In a previous blog post, I talked about designing your RAC implementations with N+1 redundancy. This ensures the loss of a node does not overwhelm the remaining nodes should one node fail. Today, I’m going to discuss the impact of server consolidation, specifically CPU cores, and its potential N+1 impacts.
One of the main systems I work on today is a four node Oracle RAC cluster. Each nodes has 4 cores. I am licensed for all 16 cores (4 cores/node * 4 nodes = 16 total cores) in my environment. I designed this system with N+1 redundancy. If I lose a node, and lose 4 cores, I’m still good because my workload demands only require 12 cores to maintain normal, acceptable levels of performance.
When this system was initially designed, 4-core servers were commonplace. Today’s environment is different and it is getting harder to find 4-core servers. They still exist, but hardware vendors are pushing systems with greater core counts.
In a conversation with my SysAdmin recently, he wanted to order 6-core systems to replace our 3-year old servers. Well we can’t simply do that. My Oracle license is for 16 cores. I could deploy three 6-core systems, but then I’d have a total of 18 cores in the cluster and I’d need to be 2 more cores worth of Oracle licenses. If I deployed two 6-core systems, I’d have a total of 12 cores and have 4 cores worth of licenses sitting unused.
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At this point, my SysAdmin thought he had a good idea…we could buy two 8-core servers. That’s still 16 total cores and exactly what we are licensed for today. No increase in license fees. But if we lose a node, we go down to 8 total cores in operation which is less than I need. This brings up a very good point…
…Increasing the core count on your servers can have detrimental impacts on your N+1 redundancy.
Right now, there is no easy answer. We can still buy 4-core servers so that’s what we’ll replace the current ones with next year. But there will come a day when 4-core servers are impossible to find. We’ll need to have a plan in place by that time, keeping in mind our N+1 design goals.
If only I could hard-partition our Linux servers and let cores sit idle and still be in compliance with our Oracle license agreements.
