The IOPS of core service systems exceeds 200,000 and takes a of around 1 ms latency. Traditional storage systems cannot satisfy these new requirements through building-block expansion.

Business continuity

Service continuity is essential for Oracle OLTP, which manages mission-critical businesses for enterprises.

Oracle license costs increase annually

Oracle license fees have consumed a big proportion of IT budgets always. For instance, the Oracle license fees for a 10 TB database take into account 50% of annual operations and maintenance costs and increase because the data volume grows. Cutting Oracle license fees is really a critical challenge for most companies.

All-Flash Solution for Oracle Databases

The Oracle database all-flash solution uses the powerful performance of Huawei OceanStor Dorado for a 5x service scale for online transactions. Furthermore, low of 0 latency.5-ms reduces the I/O waiting time, improves server and storage resource utilization, and reduces Oracle license fees significantly. The innovative HyperCDP high-density snapshot supplies the highest data protection frequency on the market and lossless performance during snapshot creation.

To show OceanStor Dorado performance for Oracle databases, a test was run with 12 hosts delivering I/O to the storage array for a well balanced 500-μs latency (see Fig. 1).

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Fig. 1. Test configuration

6x faster compared to the industry benchmark Dell EMC VMAX-F

The SwingBench tool simulated an online transaction system. The performance of the 4-controller OceanStor Dorado 18000 reached 840,000 IOPS at 0.5-ms latency, 50x that of traditional storage systems, and 6x that of Dell EMC VMAX250F. Furthermore, OceanStor Dorado supports scale-out and linear performance growth.

Table 1.  Results comparison of Oracle test

100-μs latency, 10x faster compared to the industry average

Huawei OceanStor Dorado not merely provides high IOPS, but may also decrease the latency to 100 μs in scenarios with a higher cache hit ratio. For instance, a test was performed with the SLOB tool. The 4-controller OceanStor Dorado 18000 achieved a 75% read cache hit ratio, 220,000 IOPS, and significantly less than 100-μs latency in the 25% update and 8:2 read/write ratio scenario (the most frequent database I/O model). If the IOPS of the core service system reaches 200 even,000, OceanStor Dorado will keep the latency at about 100 μs still. That is 10x the 1 ms latency of the all-flash storage of other vendors and far exceeds certain requirements of mission-critical applications.

HyperCDP without compromising performance

Service data and continuity reliability are crucial for Oracle databases since they manage mission-critical applications for enterprises. OceanStor Dorado safeguards mission-critical applications using high-density snapshots with the best protection frequency on the market for a shortened snapshot interval of 3 seconds and lossless performance during snapshot creation.

In a snapshot test for four-controller OceanStor Dorado 18000 and HDS F1500 all-flash storage, Huawei OceanStor Dorado exceeded the competing products in snapshot density and activation impact far.

OceanStor Dorado supports the very least snapshot interval of 3 seconds. On the other hand, HDS snapshots are just configurable for 15-minute intervals through APIs.

Fig. 2 shows the effect on OceanStor HDS and Dorado F1500 when snapshots are manufactured, activated, and mapped to hosts then. OceanStor Dorado performance is uncompromised since a snapshot is activated and created within several seconds. Conversely, HDS F1500 took 75 seconds to generate and activate a snapshot, increasing latency greatly.

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Fig. 2.  Snapshot performance impact

Oracle license fees slashed by 30% or more

The ultra-low latency of OceanStor Dorado reduces the I/O waiting host and time CPU usage. Fewer CPU resources are essential to handle exactly the same service pressure, reducing charges for Oracle license procurement greatly.

In addition, test outcomes were obtained for traditional OceanStor and storage Dorado when SwingBench OE2 was used to simulate online transactions. Beneath the same service pressure (800 TPS), the host CPU using OceanStor Dorado was 38.7%, while traditional storage usage was 60% or even more. As a result, storage arrays are longer something bottleneck no. Fewer host CPU resources perform exactly the same services, reducing Oracle license and host purchasing costs. At 800 TPS, the Oracle license fees are reduced by 31.3%.

To understand about OceanStor Dorado performance on two other critical applications – virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) and server virtualization – please see “Huawei OceanStor All-Flash Storage” (page 44).

To find out more about Huawei’s OceanStor Dorado All-Flash Storage, please visit here.