AMIS is spending a lot of effort keeping our people up-to-date with the latest knowledge needed to help our customers the best way we can. Traditionally we also always try to share our knowledge with customers and others, via social media or conferences, and while abroad learning from others at the same time. It is not always possible to go to those international events to learn from the best, so that’s why we invite, from time to time, those special people over here in Holland. After being able to organize special sessions with Oracle ACE Directors Doug Burns, Pete Finnegan and others, I am now honored to announce a two day masterclass with Oracle ACE Director James Morle on Thursday 6th and Friday 7th of June 2013.
Oracle ACE Director James Morle
Database administrators, architects and others, know how big the impact on performance is when the underlying architecture and storage structures are not optimal. More and more database administrators are confronted with, relying on or are responsible for technologies like Oracle Automatic Storage Management (ASM), Cluster configurations, SAN of NAS storage, Oracle dNFS, etc. 
So it is of utmost importance to have a good understanding of these methods to avoid problems and get the best performance while applying those techniques. That is why we asked James Morle to give his masterclass on site, as being one of the best out there understanding and teaching about these Oracle related techniques.
Besides being one of the founding fathers of the OakTable Network and being awarded by Oracle as Oracle ACE Director, he is also a frequent blogger on his company website and author of several books, articles and whitepapers over the years regarding storage and connection management.
More information can be found on James’ company website www.scaleabilities.co.uk or on the OakTable Network member info site
Understanding Storage Masterclass
If you would like to gain a better understanding about the storage tier, make sure to attend this two-day masterclass by James Morle. The seminar is focused on the component of the database platform that is probably the least understood—the storage tier.
The storage tier is often shrouded in mystery, frequently managed by other teams, and more often than not performing very badly. This seminar aims to deconstruct the storage tier and demystify the operation of the myriad components within it. Starting with the moment Oracle determines a need to go to disk until that requirement is fulfilled, we look in detail at all the processes and technology that lie in between. You will also learn some vital theory topics to help you gain a better understanding of what you can expect, and specific nuts and bolts explanations of how an I/O request is requested and serviced in many different configurations. As well as static slides, we will look at some examples of Oracle doing I/O and show some diagnostic techniques so that you can find out what is happening in your specific case.
Objectives
- Understand the theory and practice of I/O.
- Understand the components that interact to comprise and I/O.
- Learn to break open the black box and troubleshoot I/O performance problems.
- Be able to make informed decisions about designing storage systems for Oracle databases.
Structure
Day One:
The first day is the ‘theory day’. It is vital to understand this theory in order to make informed decisions about architecture and performance diagnostics.
- Unit 1 – Fundamentals: The Memory Hierarchy, Latency, Bandwidth
- Unit 2 – Connectivity: Fibre Channel, Ethernet, SAS, SATA, PCIe, Infiniband
- Unit 3 – The Physics of Disk Storage
- Unit 4 – The Anatomy of a Storage Array
Day Two:
The second day is more practical, and you are welcome to bring along your laptop (with Oracle installed) if you want to try some of the diagnostic techniques presented here.
- Unit 5 – The Server View of I/O: How does the Operating System issue and report on I/O (Linux/UNIX based)
- Unit 6 – How Oracle Performs I/O, part one: Direct I/O, Async I/O, Oracle I/O request types by process, buffered I/O, direct path I/O
- Unit 7 – How Oracle Performs I/O, part two: ASM internals, Direct NFS
- Unit 8 – The Latency Revolution: Flash storage and emerging technologies
Note: This masterclass is constantly being developed and improved and the exact content is subject to change.
Pre-order information
If you are interested in this 2-day Masterclass and/or want to pre-order, then you can send a mail to Wieteke Gaykema. The price for this 2 day Masterclass with James Morle, to be held on the AMIS premisses in Nieuwegein, will be 1195 Euro‘s (lunch and training materials included). The course will be given in English. Available seats for this Masterclass will be limited, so be on time.
If you register before the 4th of April, the “early bird” price for this 2 day Masterclass will be 1095 €.
More follow-up information about this Masterclass and/or direct registration details will follow shortly.
