ASE110 Using Adaptive Server Enterprise on Linux

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ASE110 Using Adaptive Server Enterprise on Linux
Patrick Pan Zhang LuPrincipal DBA
panptrck_at_aol.com / zhanglu9_at_aol.comAugust, 2003
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ASE110 Using Adaptive Server Enterprise on Linux

• Why Linux?
• Emergence of Red Hat 2.1 Advanced Server
  Operating System
• High performance Commodity CPUs
• Sybase ASE 12.5.0.3 and Replication Server 12.5
• Easily adaptable by DBA/SA who works with UNIX
• Total Cost of Ownership (TCO)

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ASE110 Using Adaptive Server Enterprise on Linux

• Why Red Hat 2.1 Advanced Server?
• Enterprise-focused release cycle. Major Red Hat
  Enterprise Linux releases scheduled every 12-18
  months. This provides Independent Software
  Vendors (ISVs) a common, stable platform, and
  allows customers to effectively plan migrations
  and upgrades.
• Asynchronous I/O support Applications no longer
  need to pause after issuing read I/Os until they
  are complete.
• Increased SMP granularity Particularly in the
  SCSI I/O subsystem. Permits increased I/O
  throughput on SMP systems with multiple I/O
  adapters.
• SMP Scheduler enhancements Support process-CPU
  affinity. Improves performance by increasing the
  CPU cache hit-rate and greatly reducing spin lock
  contention in SMP systems.
• Bounce Buffer Elimination Drastically reduces
  I/O-related memory copy operations in large
  memory systems (gt1GB memory).
• Linux Standard Base (LSB) interface conformity
  Supports industry-wide Linux API standard.

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ASE110 Using Adaptive Server Enterprise on Linux

• High performance Commodity CPU
• The Intel Xeon Processor is designed
  dual-processor servers and workstation platforms.
  It features innovative technologies such as the
  Intel Netburst Microarchitecture and
  Hyper-Threading Technology. Intel Xeon
  processor-based systems offer outstanding
  platform dependability, value and versatility
• 4-way Intel(R) Xeon (TM) CPU 2.00GHz with 256K L2
  cache
• 2-way Intel(R) Xeon (TM) CPU 2.80GHz with 512K L2
  cache
• In the near future, a wider adoption of The
  Intel Itanium 2 processor is likely

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ASE110 Using Adaptive Server Enterprise on Linux

• Sybase ASE 12.5.0.3 and Replication Server 12.0
• Supports Async I/O
• Larger Memory Support (max total memory 2.7G)
• Supports Raw Devices
• New Monitor Tables (alternatives to sp_sysmon and
  monitoring server)
• Sampling for update statistics
• Allows multiple tempdbs
• Housekeeper Enhancements
• Faster checkpointing

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ASE110 Using Adaptive Server Enterprise on Linux

• Easy to Adopt
• Most DBA scripts/utilities work on both Unix and
  Linux
• Commands are the same (ie. ls, cd, etc.)
• Change is transparent to end-user

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ASE110 Using Adaptive Server Enterprise on Linux

• How to Implement?
• OS Redhat Advance Server 2.1 Kernel 2.4.9 e.12
• Volume Manager Veritas Volume Manager and LVM
  both work
• ASE / Replication Server ASE 12.5.0.3, Rep 12.0
• Korn Shell is recommended.

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ASE110 Using Adaptive Server Enterprise on Linux

• How to allocate 2.7G memory?
• 2.7 G total memory was achieved by changing
  mapped_base for current process
• /bin/echo 268435456 gt /proc//mapped_base
• Sybase binary is loaded to 0x100000 in this
  case.
• Monitor Server must be started using the same
  method

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ASE110 Using Adaptive Server Enterprise on Linux

• Which Async library to choose?
• ASE server is boot up using KAIO by default. In
  our environment, Server will not stay up and
  crashes repeatedly.
• Posix Thread works well with our environment.
• Traceflag T1630. This trace flag forces server
  to use Posix Async I/O
• In ASE 12.5.0.3 ESD 1 EBF 10980, Support for
  (Run Time) Posix Async disk I/O is listed as new
  feature and officially supported by Sybase

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ASE110 Using Adaptive Server Enterprise on Linux

• How to check what Async library is being used?
• Check server errorlog when server is booting up.
• Posix
• 0000000000002003/01/17 120912.78 kernel
  Enabling (RT) Posix asynchronous disk I/O
  strategy.
• KAIO
• 0000000000002003/02/24 110926.52 kernel
  Enabling Linux Kernel asynchronous disk I/O
  strategy.

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ASE110 Using Adaptive Server Enterprise on Linux

• How to use raw device?
• Raw device support Typical Sybase installation
  uses /dev/raw/rawXX as a raw device. In a SAN
  environment, Sybase installation program can not
  identify these devices and fails.
• The workaround is to access these devices
  directly instead of using the /dev/raw/rawXX.
• With Linux there are no real character based
  devices. (In UNIX, a raw device is a character
  based device. )
• Conclusion Use the block devices created by
  volume manager

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ASE110 Using Adaptive Server Enterprise on Linux

• Other Issues?
• Korn Shell is not included in the default Red Hat
  installation. In order to make Linux environment
  as similar as possible to UNIX, freeware korn
  Shell rpm was installed. It runs as expected.
• Ulimit nofiles(descriptors) 1024Number of file
  descriptors. it seems other settings are not
  working while doing installations.
• Replication server Installation program will not
  work on raw partition. Workaround is to create
  partition on regular file first. When
  installation finishes, add more partitions on raw
  devices

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ASE110 Using Adaptive Server Enterprise on Linux

• Testing Application
• We developed a benchmark based upon an existing
  production application to measure the amount of
  processing that can be achieved for an OLTP
  system. The application was chosen as benchmark
  due to its nature of transactions and high CPU
  requirements. We will use these measurements as
  a benchmark for decision making. This report
  explains various steps and system requirements to
  conduct a benchmark for a Linux box.

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ASE110 Using Adaptive Server Enterprise on Linux

• Server Setup
• Block size 4k
• Default Data cache 2000 M
• Number of Engines Number of CPU
• Procedure cache size 500 M
• Six databases
• Data Row locking is used to avoid deadlocking
• Seventy-two connections to server
• Turned on truncate log on checkpoint
• Duration of Run 1 hr

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ASE110 Using Adaptive Server Enterprise on Linux
Test Lab
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ASE110 Using Adaptive Server Enterprise on Linux
Hardware
Hostname Model CPU CPU Speed (MHz) L3 Cache Memory
tstdel01 Dell 6650 4 x Intel XEON MP 2000 2 MB 16 GB
tstibm01 IBM x440 4 x Intel XEON MP 2000 2 MB 16 GB
tstegn01 Egenera Bladeframe 4 x Intel XEON MP 2000 2 MB 12 GB
tstegn10 Egenera Bladeframe 2 x Intel XEON MP 2800 512 KB 6 GB
HP HP RP7400 4 750 4 GB
SUN SUN Fire 880 4 750 4 GB
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ASE110 Using Adaptive Server Enterprise on Linux
Hardware ( cont.)

• Storage EMC CLARiiON CX600
• Storage Switch Brocade Silkworm 2800 16 Port
  1Gig Fiber Channel

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ASE110 Using Adaptive Server Enterprise on Linux
OLTP Test Results
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ASE110 Using Adaptive Server Enterprise on Linux
OLTP Test Results (continue)
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ASE110 Using Adaptive Server Enterprise on Linux
OLTP Test Results (continue)
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ASE110 Using Adaptive Server Enterprise on Linux
OLTP Test Results (continue)
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ASE110 Using Adaptive Server Enterprise on Linux

• Conclusion
• Functionality wise, Sybase works as well on Linux
  as Unix per our testing.
• All Intel based machines performed about the
  same.
• 2-Way faster (2.8GHz) host performed about half
  transactions of a 4-Way slower (2.0GHz) host
• HP performed the best
• 4-Way Intel based Linux servers can match 4-Way
  Unix servers, sometimes even better
• TCO is lower than the enterprise Unix platform