About the Oracle-based Precise Business Storage Optimizer portlets

This section includes the following topics:

• About the Tiering Recommendations page
• About the Transaction page
• About the User page
• About the Database page
• About the Storage Device page
• About the FAST Integration page

About the Tiering Recommendations page

The Recommendation page shows a prioritized list of tiering action items based on the collected information in your application and on the provided parameters. The parameters are:

• The Oracle instance (selection from drop-down box, e.g. All Instances)
• The Time Frame
• The recommendation method (optimize cost, optimize performance, or both)
• The tiering entities (Object, Datafiles, Devices)

The summary information will be shown after clicking Recommend.

When hovering over a row, more information is shown with links to check the improvement in the Storage Device Simulation and activity overtime in Precise for Oracle.

The following fields are displayed in the portlet when choosing Object as tiering entity:

Table 1 Object tiering fields

The following fields are displayed in the portlet when choosing Datafiles as tiering entity:

Table 2 Datafiles tiering fields

The following fields are displayed in the portlet when choosing Devices as tiering entity:

Table 3 Devices tiering fields

About the Transaction page

The Transaction page shows the storage tiering impact on a selected transaction and its related users, objects, datafiles, and devices.

You need to select:

• The Oracle instance (selection from drop-down box, e.g. All Instances)
• The Time Frame
• The transaction/program (field with search option)
• The target device type (selection from drop-down box)

After you click Simulate, a summary, a graph, an objects improvement table, a datafiles improvement table, a devices improvement table, and a users improvement table are shown.

The following fields are displayed in the portlet in the summary row:

Table 4 Summary row fields

The Time In Oracle Overview graph shows the measured and predicted time in Oracle values in a graph over time. The following fields are displayed in the portlet in the Objects Improvement table:

Table 5 Objects improvement fields

When hovering over a row, more information is shown with links to check the activity overtime in Precise for Oracle and predicted improvement in the Database view.

The following fields are displayed in the portlet in the Datafiles Improvement table:

Table 6 Datafiles improvement fields

When hovering over a row, more information is shown with links to check the activity overtime in Precise for Oracle and predicted improvement in the Database view.

The following fields are displayed in the portlet in the Devices Improvement table:

Table 7 Devices improvement fields

When hovering over a row, more information is shown with links to check the activity overtime in Precise for Oracle and predicted improvement in the Storage Device view.

The following fields are displayed in the portlet in the Users Improvement table:

Table 8 Users improvement fields

When hovering over a row, more information is shown with links to check the activity overtime in Precise for Oracle and predicted improvement in the User view.

About the User page

 

The User page shows the storage tiering impact on the selected user and its related transactions, objects, datafiles, and devices.

You need to select:

• The Oracle instance (selection from drop-down box, e.g. All Instances)
• The Time Frame
• The user (field with search option)
• The target device type (selection from drop-down box)

After you click Simulate, a summary, a graph, a transactions improvement, a statements improvement table, a devices improvement table, an objects improvement table, and a datafiles improvement table are shown.

The following fields are displayed in the portlet in the summary row:

Table 9 Summary row fields

The Time In Oracle Overview graph shows the measured and predicted In Oracle time values in a graph over time.

The following fields are displayed in the portlet in the Transactions Improvement table:

Table 10 Transactions Improvement fields

When hovering over a row, more information is shown with links to check the activity overtime in Precise for Oracle and predicted improvement in the Transaction view.

The following fields are displayed in the portlet in the Statements Improvement table:

Table 11 Statements improvement fields

When hovering over a row, more information is shown with a link to check the activity overtime in Precise for Oracle. The following fields are displayed in the portlet in the Devices Improvement table:

Table 12 Devices improvement fields

When hovering over a row, more information is shown with links to check the activity overtime in Precise for Oracle and improvement in the Storage Device view.

The following fields are displayed in the portlet in the Objects Improvement table:

Table 13 Objects improvement fields

When hovering over a row, more information is shown with links to check the activity overtime in Precise for Oracle and improvement in the Database view.

The following fields are displayed in the portlet in the Datafiles Improvement table:

Table 14 Datafiles improvement fields

When hovering over a row, more information is shown with links to check the activity overtime in Precise for Oracle and improvement in the Database view.

About the Database page

The Database page shows the storage tiering impact on the selected object name or datafile and its related users, transactions, objects, datafiles, and devices.

You need to select:

• The Oracle instance (selection from drop-down box, e.g. All Instances)
• The Time Frame
• The object name or datafile (field with search option)
• The target device type (selection from drop-down box)

After you click Simulate, a summary, a graph, a transactions improvement table, a users improvement table, and a statements improvement table are shown.

The following fields are displayed in the portlet in the summary row:

Table 15 Summary row fields

The I/O Time Overview graph shows the measured and predicted I/O time values in a graph over time.

The following fields are displayed in the portlet in the Transactions Improvement table:

Table 16 Transactions improvement fields

When hovering over a row, more information is shown with links to check the activity overtime in Precise for Oracle and improvement in the Transaction view.

The following fields are displayed in the portlet in the Users Improvement table:

Table 17 Users improvement fields

When hovering over a row, more information is shown with links to check the activity overtime in Precise for Oracle and improvement in the Users view.

The following fields are displayed in the portlet in the Statements Improvement table:

Table 18 Statements improvement fields

When hovering over a row, more information is shown with a link to check the activity overtime in Precise for Oracle.

About the Storage Device page

The Storage Device page shows the storage tiering impact on the selected storage device and its related transactions, users, objects, and datafiles.

You need to select:

• The Oracle instance (selection from drop-down box, e.g. All Instances)
• The Time Frame
• The storage device (select a specific device from drop-down box or select “All”)
• The target device type (selection from drop-down box)

After you click Simulate, a graph, a devices improvement table, a transactions improvement table, a users improvement table, and a statements improvement table are shown.

The I/O Time Overview graph shows the measured and predicted I/O time values in a graph over time. The following fields are displayed in the portlet in the Devices Improvement table:

Table 19 Devices improvement fields

When hovering over a row, more information is shown with links to check the activity overtime in Precise for Oracle and improvement in the Storage Device view.

The following fields are displayed in the portlet in the Transactions Improvement table:

Table 20 Transactions improvement fields

When hovering over a row, more information is shown with links to check the activity overtime in Precise for Oracle and improvement in the Transaction view.

The following fields are displayed in the portlet in the Users improvement table:

Table 21 Users improvement fields

When hovering over a row, more information is shown with a link to check the activity overtime in Precise for Oracle and improvement in the Users view.

The following fields are displayed in the portlet in the Statements Improvement table:

Table 22 Statements improvement fields

When hovering over a row, more information is shown with a link to check the activity overtime in Precise for Oracle.

About the FAST Integration page

The FAST Integration page enables you to promote critical transactions and demote non-critical transactions and based on that present the associated devices. The next step is to differentiate between critical devices and non-critical devices, naming the storage groups, and generating them.

To present the associated devices

1. Select the instance name (selection from drop-down box, e.g. All Instances)
2. Select the Time Frame.

3. (Optional) Insert the filter parameter, click the filter icon and the Transactions List is populated based on the selected filter criteria.

   The Transaction List based on the filtered criteria only contains the top-n transactions where the default value for n is 100.

4. Make a selection of the Critical and Non-Critical Transactions and move them to their relevant tables.

   Multiple selections with CTRL and Shift can be made in the Transactions List table.

5. (Optional) Click the Open/Close advanced settings toggle to change the default settings for critical and non-critical target device types (default: critical - EFD, non-critical - SATA).
6. (Optional) Mark Automatically select recommended storage devices. See “About Automatically select recommended storage devices” on page 19.
7. Click Present Associated Devices.

About Automatically select recommended storage devices

If Automatically select recommended storage devices is marked and at least one of tables (Critical or Non-Critical Transactions) contains an entry, it is mandatory to define the available disk space related to the (non-) critical transactions table. This will result in marked rows in the (Non-)Critical Devices table(s). For example, if you know that you have 30GB space available for non-critical transactions, mark Automatically select recommended storage devices and enter this value in the Available disk space for non-critical transactions field. After clicking the Present Associated Devices button, the table with Non-Critical Devices will contain top ranked devices that are marked and use up to 30GB of storage space.

About the Load Associated Devices

The tables of the critical and non-critical devices are now populated after performing the load the associated devices procedure. By default, the devices are ordered by Rank. Above the tables there is a summary row which indicates the total size of selected devices, the total I/O time of selected transactions, and the total improvement percentage of the selected devices out of the total selected transactions Time in DB. The following fields are displayed in the critical and non-critical devices tables:

Table 23 Critical and Non-Critical devices table fields

To generate storage groups

1. Insert a name for the critical storage group.

2. Mark a maximum of n associated storage devices. The maximum is related to the total available device size.

   If Automatically select recommended storage devices is marked and a value is inserted in the size fields, one or more associated storage device(s) will be marked.

3. Insert a name for the non-critical storage group.

4. Mark a maximum of n associated storage devices. The maximum is related to the total available device size.

   If Automatically select recommended storage devices is marked and a value is inserted in the size fields, one or more associated storage device(s) will be marked.

5. Click Generate Storage Groups.
6. Define the name and location to store the Storage Groups.
7. Click OK.

About Precise Business Storage Optimizer and the FAST policy

This section describes the process of integrating the Precise Business Storage Optimizer Business Aware Tiering Recommendation into the FAST policy.

Precise Business Storage Optimizer analyzes the transactions activity and provides business aware tiering recommendations. These recommendations, eventually, materialize into two scripts for FAST Storage Groups generation:

• one to be used for moving critical data to faster devices
• one to be used for moving non-critical data to slower devices

To fully utilize these scripts, the following detailed procedure needs to be performed

 

1. Set up the FAST policy by performing the following steps:
   1. Create one or more new FAST Tiers that describe the target technology type that you want to associate with one or more Storage Groups.
      For Example: If you used Precise Business Storage Optimizer to simulate the migration to Flash drives, the tier target technology type should be EFD.
   2. Verify that the previously created FAST Tiers are associated with Disk Groups from the correct technology and that the Disk Groups have sufficient disk space.
   3. Create a new FAST Policy. Each target technology must be represented by a different FAST policy and a policy may not contain different tier types.
      For Example: If you used Precise Business Storage Optimizer to simulate the migration to flash drives, the policy should only contain EFD tiers.
   4. Add the previously created FAST Tiers (Step a) to the new FAST policy (Step c).
2. Generate the Business Aware Storage Group with Precise Business Storage Optimizer by performing the following steps:
   1. Run Precise Business Storage Optimizer to generate Business Aware Storage Groups. See About the FAST Integration page.
   2. From the location where we saved the Storage Group script, open the script.
   3. Run the SymCLI commands in the script. The commands in the script create the Storage Group and associate it to the selected devices.
   4. Verify that the Storage Group has been created successfully.
3. Associate the Storage Group with the FAST policy.
   For example: if the Storage Group represents “critical activity”, the FAST policy associated with it, becomes the Business Critical policy.

4. Execute the Tiering policy. Once the FAST policy is associated with the Storage Group, the FAST analysis engine takes over the activities (according to its scheduling and configuration).

   If FAST is configured to work with “user approval”, you need to approve the FAST recommendation manually.