Performance Impact of ZFS Encryption on Oracle Solaris

Transparent Encryption is very easy to use on Oracle Solaris.
You just need to set the encryption property when you create a new filesystem and provide a passphrase or keyfile.

On a SPARC S7 LDom we have 3 ZFS filesystems with different encryption settings.

# zfs get encryption v0123_db/plain v0123_db/encr v0123_db/encr256
NAME              PROPERTY    VALUE        SOURCE
v0123_db/encr     encryption  on           local
v0123_db/encr256  encryption  aes-256-ccm  local
v0123_db/plain    encryption  off          -
Now lets see how much is the difference in write performance if we copy a 1 GB file.

# ls -lh p25604852_1100_Solaris86-64_1of4.zip
-rw-r--r--   1 marcel   staff       1.3G Apr  7  2017 p25604852_1100_Solaris86-64_1of4.zip
#

# time cp p25604852_1100_Solaris86-64_1of4.zip /plain

real    0m8.829s
user    0m0.002s
sys     0m1.711s

# time cp p25604852_1100_Solaris86-64_1of4.zip /encr

real    0m9.229s
user    0m0.002s
sys     0m1.747s

# time cp p25604852_1100_Solaris86-64_1of4.zip /encr256

real    0m9.733s
user    0m0.002s
sys     0m1.754s

The difference is a low one digit percent value.

Performance impact is a little larger when doing a simple read test.

# time cp /plain/p25604852_1100_Solaris86-64_1of4.zip /tmp

real    0m4.216s
user    0m0.002s
sys     0m3.810s

# time cp /encr/p25604852_1100_Solaris86-64_1of4.zip /tmp

real    0m5.131s
user    0m0.003s
sys     0m5.028s

# time cp /encr256/p25604852_1100_Solaris86-64_1of4.zip /tmp

real    0m5.400s
user    0m0.003s
sys     0m5.287s

Learn more about ZFS encryption with the Oracle Solaris 11.4 ZFS Admin Guide

https://docs.oracle.com/cd/E37838_01/html/E61017/gkkih.html

Oracle Database on Solaris ZFS done right

ZFS is the default filesystem on Oracle Solaris. It is

very easy to use with the two commands zpool and zfs.

Disk management

Expand existing LUNs or add additional LUNs if you

need more space. Since Solaris 11.4 you can remove LUNs if you

want to shrink your pool.

Features

No need for filesystem checks, because of the copy-on-write

implementation. You can create snapshots and clones,

use encryption and compression. Transfer data to other

systems using send/receive or sharing.

Move the pools using export/import to other systems.

ZFS builds the base for the Solaris BootEnvironment (beadm)

where you are able to update to and boot from different Solaris 11

Updates.

ZFS is my preferred filesystem and volume manager, but

is everything perfect? No. You need to carefully configure

ZFS to avoid and work around fragmentation.

Oracle Database

You can run Oracle Database very well on ZFS and profit

from snapshots, cloning and other features. Especially

for larger databases (many TB) with lots of data changes

you should setup carefully.

Following a few Best Practices based on own experiences

and Recommendations by Oracle:

- data pool with log device / 8KB recordsize for data / logbias=latency

- redo pool with log device / 1MB recordsize / logbias=latency

- archive pool / 1MB recordsize

Add multiple LUNs for striping. Use SSDs for highest performance.

If you are using SAN increase zfs:zfs_vdev_max_pending and ssd:ssd_max_throttle to 20.

Limit the ZFS Cache (zfs:zfs_arc_max)

Make sure there is around 20% free space on the zpools.

Use a Server with 'enough' Memory.

After many years of using ZFS it always hurts, if I have

to use other more complicated filesystem ....

Links

Pool Creation Practices for an Oracle Database (Solaris 11.4 ZFS Guide)

https://docs.oracle.com/cd/E37838_01/html/E61017/zfspools-4.html#SVZFSstorage-6

Configuring Oracle ZFS for an Oracle Database Whitepaper (2014)

https://www.oracle.com/technetwork/server-storage/solaris/config-solaris-zfs-wp-167894.pdf

Oracle DB erfolgreich betreiben auf SPARC/LDoms/Solaris/ZFS     (German Presentation)

https://www.jomasoft.ch/docs/DOAG18_JomaSoft_DB_Solaris_ZFS.pdf

New Oracle SPARC and Solaris Webcasts on Demand / April 2020

Learn about the Security features and Performance of the
Oracle SPARC Servers.

Upgrade to Solaris 11.4, which includes the new Web Dashboard,
Compliance, Virtualization and much more.

Why SPARC for most demanding mixed Database workloads
45 Minutes
https://go.oracle.com/LP=89566

Oracle Solaris and SPARC Virtual Seminar
2 Hours 15 Minutes
https://go.oracle.com/LP=91258

Oracle Systems Customer Forum / June 2020

Original plan was:

Tuesday, 17 March 2020  09:00 - 17:30
A full day event in Prague (Czech Republic)

NOW postponed to Early June 2020

with Oracle Systems Engineering and Product Management onsite

Learn the benefits in 2 tracks about Oracle SPARC/Solaris and Oracle PCA
Performance Analysis, Optimizing Lifecycle, Security & Compliance,
Beating Ransomware and a lot more ...

Full Agenda
https://www.oracle.com/a/ocom/docs/dc/em/systems-customer-forum-prague-2020-web.pdf

Registration is open
https://eventreg.oracle.com/profile/web/index.cfm?PKwebID=0x720861abcd

And Prague is a very nice City !!

See you there!

New Oracle Solaris eBook is available

Read the new Oracle Solaris eBook
Oracle Solaris: The Ideal Operating System for Your Oracle Database

Available for free, eMail address registration required.

On Demand-Webcast: Oracle Solaris 11.4 - The Trusted Business Platform

In case you missed the Live Webcast about Oracle Solaris 11.4 in Mid December 2019.
Oracle has made this Webcast available on Demand

The webcast is 1 hour

My Solaris Highlights 2019

And another year nearly done. Here my highlights in the field of Oracle Solaris.

In March we at JomaSoft made our VDCF Version 7.2 available with enhancements for Solaris Monitoring and Systems Verification.

If you would like to learn more about “Oracle Solaris 11.4” which is available since August 2018
you can watch the 2 hours Oracle Virtual Seminar which was held in April by the Oracle Solaris Product Managers.

Mid May Oracle organized the “Oracle Solaris Tech Day” in Prague. This was a full day event in a nice European city. Very interesting presentations and discussions with the Solaris Engineers.

May 22th I could talk about the small, but powerful SPARC S7-2 Servers at the SOUG Day in
Olten (Switzerland). You can download the german presentation/pdf

In August I talked at the Robotron Oracle Fokustag in Wil about OS Security with Oracle Solaris.

I missed Oracle Open World in San Francisco this September, but the presentations
can be downloaded. You can find the list of Solaris/SPARC Session in my 

blog post “Solaris Session PDF of Oracle Open World 2019”
https://jomasoftmarcel.blogspot.com/2019/09/solaris-session-pdf-of-oracle-open.html

Every year in November the largest Oracle User Conference in Europe takes place in Nuremberg, Germany. The DOAG Conference: Good location, food and lots of technical sessions.
This year I could talk about the two Topics “Solaris 11.4” and “Private Cloud on SPARC”
Here the Links to the 2 german PDFs:
https://www.jomasoft.ch/docs/DOAG19_JomaSoft_Solaris_114.pdf

https://www.jomasoft.ch/docs/DOAG19_JomaSoft_PrivateCloud_SPARC.pdf

In November and December I was at 5 Locations in Germany (Hamburg, Frankfurt, Düsseldorf, München and Berlin) to present our JomaSoft VDCF Solaris Management Solution and to explain how to make Solaris Operations more efficient.

After several years in the Oracle ACE Community Oracle nominated me at the highest Level in the ACE Program as an “Oracle ACE Director”.

Now its time to relax a few days. More about Oracle Solaris in 2020. Stay tuned.
Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to all Oracle Solaris Engineers, Consultants and Admins.