Since Oracle 11.2, Oracle provides ORION in the RDBMS binaries (in ${ORACLE_HOME}/bin). ORION – ORacle Input Output Numbers – is an I/O calibration tool allowing to simulating and testing I/O performances an Oracle database would be confronted with. ORION basically supports four kinds of database activities based on either small or large I/O. ORION can, as any respectable I/O simulation tool, generate an adapted workload using a given percentage of reads and write operations.

OLTP activity

ORION can simulate OLTP systems typically generating small random read and write activities. The I/O sizes are equivalent to the database block size (usually 8KB) and the application analyzes the following database I/O KPIs:

  • IOPS (I/O Per seconds)
  • I/O latency average (I/O turn-around time) per request

The first part of the “simple” run (option -run simple) simulates this kind of workload (only with read). ORION also provides an OLTP-like (option -run oltp) scheme in which you can specify the percentage of writes.

Large sequential read activity

ORION can also simulate large sequential I/Os which can be caused by database exports (through data pump), RMAN backup, or of course a data warehouse environment. In this case, large I/Os will be simulated (1 MB per default). These types of applications or procedures are processing large amount of data and the important KPI is the throughput in MBps (MB per seconds). In this case, ORION can simulate large I/O read or write streams.

This kind of workload requires the option “-type seq” to be set in order to simulate large sequential I/Os. The “mixed” workload through a workload “matrix” might also be used, see below.

Large random read activity

Large random I/O is another kind of workload ORION can simulate. The tool therefore simulates large I/Os stripped over several disk, allowing to simulate parallel activities. In this case, multiple large I/O streams are started against the available disks.

The “dss” run (option -run dss) simulates this type of activity.

Mixed Workload

Finally, the mixed workload allows to simulate together small random I/Os and large sequential or random I/Os. Of course, this workload type is useful for OLTP systems confronted with performance issues caused by online backups for instance. A percentage of writes can also be simulated during these tests.

The “normal” run (option -run normal) simulates mixed activity of the sort, but of course the “matrix” workload is perfectly adapted to this simulation.

ORION has one major drawback: It cannot perform a filesystem performance analysis. It was only designed to be started against devices. We tested it on raw devices, since they are not buffered as block devices.
ORION can be used to test performances of disks, luns, SAN, DAS, or even certain type of NAS (we have not tested this so far).

In order to prepare the test, first of all we have to purge the raw device(s) on which we will generate the load:

# dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/raw/raw1 bs=1k count=1000
1000+0 records in
1000+0 records out
1024000 bytes (1.0 MB) copied, 3.52424 seconds, 291 kB/s

A file containing the devices on which the load will be generated on must be created (testname.lun):

# cat simpletest.lun
/dev/raw/raw1

ORION offers a very interesting feature. Since most of the SAN have caches, there is a risk of being impacted by “cache hits” during the I/O load tests. For this purpose ORION will generate random I/O which cannot be re-used by the test in order to full-fill the SAN cache and avoid the “I/O cache hit” effect. ORION even offers the possibility to set the size of the SAN cache in order to be quite precise. If this parameter is not set, ORION fulfills per default during 2 minutes the cache with useless I/O.

In order to run a so called “simple test”, the “-run simple” option can be used. Take care that this test scheme will not mix up several types of workload. Small random I/O will be performed separated from large random and sequential I/Os. Moreover, only reads are simulated in this test scheme. Note that ORION refuses to start without a fully qualified path:

# orion -run simple -testname simpletest
 
ORION: ORacle IO Numbers -- Version 11.2.0.2.0
simpletest_20110201_1550
Calibration will take approximately 9 minutes.
Using a large value for -cache_size may take longer.
ORA-56727: orion must be invoked using its full, absolute path
orion_main: orion_spawn sml failed
Test aborted due to errors.

Once started as expected, the following output is generated:

# $ORACLE_HOME/bin/orion -run simple -testname simpletest
 
ORION: ORacle IO Numbers -- Version 11.2.0.2.0
simpletest_20110201_1551
Calibration will take approximately 9 minutes.
Using a large value for -cache_size may take longer.
Maximum Large MBPS=101.82 @ Small=0 and Large=2
Maximum Small IOPS=635 @ Small=5 and Large=0
Small Read Latency: avg=7867 us, min=1858 us, max=210500 us, std dev=4914 us @ Small=5 and Large=0
Minimum Small Latency=7867 usecs @ Small=5 and Large=0
Small Read Latency: avg=7867 us, min=1858 us, max=210500 us, std dev=4914 us @ Small=5 and Large=0
Small Read / Write Latency Histogram @ Small=5 and Large=0
Latency:                # of IOs (read)          # of IOs (write)
0 - 1           us:             0                       0
2 - 4           us:             0                       0
4 - 8           us:             0                       0
8 - 16          us:             0                       0
16 - 32          us:             0                       0
32 - 64          us:             0                       0
64 - 128         us:             0                       0
128 - 256         us:             0                       0
256 - 512         us:             0                       0
512 - 1024        us:             0                       0
1024 - 2048        us:             470                     0
2048 - 4096        us:             4863                    0
4096 - 8192        us:             19006                   0
8192 - 16384       us:             12410                   0
16384 - 32768       us:             1207                    0
32768 - 65536       us:             138                     0
65536 - 131072      us:             23                      0
131072 - 262144      us:             2                       0
262144 - 524288      us:             0                       0
524288 - 1048576     us:             0                       0
1048576 - 2097152     us:             0                       0
2097152 - 4194304     us:             0                       0
4194304 - 8388608     us:             0                       0
8388608 - 16777216    us:             0                       0
16777216 - 33554432    us:             0                       0
33554432 - 67108864    us:             0                       0
67108864 - 134217728   us:             0                       0
134217728 - 268435456   us:             0                       0

– Orion output 1 –

The output represented above shows:

  • Maximum MBPS (MB per seconds): 101
  • Maximum IOPS (I/O per seconds): 635
  • I/O latencies information

The following files are produced:

-rw-r--r-- 1 oracle dba   174 Feb  1 12:50 simpletest_20110201_1550_trace.txt
-rw-r--r-- 1 oracle dba   342 Feb  1 12:50 simpletest_20110201_1550_summary.txt
-rw-r--r-- 1 oracle dba     0 Feb  1 12:50 simpletest_20110201_1550_mbps.csv
-rw-r--r-- 1 oracle dba     0 Feb  1 12:50 simpletest_20110201_1550_lat.csv
-rw-r--r-- 1 oracle dba     0 Feb  1 12:50 simpletest_20110201_1550_iops.csv
-rw-r--r-- 1 oracle dba   982 Feb  1 12:50 simpletest_20110201_1550_hist.txt
-rw-r--r-- 1 oracle dba  3227 Feb  1 12:58 simpletest_20110201_1551_trace.txt
-rw-r--r-- 1 oracle dba  1773 Feb  1 12:58 simpletest_20110201_1551_summary.txt
-rw-r--r-- 1 oracle dba   498 Feb  1 12:58 simpletest_20110201_1551_mbps.csv
-rw-r--r-- 1 oracle dba   549 Feb  1 12:58 simpletest_20110201_1551_lat.csv
-rw-r--r-- 1 oracle dba   526 Feb  1 12:58 simpletest_20110201_1551_iops.csv
-rw-r--r-- 1 oracle dba  7033 Feb  1 12:58 simpletest_20110201_1551_hist.txt

These files contain useful information about I/O performances and have the following structure:

  • Lines represent large I/O load levels (number of outstanding large I/Os)
  • Columns represent small I/O load levels (number of outstanding small I/Os)

Since there is no small/large I/O mix up in the “simple” test, the tables stored in the generated files will have only one dimension (either one column or one row).

The file containing the throughput performances measured in MBPS (MB per second) has the following layout:

# cat simpletest_20110201_1551_mbps.csv

This comma-separated-value file contains the rates sustained by large I/Os in MBps. Each value corresponds to a data point test that used a fixed number of outstanding small and large I/Os. The number of outstanding small I/Os for a value is specified by its column header in the first row. The number of outstanding large I/Os for a value is specified by its row header in the first column.

Large/Small,      0,      1,      2,      3,      4,      5

1,  56.41
2, 101.82

In our example, the highest throughput is 101 MB/s. This value is rather weak for a SAN. The faster SANs reach up to 200 or 300 MB/s.
The I/O latency can be found in the following .csv file (simpletest_20110201_1551_lat.csv):

# cat simpletest_20110201_1551_lat.csv

 

This comma-separated-value file contains the average latency sustained by small I/Os in microseconds. Each value corresponds to a data point test that used a fixed number of outstanding small and large I/Os. The number of outstanding small I/Os for a value is specified by its column header in the first row. The number of outstanding large I/Os for a value is specified by its row header in the first column.

Large/Small,      1,      2,      3,      4,      5
0, 9478.83, 8590.16, 8097.65, 8089.16, 7866.98
1
2

The measured latency is located between 7.8 to 9.4 ms. According to several forums, the accepted I/O latency should be below 10ms. The average latency is indeed below 10ms, however 12410 (about one third) small I/Os had a latency between 8 and 16ms (see above – Orion output 1 -).

To simulate mixed up I/O workload (small random, large random, and large sequential), you have to use the following command and perform a “normal” test:

# $ORACLE_HOME/bin/orion -run normal -testname normaltest

This command might fail after a while with the following output:

# $ORACLE_HOME/bin/orion -run normal -testname normaltest
ORION: ORacle IO Numbers -- Version 11.2.0.2.0
normaltest_20110201_1654
Calibration will take approximately 19 minutes.
Using a large value for -cache_size may take longer.
Error completing 
IO(storax_aiowait)
ORA-27061: waiting for async I/Os failed
Linux-x86_64 Error: 14: 
Bad addressAdditional information: -1
Additional information: 1048576
Test aborted due to errors.

This issue is documented in the bug 9104898: “ORION FAILS WITH ORA-27061: WAITING FOR ASYNC I/OS FAILED”. According to the bug description, ORION has difficulties with Large I/Os on Red Hat Enterprise Linux Sever 5. The bug is currently under investigation at Oracle development.

It is also possible to define exactly how many outstanding small and large I/O you want ORION to simulate in parallel. For this purpose the “matrix” test should be used. In this case you specify the maximum number of outstanding small (-num_small) and large (-num_large) I/Os. You can even specify the size for the large I/O (depending on your infrastructure and future database settings):

# $ORACLE_HOME/bin/orion -run advanced -testname advancedtest -matrix max -num_small 4 -num_large 4 -size_large 512
 
ORION: ORacle IO Numbers -- Version 11.2.0.2.0
advancedtest_20110201_1740
Calibration will take approximately 26 minutes.
Using a large value for -cache_size may take longer.

To simulate OLTP activities with about 20% of writes, the following parameters might be used:

# $ORACLE_HOME/bin/orion -run oltp -testname oltp_write -write 20
 
ORION: ORacle IO Numbers -- Version 11.2.0.2.0
oltp_write_20110202_1140
Calibration will take approximately 22 minutes.
Using a large value for -cache_size may take longer.
Maximum Small IOPS=2820 @ Small=19 and Large=0
Small Read Latency: avg=8333 us, min=118 us, max=540359 us, std dev=9541 us @ Small=19 and Large=0
Small Write Latency: avg=315 us, min=217 us, max=11142 us, std dev=331 us @ Small=19 and Large=0
Minimum Small Latency=5409 usecs @ Small=4 and Large=0
Small Read Latency: avg=6685 us, min=243 us, max=202301 us, std dev=5715 us @ Small=4 and Large=0
Small Write Latency: avg=300 us, min=217 us, max=6300 us, std dev=296 us @ Small=4 and Large=0
Small Read / Write Latency Histogram @ Small=19 and Large=0
Latency:                # of IOs (read)          # of IOs (write)
0 - 1           us:             0                       0
2 - 4           us:             0                       0
4 - 8           us:             0                       0
8 - 16          us:             0                       0
16 - 32          us:             0                       0
32 - 64          us:             0                       0
64 - 128         us:             0                       0
128 - 256         us:             1                       6457
256 - 512         us:             339                     1894
512 - 1024        us:             115                     369
1024 - 2048        us:             2830                    92
2048 - 4096        us:             7105                    44
4096 - 8192        us:             16469                   11
8192 - 16384       us:             7301                    0
16384 - 32768       us:             1106                    0
32768 - 65536       us:             190                     0
65536 - 131072      us:             30                      0
131072 - 262144      us:             4                       0
262144 - 524288      us:             0                       0
524288 - 1048576     us:             0                       0
1048576 - 2097152     us:             0                       0
2097152 - 4194304     us:             0                       0
4194304 - 8388608     us:             0                       0
8388608 - 16777216    us:             0                       0
16777216 - 33554432    us:             0                       0
33554432 - 67108864    us:             0                       0
67108864 - 134217728   us:             0                       0
134217728 - 268435456   us:             0                       0

You will find the technical specifications concerning the hardware and operating system below:

# uname -a
Linux serveroracle01 2.6.18-194.26.1.el5 #1 SMP x86_64 GNU/Linux
# cat /etc/redhat-release
Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server release 5.5 (Tikanga)
EVA: HSV210 (6220). Raid level of the virtual disk is Raid 5

As a Summary

Considering all advantages and drawbacks, ORION is quite an interesting tool. However, as mentioned by several experts, this tool is mainly useful in case you are at the beginning of a project and have full access to the disk/LUN configuration. It is definitively not a good idea to overwrite some LUNs on the production environment. ORION also allows realizing test schemes that are perfectly fitted to the database behavior and offer a robust framework to compare storage vendors and storage infrastructures.