micropartition a db2 server?

[vaportrail]

We are implementing 2 new p570s for db2. We want to micropartition them but can only use 1 vio server each because of our disk architecture. We will have sets of 3 disks from the san with raid 0 on each partition os so this precludes using multiple vio servers.

Will the vio server be a significant bottleneck for 3 active db2 partitions? IO is the primary concern. Our current p570s use dedicated hardware and only experience io bottlenecks. Cpu and memory are good. Layer 8 (political) issues requre the seperation. Current performance is adequate with 3 databases sharing the same physical disks. The current servers are 4way with dual 2GB hbas to ds4400 sans. The vio servers would be the same.

 

[jstacey]

I am running a pair of p510Qs as test servers with 3 LPARs each running Oracle plus a VIO server to share ethernet and fiber channel disk. My DBA's think that these are 6 physical servers.

We have not seen I/O bottlenecks at all. When ordering these boxes my IBM sales rep recommended each LPAR have it's own fiber channel connection to the SAN if we would have high sustained I/O on more than one LPAR.

Personally I have found that sharing ethernet is a resource hog on the VIO server, fiberchannel is not greatly impacted by VIO.

The only way to know for sure is to test the config in your environment.

 

[vaportrail]

That's good to know. I am planning on testing this config. I will present entire hdisks to the partitions rather than logical volumes. I hear this helps a lot. Network IO is only high during backups. I'm also getting a quote for a D20 and enough hbas to give each partition its own path to the san. I hope this isn't necessary but we'll see.

Thanks for your time.

chuck