Last week Juan Loaiza introduced the latest generation of Oracle Exadata, X10M, , and with each new release comes more powerful compute power and larger flash and disk capacity. Along with all of the hardware improvements come a bunch of software enhancements that transparently accelerate your database workloads (RDMA, Smart Scan, Storage Indexes, Smart Flash Cache, etc.).
But how do you know if you are benefiting from these accelerators?
The easiest way to determine how your databases on Exadata are performing is via an Automatic Workload Repository (AWR) report, and two of my favorite Oracle experts have created step-by-step guides to help you do just that.
Cecilia Grant has written a fantastic white paper on Using AWR reports on Exadata. It provides a step-by-step guide to the Exadata performance statistics found in an AWR report and shares common challenges you may encounter and how to resolve them.
For those less familiar with Exadata, Kodi Umamageswaran(SVP of Exadata development) gave an excellent introductory talk at last year’s Oracle Database World called Transparent Performance with Exadata: What, When, How, and Why. In the session recording below, Kodi does a great job of introducing the capabilities of Exadata and how to identify those benefits using AWR to determine if you are getting all of the performance-enhancing benefits you should be.
Happy performance tuning!
