SAP NW7.1 with 10g and Netapp SAN on VM-Ware

[Former Member]

Hello together,

I want to install several NW CE 7.1 Installations with an 10g Oracle DB on Windows Server 2003.

Now, our admins talk about the Windows Hard Disk Drives like C: or 😧

Some admins want to implement different hard disk drives (like c: and d: etc.) to the windows server 2003 to optimize the disk access, even if the server is connected to a netapp NAS. They say the the Windows 2003 server optimizes the disk access if more then one disk drive is configured.

Some other solution architects says, that this is not necessary, because the C: partition an 😧 partition and e:partition is not on a real hard disk, but on a SAN connection. It will be ok, if you define a c:partition with windows and a d:partition with oracle and sap on it, because the SAN is so fast that you must not seperate the disk load.

How do you configure your Systems with oracle ?

best rgards,

Carsten Schulz

[Former Member]

Hi,

I think, I don not understand enough from Netapp Volumes for Windows Server.

I am coming from mainframe.

I thought that I can't influence whether the data are on a phsical disk, because netapp is only providing space, not physical disks.

The server will be on a VM-ware installation, so I don't have a chance to get physical disks to this partition. I think all partitions are in the netapp filer.

regrads,

Carsten

[stefan_koehler]

Hello Carsten,

we are using no NetaApp, but a SAN environment by IBM.

We are using the following layout.

C Partition - Windows 
D Partition - "Service Partition" with programs like Tivoli Agent, TSM Agent, etc.
E Partition - All SAP related stuff
....

Why? Because of we seperate OS data from application data. This is helpful in case of recovery or by moving systems via SAN zoning. Of course you can also spread the sap related data over different disks (and partitions), but if you only have one SAN storage device and the LUNs are not located performance optimized .. so no need to. In case of a SAN storage device failure all your data is gone .. so also no need to spread the online redo logs over different partitions, etc.

> I thought that I can't influence whether the data are on a phsical disk, because netapp is only providing space, not physical disks.

Don't know how exactly it is handled by NetApp, but behind the "provided" space are physical disks. These physical disks "are formatted to LUNs" and these are mapped to the servers. So of course you can spread your workload over different disk ranks, etc.

Regards

Stefan

[Former Member]

Hi,

thanks for the answer.

I will talk tomorrow to out netapp admin.

After that I will post here again.

regards,

Carsten Schulz

[Former Member]

Hi,

what are the reasons?

Perfomance?

Clearity?

SAP recommendation?

Oracle Recommandation?

regrds,

C.Schulz

[former_member524429]

Hi,

I would do the mixing of Local Storage + SAN Storage for the same to have optimal file distributions.

Along with the suggested partition layout by Eric (as well as by SAP and Oracle) , I would add the additional stripped partition on the local Hard-disk of the Box, which will be specially used for Paging activity (Virtual Memory).

It is good to distribute all the suggested files (of different purpose) on different disks using RAID levels to deal with Data loss situation as well as to achieve higher I/O performance.

Also the RAID levels play an important role here. Storage Partition with RAID-5 level is recommended for Storing the SAP Data files (Oracle Database files). I am preferring RAID-0 level for OS executable and for SAP Executable (sapmnt) on local Hard-disks (or on SAN storage LUNs).

*Origlogs and Mirrlogs files * are very sensitive & important files (online redo log files) which contains all committed+non-committed transaction entries and which are required to deal with Instance Recovery. So they are required to store at different locations to deal with any unexpected File loss/corruption situation whenever demanded in future.

Along with the other files, the mirroring of Control files are also recommended on separate Disks location. A control file is very necessary file for the database to start and operate successfully.

Separate location for storing Offline redo-log files (ORAARCH) is recommended to deal with Media recovery which is required in performing Complete/Point-in-time Database recovery.

Regards,

Bhavik G. Shroff

[former_member204746]

even if these partitions are on a SAN, we use this layout:

C: windows

😧 executables + origlog*

E: archives +mirrlog*

F: database (all in one big partition)

[former_member204746]

C: windows

😧 executables + origlog*

E: archives +mirrlog*

F: database (all in one big partition)

you do not want OS actions to have an impact on database actions. Just make sure that all these @sdisks@ are actually on different physical disks.