Considerations and best practices for deploying the Oracle database

If you choose to use an Oracle database you must provide an Oracle instance. To enable scalability and load distribution, BMC recommends that you install the Oracle instance on a host separate from the BMC TrueSight Infrastructure Management Server. The following topics describe options and recommendations for deploying an Oracle database instance for Infrastructure Management:

Support for multiple Infrastructure Management servers in a single Oracle instance

In Infrastructure Management, multiple BMC TrueSight Infrastructure Management Servers can be supported on a single Oracle instance. This is accomplished by creating/allocating separate Oracle schemas in the single Oracle instance, one for each server. Database resources and sizing of the Oracle instance SGA must be increased to support this scenario. The following diagram illustrates how multiple BMC TrueSight Infrastructure Management Servers can share a single Oracle instance. 

Shared Oracle instance with multiple BMC TrueSight Infrastructure Management Servers

Sharing an Oracle instance with BMC TrueSight Reporting

Similarly, multiple BMC TrueSight Reporting instances can share the same Oracle instance, as shown in the following diagram.

Shared Oracle instance with BMC TrueSight Reporting

In previous releases of Infrastructure Management, each instance of both the server and BMC TrueSight Reporting components required a dedicated Oracle instance. (This assumes Oracle was the chosen database and not SAP SQL Anywhere.)

Oracle HA recommendations

 BMC recommends leveraging Oracle RAC for database high availability.

Disk subsystems and database performance best practices

The performance of the disk subsystem used for the database can significantly affect the scalability of your system. To optimize performance, BMC recommends the following guidelines:

• Use RAID 10 or 01 on larger Infrastructure Management installations to better satisfy the higher demands on write I/O operations. BMC does not recommend using RAID 5.
• Use SAN on medium and large deployments.
• Use a larger number of physical disk drives (spindle count) than capacity disks. Because disk drive throughput performance has not increased at the same rate as disk capacity, you can achieve better performance with smaller disks.
• For large environments, run a defragmentation process on the database file every six months.
• Avoid extending raw data retention past recommended guidelines because this can impact I/O performance. For recommended guidelines, see the following topics:
  • Sizing charts and guidelines for data and event management environments
  • Sizing charts and guidelines for event and impact management
  • Sizing chart and guidelines for the BMC Cloud Lifecycle Management integration
  • Frequently asked questions (FAQ) about performance and scalability
• BMC performance testing for sizing was performed on UNIX and NTFS file system. Performance problems were observed using Veritas file systems, and BMC does not recommend those file systems for large deployments. For information about database performance benchmarks and tuning recommendations, see the following topics:
  • Performance benchmarks and timing for data and event management operations
  • Performance tuning recommendations for data and event management
  • Performance benchmarks and timing for event and impact management operations
  • Performance tuning recommendations for event and impact management

Additional best practices for deploying the Oracle database

The following are additional best practices when deploying Oracle as the database platform for the Infrastructure Management Server:

• Physically co-locate the BMC TrueSight Infrastructure Management Server and the database server on the same subnet.
• Use Oracle Data Guard for disaster recovery.
• Use Oracle Storage Area Network (SAN).

Related topics

Sizing and scalability considerations and best practices

Supported databases and Web consoles system requirements

Deployment use cases and best practices

Network ports

Best practices webinars