Summary
Intelligent storage arrays with hardware RAID and advanced configurational options have moved volume management intelligence into the storage solution, thereby decreasing the reliance on software volume management. Solaris Volume Manager software is able to match Veritas performance and does not require additional license fees. This makes Solaris Volume Manager software a compelling choice for software volume management.
The following list summarizes the key performance best practices for the Solaris Volume Manager software.
Avoid software striping Hardware striping is superior in performance and avoids the split I/O problem.
Make software stripe width large compared to the I/O size A large stripe width helps decrease the probability of splitting I/O.
Align soft partitions on stripe boundary If soft partitions are used on top of a striped meta device, make sure they are aligned to avoid splitting I/O.
Limit the number of meta devices when striping Do not correlate Veritas subdisk concepts when creating a Solaris Volume Manager layout.
Avoid software RAID 5 Use hardware RAID 5 or software mirroring instead.
Increase I/O size when resyncing meta devices The default I/O size is too small, resulting in a longer resync time.
Use Sun StorEdge Traffic Manager to increase availability and throughput.
Use an 8-Kbyte database block size for Oracle data files on UFS The Solaris OE uses only an 8-Kbyte I/O on file systems. If a smaller block size is used, extra I/O to read, modify, then write would occur on writes. Mounting with direction or using init.ora parameters can get around this, but requires careful planning.