3.7.0 HP StorageWorks HP Scalable NAS File Serving Software provisioning guide for Oracle HP Scalable NAS (AG513-96013, October 2009)

4 Oracle DBA: managing Oracle

databases in a NAS environment

Configuring an Oracle database for HP Scalable

NAS

NFS client I/O

Generally speaking, the best I/O performance with Oracle is achieved by using

Direct I/O (bypassing the OS buffer cache) and asynchronous I/O where possible.

For Oracle ports that support Oracle on Network Attached Storage, the init.ora

parameter filesystemio_options governs whether these filesystem features will

be used by the server.

Your choices are:

• No direct I/O or async I/O (not recommended)

• Direct I/O but not async I/O (recommended only when async is not possible)

• Both direct I/O and async I/O (recommended)

• Async I/O but not direct I/O (not recommended)

Support for these options and the values used to configure them are platform-specific.

RHEL5.x and SuSE 10 releases support async I/O and direct I/O. Certain ports of

Oracle on platforms other than Linux can support Direct I/O, but sometimes native

Operating System asynchronous I/O is not supported. In that event, you cannot

configure the database to use asynchronous I/O although HP Scalable NAS supports

it. Also, as stated in Metalink note 359515.1, due to an unpublished bug (5856342)

For more information on the filesystemio_options parameter provided fpr init.ora, see:

http://download-west.oracle.com/docs/cd/B19306_01/server.102/b15658/appc_linux.htm#sthref895

http://download-west.oracle.com/docs/cd/B19306_01/server.102/b14237/

initparams072.htm#REFRN10061

http://download-west.oracle.com/docs/cd/B19306_01/server.102/b14211/ch23_os.htm#sthref749

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