Tuning DB2 in a Solaris Environment

http://sun.com/db2
Tom Bauch
Technical Lead, IBM
Jignesh Shah
Software Engineer, Sun Microsystems
TUNING DB2 IN A SOLARIS ENVIRONMENT

Session 10792
About Tom Bauch
● Senior Consulting IT Specialist, responsible for pre-sales technical support
of IBM’s ’DB2 Universal Database on Sun Solaris’
● Currently the technical lead for the DB2 Ranger Team
● Co-author of the upcoming book DB2 V8.1 on Solaris; The Official Guide
● In 2000, was a co-author of the book DB2 in the Solaris Operating
Environment
● In 1999, helped develop and teach the UDB EEE for Windows NT course
● From 1995 through 1998, was an instructor with IBM Education and
Training, in the OS/2 and DB2 UDB curriculums, teaching OS/2 Warp and
Warp Server as well as DB2 UDB Administration on OS/2 and NT, net.data,
and the UDB Extenders course
● Been with IBM for 23 years, serving in a variety of technical support roles,
from mainframe VSE/VM, VTAM/NCP, SQL/DS, and DLI to OS/2 Warp,
DB2/2, and Warp Server; Spent 7 years on international assignment
supporting IBM systems for the US government in Europe

Session 10793
About Jignesh Shah
● IBM Certified Database Administrator—DB2 UDB V8.1
● IBM Certified Solution Designer—DB2 Content Manager V8
● Sun Certified System Administrator for Solaris 8
● Sun Certified Network Administrator for Solaris 8
● Sun Certified Programmer for the Java 2 Platform
● Sun Certified Developer for the Java 2 Platform
● Sun Certified Web Component Developer for the
J2EE Platform
● Working on tight integration and performance enhancement of DB2
on Solaris Operating Environment
● Previously worked on various ERP implementation and their
performance on Solaris and other flavors

Session 10794
Agenda
● General Considerations
● Memory Usage and Bottlenecks
● Disks and I/O Considerations
and Bottlenecks
● Tuning DB2 V8.1 in Solaris 9
● Other Stuff…

Session 10795
You Are Here
and Bottlenecks
● Other Stuff…

Session 10796
Supported Solaris Versions
● Refer to the Quick Beginnings manual and Fixpak Readme’s
for patch requirements
● DB2 UDB V6.1 is supported on the following
Solaris versions:
– Solaris 2.5.1, 2.6, 7 and 8 (Fixpak 3 and above)
● DB2 UDB V7.1 and 7.2 are supported on the following
Solaris versions:
– Solaris 2.6, 7, 8 and 9
– 32 bit and 64 bit DB version in shrink-wrap or 64 bit version
via Fixpak
– 32 bit DB tested and supported on Solaris 7, 8 in 64-bit O/S mode
● DB2 UDB V8 is supported on the following Solaris versions:
– Solaris 7, 8 and 9

Session 10797
Supported Solaris Matrix
Note 1: V6 is no longer being distributed and is only supported with a special support agreement
Solaris 2.5.1 Solaris 2.6 Solaris 7 Solaris 8 Solaris 9
DB2 V6* Build Level Supported Supported Supported Not Supported
DB2 V7.1, V7.2 Not Supported Build Level Supported Supported Supported
DB2 V8.1 Not Supported Not Supported Build Level Supported Supported

Session 10798
Kernel Settings
● Kernel settings tool (db2osconf) should
be used on the machine where DB2 will
be running for initial kernel suggestions
– Sum of all applications may be required if multiple
apps sharing the domain/server
– Restart the system (you knew that…)
– DB2 instance creation checks for certain minimum
values, and will fail if those values are not set

Session 10799
Patches
● Patches:
– DB2 Workgroup Server Edition is supported on:
● Solaris 7 (32-bit) + 107226-17 + 107153-01 + 106327-10
● Solaris 8 (32-bit) + 108921-12 + 108940-24 + 108434-03 and 108528-12
● Solaris 9 (32-bit)
– DB2 Enterprise Server Edition is also supported on:
● Solaris 7 (64-bit) + 107226-17 + 107153-01 + 106300-11
● Solaris 8 (64-bit) + 108921-12 + 108940-24 + 108435-03 and 108528-12
● Solaris 9 (64-bit)
– All should have “Recommended and Security Patches”
● The J2SE Solaris Patch Clusters are also required, and the
SUNWlibC software is required to install DB2 on Solaris
(this is included in the prerequisite patches above)

Session 107910
Installation Methods
● Two options for installing DB2 on Solaris
– Choose the code you wish to install; server,
client, connect
● db2_install
– Runs Solaris ‘pkgadd’ to install DB2
executable code
– Puts DB2 code into /opt/IBM/db2/V8.1
with option to place binaries elsewhere
– Requires root access, DB2 tailoring done
after install
– db2_install script does not get installed

Session 107911
Installation Methods
● db2setup
– Java-based GUI
– Two basic parts
● Part 1: Install DB2—uses pkgadd
● Part 2: Tailor install—creates users, groups, instances
● kernel configuration and reboot necessary
before part 2
– Requires root access, db2setup installs into
'/opt/IBM/db2/V8.1' only

Session 107912
Before You Start Looking…
● DB2 ‘out of the box’ is tuned for the
minimum required system
– Small memory machine (256 MB)
– Single disk
● Memory and I/O parameters are
optimized for that small environment

Session 107913
Configuration Wizard
● Shipped with DB2 is a ‘Configuration wizard’
– Configures database parameters for your environment
– Analyzes your system based on RAM, disk subsystems,
number of processors
– Should be run prior to starting tuning efforts
– Allows input to define maximum system resources this
database allowed to use
– Suggestions can be implemented immediately or deferred for
your evaluation prior to implementation
● Run the Configuration wizard ‘up front’ to make
your baseline appropriate for your system!

Session 107914
What Is DPF Option?
● Data Partioning Feature
– Required in order to partition your database,
– Either within a single server, or across multiple
servers
– The DPF is a license-only and does not require
any additional products on top of DB2 UDB ESE
to be installed on your database server to
support database partitioning

Session 107915
DB2 UDB ESE
Clients
CPU DB2 Server
CPU
CPU
CPU
CPU
CPU
CPU
CPU
Log
Buffers
Buffer
Pools
Prefetchers
Page
CleanersLogger
Parallel
Subagents
● Full Parallelism
– SQL and utilities
– Inter- and intra-partition parallelism
– Cost-based optimizer with
query rewrite
– Dynamic throttling based on load
● Full SMP Exploitation
– All CPUs exploited through
OS threads and processes
● Very Large Memory
– 64 bit support
– I/Os fully buffered
– Multiple buffer pools
● Highly optimized I/O
Subsystem
– Asynchronous
– Parallel I/O
– Automatic intelligent data striping
with parallel I/O
– Big block I/O
– Scatter/Gather I/O

Session 107916
DB2 UDB ESE With DPF
CPU
CPU
CPU
CPU
CPU
CPU
CPU
CPU
Log Buffers Buffer
Pools
Prefetchers
Page
CleanersLogger
Parallel
Subagents
Coordinator
Agent
CPU
CPU
CPU
CPU
CPU
CPU
CPU
CPU
Log
Buffers
Buffer
Pools
Prefetchers Page
Cleaners
Logger
Parallel
Subagents
CPU
CPU
CPU
CPU
CPU
CPU
CPU
CPU
Log Buffers Buffer
Pools
Prefetchers Page
Cleaners
Logger
Parallel
Subagents
...
Partition 1 Partition 2 Partition N
SELECT * FROM
T1,T2 WHERE…
Single Database View;
Transparent Intra- and Inter-Partition Parallelism
● Shared nothing architecture allows
virtually unlimited scalability
– Each partition owns it’s resources
(buffer pool, locks, disks, …
– Avoids common limits on scalability:
● No need for distributed lock manager
or buffer coherence protocols
● No need to attach disks to multiple nodes
● Flexible configuration
– Any number of partitions can be created
on a single physical machine (works
extremely well with NUMA architectures)
● Partitions communicate only
necessary tuples
– Using shared memory (when partitions on
same machine)
– Using high speed comm protocol (on
different machines) -e.g., VIA, GigaEthernet

Session 107917
When to Use DPF?
● Large data volume (> 200GB Raw data)
● DSS type applications
● Large volume/connections OLTP
● Enhanced Parallelism (memory,
IO— logger and tablespace)
● Need more than 4GB bufferpools in
32-bit instances

Session 107918
You Are Here
and Bottlenecks
● Other Stuff…

Session 107919
Global/Instance Memory
● Database memory
– Each 32 bit database has a 4 gig limit, about 3.5
gig usable
– Global memory use is limited by shmmax
and is ISM (pinned)
– 64 bit instance removes 4 gig memory limit
– 32 bit and 64 bit instances can coexist on the
same machine
– ‘Instance Owning’ userid is the address space
used for an instance

Session 107920
Global/Instance Memory
● Client/Agent memory
– Each connection to the database is a process
– Many functions within DB2 are processes
● Logger
● Prefetchers
● Bufferpool cleaners
● Other
– Each agent/process requires a semaphore set
– Each agent has private and shared memory
● Agent shared memory is also ISM (pinned)

Session 107924
Memory Logical View

Session 107925
Memory Bottleneck
● Not enough
– DB2 can use all the memory you can afford
– Tradeoffs are required to determine where the memory
should be allocated
– Usually memory shortage seen as a load on Solaris
(i.e., swapping)
● Swapping?
– ISM usage requires awareness of memory usage
– Review memory definitions in DB2
● Buffer pools
● sortheapthresh
● If lots of agents (processes), each has private allocation, consume swappable
memory, consider using agent pooling
– Adequate Swap?

Session 107926
Memory Bottleneck
● Slow query performance due to memory?
– Use DB2 Snapshot tool, or vendor tools to view DB2
memory usage
– Heavy sorting? Perhaps add indexes
● Memory tradeoff is usually between buffer
pools and sorting or utilities
– Can be dynamically shifted within the shared segment
to favor utilities or applications
– Off-shift memory usage can be shifted to batch
style definitions
– Multiple bufferpools allows flexibility of keeping
indexes or specific objects in memory

Session 107927
Memory Bottleneck
● Memory issues seen as slow query performance
– Use DB2 snapshot tool to see effectiveness of your
bufferpools
● Hit ratio
● Multiple bufferpools may help
● Block-based bufferpool definitions can assist in mixed workload systems
– Look for sorting going to disk (spilling) due to
inadequate sortheap
● Tradeoff between sorting memory and bufferpools
● Snapshot will indicate what your sorting activity is doing
– Check the access plan generated by the optimizer
● ‘Explain’ the queries
● Look for performance issues, index usage (or not)
● Multiple sub-agents with high levels of parallelism

Session 107928
You Are Here
and Bottlenecks
● Other Stuff…

Session 107929
Disk and I/O Considerations
● DB2 I/O and optimization
– Lots of small disks generally better than a few large disks
(same for any DB)
– SANs and Storage Subsystems are supported, but
‘Memory Cache’ in that subsystem does not necessarily
improve database performance
– DB2 optimizer is ‘I/O subsystem aware’
● Allows for access plan definition based on actual I/O
● I/O parallelism is standard, and the amount is dictated by the optimizer
● SAN/Raid Considerations
– DB2 cannot see the actual disk configuration in a SAN/Raid
implementation
– Registry settings available to provide the optimizer with the
necessary information to parallelize I/O activity against
SAN/Raid devices

Session 107930
Disk and I/O Considerations
● Disk Layout
– DB2 layout is defined at the tablespace layout
– Tablespaces are defined by ‘containers’
● One or multiple containers per tablespace; raw devices,
files, or directories
● DB2 ‘stripes’ data across the containers, in a round-
robin fashion
● Parallel/concurrent access to multiple containers is the
default, both within a single sql query and across
multiple queries
– DB2 registry parameters

Session 107931
Disk/Tablespace Layouts

Session 107932
I/O Performance
● Lots of disks
– DB2’s internal striping allows for concurrent access to
multiple disks
– Define tablespaces with containers on all disks available (?)
– Indexes can be separated from table data (in a different
tablespace)
● Tablespaces are associated with a bufferpool
– To keep an individual table in memory, put it in a
separate tablespace, and associate a separate bufferpool
with that tablespace
– Indexes and Table data can use separate tablespaces,
which can then be associated with different bufferpools

Session 107933
I/O Performance
● Logging I/O
– Database logging is a ‘synchronous’ operation
– Place the logpath on a separate physical disk (if possible)
not used by the database
– A write cache can improve performance on the log, but
insure it is equipped with a good battery backup, and the
battery is changed frequently
● SAN/RAID
– Use DB2 facilities to tell the optimizer that tablespaces are
not on single disks to enable parallel/concurrent access of
raid or SAN devices (multiple concurrent I/O operations)
– Align DB2 extents (contiguous blocks) with physical
disk stripe

Session 107934
Disk Performance
● Always know where your containers really are!
– Make a drawing of the physical disk to the volume to the mount point
– Often this layering of definitions can hide the true layout of your
disk geometry
– DB2 has an extremely efficient I/O capability, executing multiple
I/O’s in parallel, which can cause disk contention if the tablespaces
appear to be on separate disks, but behind the scenes are actually
on the same physical mechanism…
– This is true for all databases
● Use iostat to identify disk bottlenecks
– iostat -xnez 5
– Will display devices that have activity, look for disks that have high
service times or high busy indicators

Session 107935
Disk Performance
● I/O for DB2 is defined at the tablespace level
– Make sure that your containers are really on
separate disks
● If SAN or RAID, make sure there are adequate containers to
allow DB2 to perform multiple concurrent I/O operations,
or that the parallel I/O registry settings are enabled
– Containers can be added to move the I/O load
(make sure you know where they go)
– Temp space should be defined on multiple disks,
make sure they are not really the same disk behind
the scenes

Session 107936
You Are Here
and Bottlenecks
● Other Stuff…

Session 107937
New Features of Solaris 9
Exploited by DB2 V8.1 fp 4
● Projects-based Resource Pool Management
– Prelude to “Zones” which will be introduced in Solaris 10
– Uses /etc/project and /etc/pooladm.conf
– Can be set in db2nodes.cfg (in DB2 V8.1 fixpack 4)
– Uses processor bindings in background with resource pools, exploits
MPO, improves performance, eases management by reporting usage
by projects also in prstat utility (prstat -J)
● Memory Placement Optimization (U1)
– Giving preference to local memory (Sun 12000 and Sun Fire 15000)
– In/etc/system add set lgrp_mem_pset_aware=0x1
– Use projects to bind DB2 nodes to CPU Boards or use custom scripts
to bind processes to CPU board
– Improves performance by improving latency due to memory access

Session 107938
New Features of Solaris 9
Exploited by DB2 V8.1 fp 4
● Use bundled Solaris Volume Manager
(specially in SAN environment)
– Map containers to soft volume partitions using Solaris
Volume Manager (useful if you use RAID Controllers
where
it presents itself as a big LUN to DB2)
– Now you can use iostat tool to get IO rates per container
(Solaris 9 iostat tool shows all
SVM volumes also)
– Makes analyzing problems easier as you can get IO
information by containers in iostat

Session 107939
Example Tuning in Solaris 9
● Say you have a DB2 V8.1 with Solaris 9
update 3 on a single domain of a 24-way
Sun Fire 6800
● You have multiple partitions or instances
running on same physical server
● You have tuned your DB2 and Solaris
kernel parameters as advised by
db2osconf and the Configuration Wizard
● You are looking at Solaris to give you
some extra boost to your system and
make management more easier

Session 107940
Example Tuning in Solaris 9
● Use the Project database and resource
pools to manage resources for each
partitions of instances
– Uses processor bindings in background
– Exploits Memory Placement Optimization(MPO)
– Creates virtual isolation of instances/partitions
– Can now track individual project resource
consumption

Session 107941
Setting Up Projects
● Add to/etc/system to make Solaris local
memory aware
– set lgrp_mem_pset_aware=0x1
●
Modify/etc/project
– system:0::::
– user.root:1::::
– noproject:2::::
– default:3::::
– group.staff:10::::
– db1_0:5000:DB2 Instance 1 Node 0 project:db2inst1,root::project.pool=db0_pool
– db1_1:5001:DB2 Instance 1 Node 1 project:db2inst1,root::project.pool=db1_pool
– db2:5002:DB2 Instance 2 project:db2inst2,root::project.pool=db2_pool
● To identify your current project
– $ id -p

Session 107942
Setting Up Resource Pools
● Create a pool.host text file
– create system myhost
– create pset pset_default (uint pset.min = 1)
– create pset db0_pset (uint pset.min = 4; uint pset.max = 4)
– create pool pool_default (string pool.scheduler="TS"; boolean pool.default = true)
– create pool db0_pool (string pool.scheduler="TS")
– associate pool pool_default (pset pset_default)
– associate pool db0_pool (pset db0_pset)

Session 107943
Setting Up Resource Pools
● Creating pool configuration
– # /usr/sbin/poolcfg -f pool.host
● Activating pool configuration
– # /usr/sbin/pooladm -c
● If you need to deactivate the configuration
– # /usr/sbin/pooladm -x
● Use the following to view your active pool
configuration
– $ /usr/sbin/pooladm

Session 107944
Setting Up DB2 to Use Projects
● Need DB2 V8.1 fixpack 4
● You can set the project information
in db2nodes.cfg (Solaris 9 only)
● The modified db2nodes.cfg format is
– nodenum hostname logical port netname
projectName
● Example of db2nodes.cfg for db2inst1
– 0 myhost 0 myhost db1_0
– 1 myhost 1 myhost db1_1
● Now when you start db2inst1, node 0 starts in the
db1_0 project while node 1 starts in the
db1_1 project

Session 107945
System View
Sun Fire 6800 (24 CPU)
Project db1_0:
4CPU
DB2 Inst 1 DPF
Partition 0
Project db1_1:
4CPU
DB2 Inst 1 DPF
Partition 1
Project db2:
4CPU
DB2 Instance 2
Project db3:
4CPU
DB2 Instance 3
Project db4:
4CPU
DB2 Instance 4
Project default:
4CPU
Everything else
Note:This is just an example and not an actual recommendation for Sun Fire 6800.
Actual distribution should consider all applications running on the system.

Session 107946
Monitor Resources
● Use following tools to narrow your search
– prstat -J (or drill down using prstat -J -j db1)
– vmstat 5 (check total memory consumption)
– iostat -xnez 5 (narrow down to the containers)
– lockstat sleep 5 (as root to get kernel
locking statistics)

Session 107947
Basic MonitoringMemoryUtilizationBySystem
Sun Fire 6800 (24 CPU)
Project db1_0:
4CPU
DB2 Inst 1 DPF
Partition 0
Project db1_1:
4CPU
DB2 Inst 1 DPF
Partition 1
Project db2:
4CPU
DB2 Instance 2
Project db3:
4CPU
DB2 Instance 3
Project db4:
4CPU
DB2 Instance 4
Project default:
4CPU
Everything else
IO Utilization by DB2 Container
CPU Utilization by Projects
BasicLockstatBySystem

Session 107948
What Does prstat Tell You?
● Using prstat -J and prstat -J -j projname
you can get the relative CPU usage by
each project
● It will show you relative memory
consumption too but it will add up
to more than 100% (shared memory)
● This will give a global view w.r.t.
projects which in this case will represent
DB2 nodes (or instances) and the default
system activity

Session 107949
What Does vmstat Tell You?
● You need to monitor the free swap and
free memory space primarily
● If you cannot explain the used memory
then try using db2mem to analyze
memory usage
● If excessive paging is occurring in system
(HINT: If you are using INTRA_PARALLEL = NO then try setting
SHEAPTHRES_SHR to a small value like 250 since SORT will be done
in client private memory anyway)

Session 107950
What Does iostat Tell You?
● Containers having I/O problems
● Imbalance in Containers IOPs
● Containers can be traced back to the
tablespaces and can give an indication of
which database and the tables related to
the tablespace could be having problems
(HINT: If you are use Solaris Volume Manager’s soft partitions
to map to each DB2 containers then you can use iostat to monitor
each containers separately and trace it back to DB2 Tablespace)

Session 107951
What Does lockstat Tell You?
● Any reader/writer blocks going on
(very expensive—need to be resolved)
● Any excessive adaptive mutex spins
going on (If it is DB2 related, try to
control using DB2SPINLATCHES
registry value)

Session 107952
What to Do Next?
● Take a baseline number
● Compare your current readings and
baseline number
● If current readings are better than
your baseline number update your
baseline number
● Iteratively try one change at a time

Session 107953
Things to Try on DB2
● Make sure db2set contains
– DB2_STRIPED_CONTAINERS=ON
– DB2_PARALLEL_IO="*"
● Use DB2 monitor switches if you doubt
any DB2 record locking issues
● Refer the DB2 manual to tweak the right
tuning parameters according to the
output of “snapshots”

Session 107954
Things to Try on Solaris
● If you are using DMS on UFS try the
“forcedirectio” mount option (use
lockstats to verify the difference too)

Session 107955
You Are Here
and Bottlenecks
● Other Stuff…

Session 107956
How Can We Influence DB2
Optimizer Without Hints?
● Using DB2 parameters
● Available memory
– To sort
– To read and write data
– To maintain consistency (lock)
● Expected number of concurrent queries
● Hardware characteristics
– Processor speed
– Communication speed
– Disk speed
● Eventually, desired parallelism
– Parallel limits
– Parallel defaults
– Parallel deactivation
● Sophistication for optimization
– Optimization level

Session 107957
How Can We Influence DB2
Optimizer Without Hints?
● Database layout
– Tablespace design
– Table constraints
– Table alteration
● "Volatile" (favor index scans)
● No row locking
– Table partitioning
● Enabling/disabling special features
– Sort algorithm
– Correlation detection
– Search algorithm for varchar
– ...
● Collecting statistics
– RUNSTATS
● There are no hints in DB2!

Session 107958
Other Good Stuff…
● Setting up projects and resource pools in Solaris 9
– http://docs.sun.com/db/doc/817-0204
– http://docs.sun.com/db/doc/817-0204/6mg168bsn?a=view
● www.redbooks.ibm.com
– DB2 UDB V8.1 Performance Tuning Guide
– DB2 UDB V8.1 Porting Guide
– Migrating to IBM Replication Solution (from Sybase)
– Migrating to DB2 UDB V8.1 in a Visual Warehouse Environment
– ESS Solutions for Open Systems Storage: Compaq AlphaServer, HP,
and SUN
● DB2 on Sun Install Guidelines whitepaper—contact
Ranger Team
– DB2sun@us.ibm.com

Session 107959
Other Good Stuff…
● Papers
(http://www7b.software.ibm.com/dmdd/library/techarticle/)
– Clustering with Sun Cluster:
www.ibm.com/software/data/pubs/papers/suncluster/suncluster
.pdf
– Clustering with Veritas:
http://www.ibm.com/support/manager.wss?rs=71&rt=0&org=SW
&doc=1045033
– Quick Reference for Tuning:
http://www7b.software.ibm.com/dmdd/library/techarticle/0205p
arlapalli/0205parlapalli.html
● Free download of 2-day “FastPath to UDB for
Experienced DBA’s” Course
– http://www-3.ibm.com/software/data/education/ct28v8.html

Tom Bauch
bauch@us.ibm.com
Jignesh Shah
j.k.shah@sun.com
TUNING DB2 IN A SOLARIS ENVIRONMENT
http://sun.com/db2

Tuning DB2 in a Solaris Environment

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