NetBackup™ Deduplication Guide

Use Direct Network File System to improve the performance of Network Attached Storage

Direct Network File System (dNFS) provides performance improvements for Network Attached Storage (NAS) over standard NFS for Oracle Databases. Direct NFS allows Oracle software to skip the operating system's NFS client when it communicates with a storage server. Direct NFS also improves High Availability (HA) and scalability by supporting up to four parallel network paths to storage and load-balancing across these paths. These improvements result in cost savings for database storage.

To enable Direct NFS, run the following commands and restart the database instance:

cd $ORACLE_HOME/rdbms/lib

make -f ins_rdbms.mk dnfs_on

To enable Direct NFS, run the following commands and remove the oranfstab file:

cd $ORACLE_HOME/rdbms/lib

make -f ins_rdbms.mk dnfs_off

In the following directories of Direct NFS, search for the oranfstab file where the first matching entry (of the file) is the mount point. You can update the file to set up multipathing and handle other configuration details.

Use the following list of parameters to create the oranfstab file for each NFS server that you want to access using Direct NFS:

Sample output of an oranfstab file.

server:  myNFSServer1
local: 192.168.1.1 path: 192.168.1.2
local: 192.168.2.1 path: 192.168.2.2
local: 192.168.3.1 path: 192.168.3.2
local: 192.168.4.1 path: 192.168.4.2
export: /vol/oradata1 mount: /mnt/oradata1
export: /vol/oradata2 mount: /mnt/oradata2
mnt_timeout: 600

Ensure that you set up the oradism file at the following path: $ORACLE_HOME/bin/oradism. Direct NFS uses this oradism binary to issue mounts as root. The file must be local to each node and with the ownership of a root user.

To ensure that the file is local to each node, run the chown root $ORACLE_HOME/bin/oradism command. Run chmod 4755 $ORACLE_HOME/bin/oradism to ensure that the oradism file has the correct access permissions.

Refer to the contents of the following tables for client monitoring.

Ensure that Oracle 11g software or later is installed using the Oracle installer on the Windows server.

Create and configure the oranfstab file. You must add the oranfstab file in the %ORACLE_HOME%\dbs directory. Ensure that any file extension (for example, text file - txt) is added in the file name.

Configure the oranfstab as in the following way:

C:\>type %ORACLE_HOME%\dbs\oranfstab
server: lnxnfs         <=== NFS server Host name
path: 10.171.52.54 <--- First path to NFS server ie NFS server NIC
local: 10.171.52.33 <--- First client-side NIC
export: /oraclenfs  mount: y:\
uid:1000
gid:1000
C:\>

The Direct NFS client uses the UID or the GID value to access all NFS servers that are listed in the oranfstab file. Direct NFS ignores a UID or the GID value of 0. The UID and the GID used in the earlier example is of an Oracle user from the NFS server.

The exported path from the NFS server must be accessible for read, write, and run operations by the Oracle user with the UID and the GID specified in the oranfstab file. If neither UID nor GID is listed, the default value of 65534, is used to access all NFS servers listed in oranfstab file.