Did I mention?

That in only two short weeks that I'll be attending the Hotsos Symposium as a speaker?  It's true!  If you haven't made plans to attend, you should visit the registration page and reconsider.  There are so many reasons to go, besides me being there, that I should direct you to a sample justification that you should send in to your boss.  Or your boss' boss.  Oh and don't forget about the Training Day by Tanel Poder!

I look forward to meeting you in Dallas!

Blog spotlight follow up: Tanel Poder

The last spotlight I did was on Tanel Poder, and even though it has just been a few months he's absolutely published some gems which are worth visiting.

Did you know that it is possible for the SGA to be larger than the amount of HugePages in Linux?  It is possible and maybe you'll learn something about USE_LARGE_PAGES and SGA_MAX_SIZE too.

Tanel has introduced a new version of his ash_wait_chains script!  Looking forward to using this, and to see what's in his next version of the script too.

Want to learn more about Oracle Parallel Execution?  Click here for part one and here for part two of some very seriously in-depth articles on the topic!

Ever have to replace a hard drive for Exadata?  Tanel breaks down exactly WHY the system believes the drive has failed in a very methodical way that will be easy to replicate the next time we have an issue.  I've even picked up a few new tricks here to look at disks in a proactive manner!  Also, a great reminder that he has some webinars lined up that I know are worth signing up for.

Here is an interesting post on the difference between "cell flash cache read hits" versus "cell writes to flash cache" metrics.

Weekend Reading: Troubleshooting the Linux kernel with Tanel

In this post by Tanel Poder, he lays out very simply how one can use general commands to find out what is going on with a Linux process.  No stack dumps required, no exotic debuggers, or other tools required.  I read this months ago, and flagged it for use later because I'm looking forward to using it.  Yes, I want to have a problem in our environment so I can troubleshoot it with these techniques.  :}

Hotsos in March!

The Hotsos Symposium this year has been billed as having more than 30 speakers that are global experts in Oracle performance optimization and I can tell you that when I attended in 2012 it certainly lived up to that reputation!  Why am I telling you all this?

I've been accepted to present at this prestigious event!!  I'm so excited and just besides myself with joy!  I even have my own speaker page!!

I hope to see you there in March, or at least have you watch virtually, as the conference is very well priced (especially the already mentioned virtual option) and has some of the best speakers in the Oracle business.  I'm especially excited about the Training Day offered, this year with Tanel Poder!

Exadata cell scripts and investigative information

Closing our the spotlight for the week on Tanel Poder, are several articles on Exadata gathering more data about cells and diving into performance issues with it.  First up, Tanel shares a script which lists configurations about the individual cells and gives us some additional information about virtual CPU threads, but the best part of this are all of the links in the comments which give us even MORE information!  Secondly, Tanel hosted a free hacking session on Exadata and is exactly why you need to register to get his blog updates so you don't miss out on the next one and I think you might enjoy the PDF he shared as the basis for his hacking session because it has a few tips and tricks in it that are useful even though you weren't able to attend.

Weekend Reading: Oracle DB 11.2 Upgrade

Working on getting to the 11.2 database patch set?  Well Tanel wants us to know about a slide deck from Oracle that has over 500 pages of information in it just about this!  Awesome reading material, and something to sink your teeth into (Halloween pun intended) over this weekend.  All that AND another document link which details the behavior changes from 8.0 to 11.2 (and I'd bet it'll be soon updated for 12c too).  Have fun!

How to query Exadata's Storage Cell activity

Yesterday we learned how to go up and down the chain of disks to identify problems and information for Exadata cells, but today in our blog spotlight you'll learn from Tanel about v$cell_thread_history!  He equates this to a database ASH (Active Session History) type of table/report, but only for your cell server and apparently the last 10 minutes of activity on a heavily used cell.  Since I don't really have to dig into Exadata cell problems (yet) this script might gather some dust, but when I have some free time or see the glimmer of a problem on a single cell you can bet I'll have this in my toolkit to use when that day comes.  Another great script for Exadata!

Exadata disk mapping utilities!

Continuing our blog spotlight on Tanel, I'm always surprised by how many scripts he has created and shared with us about Exadata, wait events, performance, and just troubleshooting in general.  The first post we're reviewing today shares how to find out what your disk information is from ASM to the very storage cells of Exadata!  Going into such detail gives me several ideas for how to script out alerts which don't rely on our Oracle ASR machine to tell us when something goes out.

The second thread is very closely related to the first, but in this article he has what I'd call a quick and dirty set of scripts that allows you to see a. a lot of information at one glance and b. some very in-depth information after you've identified that something needs attention.  I'm not an Exadata DBA, but we have had some issues with disk so I'd like to keep these scripts handy for the next time we might be having problems so I can do some quick investigation and verification.

Blog spotlight: Tanel Poder

Last month during the week long 12c spotlight, I promised that I'd be including one of the authors and for the blog spotlight this month I've picked Tanel Poder!  I "met" Tanel during the Hotsos Symposium in 2012 after attending one of his sessions, and his is one of several blogs that inspired me to join the blogosphere.

In this really great article, Tanel starts by explaining what direct path reads are, why they happen (or don't) in Exadata, and introduced us to a hidden parameter that seems to be documented in My Oracle Support.  While still a dangerous choice if you don't understand what the _serial_direct_read option will do to your environment, at least now we know about it and some of the associated documentation from MOS so we can open our own SRs referencing that to make sure what would work best in our own systems.