informix dynamic server in a linux-based environment craig szczublewski unique systems, inc....

Informix Dynamic Server in aInformix Dynamic Server in aLinux-based EnvironmentLinux-based Environment

Craig SzczublewskiCraig SzczublewskiUnique Systems, Inc.Unique Systems, Inc.

Informix User Forum 2005 Moving Forward With Informix

Atlanta, Georgia December 8-9, 2005


Section 1: Linux - A Brief History

Foundations: An operating system born of the Internet

The Current State of Linux

A Sample of Major Linux-based Distributions


Linux: A Brief History

Foundations: An operating system born of the InternetAugust 25, 1991 (comp.os.minix) by Linus Benedict Torvalds

"I'm doing a (free) operating system (just a hobby, won't be big and professional like gnu) for 386(486) AT clones..."

1998 Informix Ported to Linux,SMP Kernel work begins

1999 Compaq, HP, Dell offer Linux basedsystems, Red Hat goes IPO

2000 Suse releases supported distro forIBM S/390

2001 IBM Invests $1 Billion in Linuxdevelopment

2002 Red Hat goes commercial only, announces Fedora Project

2003 Novell acquires Suse2004 2.6 Kernel released2005 Year of migration, fast adoption rate


1991 Linux version 0.1 released (kerneland a few basic utilities)

1992 SLS, the first standalone Linuxinstall, around 10MB

1993 Slackware founded – born from SLSnow at version 10.2

1994 Linux gains notice of the press, Linux Journal founded, Red Hat 1.0

1995 Linux version 1.2 released, many new distros form

1996 Alternate ports start to appear, MIPS, Alpha, etc.

1997 First Linux “virus” discovered



The Current State of Linux

o Linux is one of the world's fastest-growing operating systems.

o Growth of 16% in 2003, 35% in 2004. Outsold all other Unix

combined in 2003, exceeded all Unix installs in 2004.

o Ported to every major hardware platform: Intel, PPC, Alpha,

Sparc, Itanium, Mainframe.

o Supported by every major hardware vendor.

o Linux: Flexibility, Security, and Reliability



A Few of the Major Linux-based Distributions

Section 2: Why IDS on Linux?


64-bit Platform Support

Wide Variety of Hardware Platforms

IBM is a leader in hardware and software offerings for Linux

Support for the version 2.6 Kernel

Processor Affinity

SNMP Agent Support

Interprocess Communication with Stream Pipes

User Configurable Page Sizes


Why IDS on Linux?

64-bit Platform Support

o Increased performance of database servers, as well as

database applications.

o 32-bit platforms have an inherent address-space

limitation of 4 Gigabytes.

o 64-bit allows for the creation of larger buffer pools, sort

heaps, package caches, and other memory consuming

items.

o End result: bigger files and more memory.


Why IDS on Linux?

Wide Variety of Hardware Platforms

o x86 (32-bit Xeon, Pentium, AMD)

Support for legacy systems

o 64-bit EM64T (x86-64), IA64 (Itanium),

AMD64 Opteron & Athlon

o Power (iSeries, pSeries, OpenPower)

o zSeries


Why IDS on Linux?

IBM is a leader in hardware and software offerings for Linux

o Invested $1 Billion in Linux development across

all platforms.

o Linux Technology Center: designed to accelerate the

enterprise growth of Linux.

o Chiphopper: ISVs can port and test Linux

applications across all IBM platforms supporting

Linux.

o Over 7,000 service professionals working with Linux.


Why IDS on Linux?

Support for the version 2.6 Kernel

KAIO - Kernel Asynchronous I/O

o Allows applications to overlap processing with I/O operations

o Processes do not need to wait for I/O requests to complete

o Supported on character and block devices (raw or cooked)

o Enabled by default

o Requires a minimum libaio of 0.3.96-3

DIO - Direct I/O

o Direct I/O is turned ON when KAIO is enabled and a 2.6.x kernel

o An alternative caching method that reduces CPU utilization

o Data is transferred directly between the user buffer and the disk

o Usually beneficial when using cooked files


Why IDS on Linux?

Processor Affinity

o Allows to bind certain processes to a CPU or set of

CPUs overriding the default system scheduler.

o Beneficial in SMP and NUMA architecture.

o Increased chance the processor cache will contain

relevant data.

o May require experimenting to realize performance

benefits.

o Recently backported to run in a 2.4 kernel environment.


Why IDS on Linux?

SNMP Agent Support

o Based on the PEER Network's SubAgent Development Kit.

o Check engine availability, chunk status, table space.

o Allows for integration into existing network and system

monitoring utilities.

o Currently limited to running on a host with only one server.

o Cannot run in conjunction with other system SNMP agents.

$INFORMIXDIR/bin/snmpdp $INFORMIXDIR/snmp/peer/CONFIG NOV$INFORMIXDIR/bin/onsrvapd -l /tmp/onsrv -g 64

(note, snmpdp is not located in $INFORMIXDIR/peer per the release notes)

Why IDS on Linux?


Interprocess Communication with Stream Pipes

o Provides: A full-duplex communication path between two processes.

o Security: Stream pipes do not pose the security risk of being

overwritten or read by other programs that explicitly access the

same portion of shared memory.

o Flexibility: Stream Pipe connections allow distributed transactions

between database servers that are on the same computer.

o Disadvantage: connections might be slower than shared-memory

connections.


Why IDS on Linux?

User Configurable Page Sizes

o Fewer (but bigger) I/O operations for data and indices

o Less internal fragmentation on pages

o Longer rows fit into a single page

o Larger data pages maximize disk scan rates

o May improve table scan performance

o Caution: Large pages do not always reduce fragmentation

Section 3: IDS Installation


Preparing Disk Space under Linux

Maintaining the Latest Packages for Your OS

Starting the version 10 installer

Post Installation Tasks With Linux


IDS Installation

Preparing Disk Space under Linuxo Partition types available (ext2, ext3, jfs, xfs) Do not use SuSE

reiserfs which has performance issues in an IDS installation.

o Raw device definitions (distribution dependent)

SuSE: /etc/raw, Red Hat-ish: /etc/sysconfig/rawdevices

o Newer releases treat raw links as deprecated. With 2.6 kernel and

KIO it should not be necessary as you can use block dev

o Most drives will support 15 partitions under Linux, some RAID

controllers will only allow for 7.

Invoke using: fdisk devname (/dev/hda, /dev/sda, etc.)

Initialize new partition using: mke2fs partname


IDS Installation

Maintaining the Latest Packages for Your OS

o For production servers, try and minimize the installed

packages which are not necessary to the server workload.

o Will probably require compat-libstdc++

o If using 2.6 kernel, make sure your libaio is at least

version 0.3.96-3 (i.e., rpm -q libaio).

o Always run vendor update routines (up2date, yum, yast)

before putting a new install into production.

o Automatic update configurations are enabled via CRON.

IDS Installation


Starting the version 10 installer

o IDS 10.0 Uses Install Shield Multi-Platform (ISMP).

o An embedded JRE is included but may not function on your

Linux platform. You may need to load your own JRE

(Blackdown, Sun, RPM?).

o Bypass the Java installer by copying the relevant .rpm

files and the install_rpm utility to $INFORMIXDIR, then

run 'install_rpm'.


IDS Installation

Post Installation Tasks With Linux

o Choose a runlevel for your installation. Set the value in the

/etc/inittab file (id:x:initdefault:)

o Conserve resources: identify what processes you need for

your installation, disable the rest! (chkconfig, service).

o Starting IDS on system boot, many ways to skin that cat

(inittab, rc.local, init.d).

o Firewall control may prevent access to your database!

(iptables/ipchains).

o Identifying archive devices (scsi/ide device names, /proc/scsi).


Section 4: IDS Configuration

Setting Linux kernel parameters

Planning Shared Memory Location

Using Kernel Asynchronous I/O (KAIO)

Setting Network Protocol


IDS Configuration

Setting Linux kernel parameters

o System Control File is /etc/sysctl.conf

Load system settings by running: sysctl -p /etc/sysctl.conf

o Quick changes can be accomplished by manipulating the /proc filesystem:

echo “67108864” > /proc/sys/kernel/shmmax

o RHEL 3 users should disable Exec Shield or set INFORMIXSHMBASE to -1

o SHMALL will probably need to be adjusted out to 4194304 as

outlined in the Machine Notes. (kernel.shmall)

o Linux SHMMAX defaults to 32MB which may be a bit weak

for some workloads, change by adjusting kernel.shmmax value.


IDS Configuration

Planning Shared Memory Location

o Executables start at 0x0 and grow upward.

o Shared Libraries start at 0x40000000.

o The Stack starts at 0xC0000000 and grows downward but will

usually not grow to a significant size.

o IDS Machine Notes recommend starting at 0x44000000 which

skips past the standard start point for shared libraries yet is

well below the stack start point of 0xC0000000.

o Try and limit or remove programs like X-Windows which can

consume shared memory unexpectedly. (check ipcs and

/proc/PID/maps or /proc/sysvipc/shm).


IDS Configuration

Using Kernel Asynchronous I/O (KAIO)

o enabled by default, disable by setting KAIOOFF=1

prior to starting the engine

o run poll threads on separate virtual processors specifying

NET as the virtual processor (VP) class in the NETTYPE

o KAIO kernel param controlled by /proc/sys/fs/aio-max-nr (default 65536)

o By default, IDS 10.0 allocates half of the maximum number

of requests and assigns them equally to the number of

configured CPU virtual processors. The environment variable

KAIOON can be used to control the number of requests allocated per

CPU virtual processor. The minimum value for KAIOON is 100.


IDS Configuration

Setting Network Protocol

o Available Network Protocols under Linux:

- Berkley Sockets: onsoctcp

- Shared Memory: onipcshm

- Stream Pipes (version 10): onipcstr

o Unless you need the security of stream pipes, you will

probably realize better performance with shared memory.


Section 5: Resource Monitoring & Performance Tuning

Disk, Memory and CPU Monitoring

Network Utilizations & Monitoring


Resource Monitoring & Performance Tuning

Disk, Memory and CPU Monitoring

o Resource Monitoring utilities under Linux:

ps – support SYSV and BSD style syntax

iostat – part of the sysstat package

top – great for at-a-glance usage of cpu/mem

vmstat – virtual memory stats

sar/sa – also part of sysstat package, enable through

CRON for better statistic collection

ipcs – shared memory monitoring


Resource Monitoring & Performance Tuning

Network Utilizations & Monitoring

o Interface Speed and Settings: mii-tool

o Traffic Snooping/Analysis: ethereal

actual binary is tethereal, can dump to a variety of formats for

import into other analysis programs (LANalyzer, Netmon, Visual)

o Real Time Statistics: iftop

o Open/Listening Ports: lsof, netstat

o Iptables is enabled by default on most installations, check settings

if you cannot connect to the database server remotely.

iptables -L -v -n

Informix Dynamic Server in aInformix Dynamic Server in aLinux-based EnvironmentLinux-based Environment

Craig SzczublewskiCraig [email protected]@uniqsys.com


Atlanta, Georgia December 8-9, 2005

informix dynamic server in a linux-based environment craig szczublewski unique systems, inc....

Documents

linux basedsystems

linux journal

linux development

o linux technology center

test linux applications

enterprise growth of

linux gains notice

o growth