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Oracle Exadata Support in The Toad DBA Suite

The Toad DBA Suite for Oracle - Exadata Edition provides tools to help manage Oracle Exadata environments. It includes features that show Exadata-specific configuration options, perform health checks with Exadata-focused diagnostics, provide dashboard views of the Exadata infrastructure, and display additional details in SQL execution plans related to Exadata offloading operations. The suite helps with tasks like maintenance, tuning, troubleshooting performance issues, and understanding interactions between database and storage components in Exadata.

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82 views4 pages

Oracle Exadata Support in The Toad DBA Suite

The Toad DBA Suite for Oracle - Exadata Edition provides tools to help manage Oracle Exadata environments. It includes features that show Exadata-specific configuration options, perform health checks with Exadata-focused diagnostics, provide dashboard views of the Exadata infrastructure, and display additional details in SQL execution plans related to Exadata offloading operations. The suite helps with tasks like maintenance, tuning, troubleshooting performance issues, and understanding interactions between database and storage components in Exadata.

Uploaded by

Claudio Cmaster
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Oracle Exadata support in the Toad for Oracle DBA Suite

Oracle Exadata is a hardware and software appliance that contains everything an organization
needs to run high-performing analytic and transactional applications. Exadata hardware and
software components are integrated to improve performance and achieve high availability for OLTP
and data warehousing. It’s a complete database machine that is pre-configured with memory, flash,
disk and network bandwidth.

According to Forrester, 25% of Oracle customers currently use Exadata for OLTP, 50% for data
warehousing and 25% for mixed workloads. Forrester see these benefits for Exadata:
• Consolidation of databases to lower IT costs
• Support for any type of database workload
• Dramatically improved performance (1.5M random I/O; 5-40X performance improvement)
• Improved database manageability
• Scalability to support more throughput
(Source: Forrester Research, “Oracle Exadata Raises the Bar on Database Appliances,” May 20, 2011).

When you plan to put Exadata in place in your company, then you must be aware, that there are
some challenges like
• Specialized skills required: design, operate & manage
• Migration involves assessing requirements: expected data growth, availability, software and
support
• Understanding of interaction between storage and database
• Lack an overall/dashboard view of the Exadata infrastructure
• Performing maintenance, tuning and scaling Exadata
• Pinpointing the source of performance degradation.

So I would like to give you an overview, how Dell Software adopts Oracle Exadata and supports you
with the Toad DBA Suite for Oracle – Exadata Edition:
• Toad for Oracle DB Admin Module – Create/Alter Table Dialogue includes parameters for
Exadata, Database Health Check advises users on optimal Exadata configuration, according
to Oracle recommendations
• Spotlight on Oracle Exadata – a complete view of Exadata environment shows the
relationship between database and storage
• SQL Optimizer – includes additional information in the SQL execution plans showing
Oracle Exadata SQL offloading operations
• Benchmark Factory – perform scalability and performance testing on Oracle Exadata RACs.

Now have a deeper look on some of these features. Starting with Toad for Oracle you will see new
Exadata storage options added to the Create/Alter Table window, when connected to a database
running on an Exadata server:

TOAD DBA Suite for Oracle – Exadata Edition Side 1


In Database Health Check feature from the Toad for Oracle DB Admin Module you have several
health checks include over 34 special checks for Exadata. This feature requires access to some V$
tables. You can run the Health Check and will get settings, information, advisories and hints on your
Exadata installation and usage. You can view the results on the Report Output tab and you can also
compare the differences from the last health check on the Diff Since Last Run tab. Also you can
adjust the settings for some items by clicking Params:

Spotlight on Oracle Exadata is a real time diagnostic tool and it gives you also a great overview on
your Oracle Exadata instance, where colors guide you to the problem areas. This is the Spotlight
homepage:

The Spotlight homepage deliver this information:


− Cell Overview in terms of CPU Usage and Total Cell IO
− Latencies – for Physical or Spinning disks and those for Flash Disks

TOAD DBA Suite for Oracle – Exadata Edition Side 2


− Smart Scans – major offloading feature of Exadata
− Smart Flash Cache
− Hybrid Columnar Compression
− Cell Summary including Number of Cells,
− Cell Balance – whether one cell is working harder than others in terms of Total I/O
− Total Space available which is different to useable space given mirroring
considerations.
When you click on this homepage or using the icons, then you will get the drill-down with further
information, which help you to diagnose and resolve the problem. The drill-down of Exadata deliver
information about:
- Databases,
- ASM Groups,
- Cell Disks,
- Smart Flash Cache,
- Cell Balance
- And Cell Metrics.
Here an example for the Spotlight drill-down of Cell Disks:

SQL Optimzer for Oracle combines the process of scanning the application, classifying problem
SQL statements for action and automating the optimization process. When using Exadata, two
additional columns are displayed in the execution plan: Storage and Bloom Filter. This new
enhancement is available in all SQL Optimizer modules that display an Execution Plan. In the
Optimize SQL feature three additional columns are available for display in the Alternatives pane data
grid in SQL Rewrite and Plan Control sessions. These columns show the number of offloading
operations in the plan of each Alternative. Here you can see an example of this Exadata information:

TOAD DBA Suite for Oracle – Exadata Edition Side 3


I hope this short introduction gives you an overview how Toad DBA Suite for Oracle – Exadata
Edition can support you and also seeing your challenges with an Oracle Exadata environment.

About the Author

Udo Brede is Senior Solutions Architect Databases at Dell Software. Before joining Quest/DELL in
2001, Udo worked as a presales consultant at Compuware, supporting the File-AID products.
Currently, Udo works primarily with Dell tools for BI, Oracle, DB2 z/OS and DB2 LUW. He supports
customers across Europe and speaks at IDUG Europe and regional DB2 and Oracle user groups
meetings.

TOAD DBA Suite for Oracle – Exadata Edition Side 4

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