Oracle-Ninja.com Andy Colvin's Oracle Blog

Exadata Diskgroup Planning

As business has picked up since OpenWorld (didn't think that was possible, but that's another story for another day), we have been seeing more customers adopt or seriously look at Exadata as an option for new hardware implementations.  While many will complain that there isn't enough room for customization in the rigid process of configuring an Exadata system, there are still many possibilities to make your Exadata your own, whether it's during the initial configuration phase or shortly thereafter.  Of course, some of these modifications can be difficult to implement after the system is up and running with users logging in.  I'm planning on starting a series of posts regarding a couple of the hot-button topics with regard to Exadata configuration - ASM diskgroup layout (the topic for today), role separated vs standard authentication, and so on.  As these topics have no right answers, I'm more than open to a dialogue where you may disagree.  On to the good stuff!

A Quick Primer - The Exadata Storage Architecture

Ok...so we're looking at Exadata specifically in this post.  In the examples listed below, we'll discuss a quarter rack, since it's the easiest to diagram.  To expand to half or full racks, just adjust the number of cells (7, 14) and disks (84, 168) accordingly.  To see the relationship between the compute nodes (database servers), Infiniband switches, and storage servers refer to figure 1:

Figure 1 - Exadata Infiniband/Storage Connectivity