Improving Oracle OLTP database performance with Dell Fluid Cache for DAS
Executive summary
With increasing capacity and more affordable prices, the very fast, low-latency, flash-based Peripheral Component Interconnect Express (PCIe) Solid State Devices (SSDs) are finding a place in modern enterprise data centers. As a result, many enterprise hardware companies have begun to integrate and offer these PCIe SSDs in their commodity servers. One of the ways to leverage these server-side PCIe SSDs is by using a host-based caching software that can cache the application workloads and thereby accelerate performance. This method can provide an excellent solution to overcome the performance bottleneck of an existing traditional spinning disk-based storage solution. Alternatively, this method can provide an excellent solution for new environments looking for very low-latency application performance. Dell Fluid Cache for DAS (Fluid Cache) is a new host-based caching solution that combines the Fluid Cache for DAS software with ultra-high speed Dell PowerEdgeTM Express Flash PCIe SSDs to create a high-performance cache within the server itself.
This paper provides a reference architecture of the Fluid Cache based storage solution and demonstrates how the performance of an online transaction processing (OLTP) database can be accelerated using this solution. The study compares the performance of the Fluid Cache based storage solution to a traditional hard disk drive (HDD)-based storage solution used as the baseline configuration.
The key performance improvement findings from this study show that the Fluid Cache based solution compared to the baseline configuration
- Delivers approximately 60% more transactions per second (TPS)
- Delivers approximately 95% improvement in average response time (ART) at 3100 user load
- Supports approximately 34% more users while delivering two seconds or less ART