10 Storage Management for VLDBs

Storage performance in data warehouse environments often translates into I/O throughput (MB/s). For online transaction processing (OLTP) systems, the number of I/O requests per second (IOPS) is a key measure for performance.

This chapter discusses storage management for the database files in a VLDB environment only. Nondatabase files, including Oracle Database software, are not discussed because management of those files is no different from a non-VLDB environment. Therefore, the focus is on the high availability, performance, and manageability aspects of storage systems for VLDB environments.

This chapter contains the following sections:

Note:

Oracle Database supports the use of database files on raw devices and on file systems, and supports the use of Oracle Automatic Storage Management (Oracle ASM) on top of raw devices or logical volumes. Oracle ASM should be used whenever possible.