Collection of links, tips and tools for running SLOB

UPDATE 20140227: I am leaving this post here for historical reference, but the version of SLOB I used while writing on it is now fully deprecated.  Please go directly to the distribution page for SLOB2 and use the information there to retrieve the latest version of SLOB and learn how to use it, as the usage and functionality have changed.  For additional tips, consider Yury’s “SLOB2 Kick start“.  Please do not attempt to use the scripts, instructions or techniques I have described here unless you are still using the old version of SLOB.  If you are still using the old version, you should not be.

This post contains a collection of various tips and tools I have found useful for running SLOB. Where possible I’ve provided attribution for where I first learned of each tip, but some items are simply common sense or have already been posted by multiple people, so I can’t be sure that I have linked every possible source. If you have a write up out there that I’ve missed that you would like linked, please let me know in the comments. I have only focused on running SLOB to test physical read performance, redo generation performance, and mixed workload read/write performance so these tips will only cover those use cases, not other potential uses like testing logical I/O performance. I would be happy to include LIO testing tips if anyone shares some in a comment.

Getting Started – Things You Need

1. First you’ll need to have an installation of the Oracle database licensed to run AWR reports.
2. Next go to the OakTable site and download the SLOB distribution, SLOB includes a simple database creation script in the misc/create_database_kit/ directory along with a README describing how to use it, or you can use your existing database. I extract the kit into my oracle user’s home directory, but you can put it anywhere.
3. You should also get the simple SLOB init.ora file for read IOPS testing and start your database with those parameters to get a quick start on testing physical read performance. If you’re using Oracle 11.2.0.3 you really should use the underscore parameters in this init.ora for accurate results.
4. Read the SLOB readme if you haven’t already.

General SLOB Tips For Best Results

1. Disable automatic generation of AWR snapshots. SLOB relies on the differences between an AWR snapshot taken at the start of the test run and another snapshot taken at the end of the test run, so if an automated AWR snapshot occurs it will throw off your results.
2. Disable backups, autotasks, resource manager, and so on. You want the database to be as idle as possible, other than SLOB. See Yury’s SLOB index page which includes these suggestions.
3. Save the awr.txt file that SLOB generates after each run so you can compare performance with previous runs. Use the awr_info.sh script included with SLOB to summarize your collected AWR reports for easy reading.
4. Review your results. Check for unexpected differences from run to run, don’t simply run it once and expect meaningful results; you want to see consistent performance to have confidence your tests accurately reflect your setup.
5. A throwaway SLOB run after creating the users with setup.sh (or bouncing the DB to change init parameters) will help with repeatability.
6. Start small, with 4 or 8 sessions, and then try again with a few more sessions to find the sweet spot with the best performance for your hardware. Once you hit a session count where performance starts to degrade, don’t bother running more sessions than that. On high-powered hardware you might be able to run 128 sessions, but a smaller server might work better with 32.
7. If you aren’t trying to test variances in your storage, keep your storage consistent from test to test. To put this another way, if (like me) you are using SLOB to test the performance of various filesystems, don’t create all your filesystems on separate LUNs. You probably don’t know how each LUN might be striped across the storage backend. Use the same LUN for every test, running mkfs as necessary to change filesystems or fdisk to reformat for raw usage. (Kevin Closson suggested this in email, I can’t find a public posting to link to.)

Physical Read Testing Tips

1. Disable Oracle IO optimization that turns your desired db file sequential reads into db file parallel reads. Kevin Closson has also recommended use of these parameters in the simple init.ora file for read testing. I consider this a requirement, not a recommendation. I already mentioned this above but it’s worth repeating.

Redo Generation Testing Tips

1. When testing M writers with N redo logs configured, preface your test with (N*2)+1 log switches followed by a throwaway SLOB run using M readers. See this tweet from Kevin Closson. This will produce more consistent results from run to run.

Read/Write Testing Tips

1. If your buffer cache is small enough (and it should be), running SLOB with zero readers and some writers will produce enough random reads to represent a mixed workload. See this comment from Kevin Closson. Including dedicated read sessions is not necessary.

SLOB Tools

1. The SLOB distribution contains a script called awr_info.sh in the misc/ directory that will summarize the most important parts of your AWR report for easy reading.
2. My SLOB.R script to interrogate SLOB awr_info.sh output in R.
3. Yury Velikanov’s SLOB On Steroids, which I haven’t yet tried but is worth a look.

Advanced Tips

1. SLOB is simple, yet powerful, and people are always finding new uses for it. So read what others write about SLOB, like Yury’s SLOB index linked above, my other SLOB posts, and posts about SLOB from Karl Arao, flashdba, Martin Bach and of course Kevin Closson himself.
2. Make mistakes and learn from them.

Further Reading

1. Added 20130220: Check out the new SLOB mind map!  Thanks to Martin Berger for the great idea.
2. Added 20130226: Lies, Damned Lies, and I/O Statistics by Matt Hayward.  While not directly related to SLOB, this is worthwhile reading for anyone involved in any sort of I/O benchmarking.
3. Added 20130320: Using SLOB for PIO Testing by FlashDBA, including a configuration-file driven SLOB harness that you will probably like more than the simple ones I put out there.