Now that I am able to aggregate SytemTap probes by Oracle database, let’s focus on I/O and Network Traffic.

For this purpose a new SystemTap script (traffic_per_db.stp) has been created and has been added into this github repository.

traffic_per_db

This script tracks the I/O and Network traffic per database and also groups the non database(s) traffic.

Usage:

$> stap -g ./traffic_per_db.stp <oracle uid> <refresh time ms> <io|network|both>

Output example (I/O only):

$> stap -g ./traffic_per_db.stp 54321 5000 io

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
|                                                          I/O                                              |
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
                                  READS                     |                     WRITES                    |
                                                            |                                               |
                       VFS                    BLOCK         |          VFS                    BLOCK         |
            | NB                 KB | NB                 KB | NB                 KB | NB                 KB |
            | --                 -- | --                 -- | --                 -- | --                 -- |
BDTS        | 6203            49280 | 0                   0 | 11                 64 | 12                128 |
NOT_A_DB    | 45                  3 | 0                   0 | 15                  2 | 0                   0 |
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

For this example the database files are located on a file system. In this output, we can see than the reads I/O are served by the file system cache: Reads VFS I/O and no Reads BLOCK I/O.

Output example (Network only):

Example 1: The database files are located on Kernel NFS (kNFS)

$> stap -g ./traffic_per_db.stp 54321 5000 network
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
|                                                                                Network                                                                    |
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
                                              RECV                                  |                                 SENT                                  |
                                                                                    |                                                                       |
                       TCP                     UDP                     NFS          |          TCP                     UDP                     NFS          |
            | NB                 KB | NB                 KB | NB                 KB | NB                 KB | NB                 KB | NB                 KB |
            | --                 -- | --                 -- | --                 -- | --                 -- | --                 -- | --                 -- |
NOT_A_DB    | 4                  32 | 0                   0 | 61                706 | 1943              252 | 0                   0 | 5                  80 |
BVDB        | 0                   0 | 0                   0 | 1623            16825 | 113                13 | 0                   0 | 170              1437 |
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

As expected we can observed NFS traffic at the database level.

Example 2: The database files are located on Direct NFS (dNFS)

$> stap -g ./traffic_per_db.stp 54321 5000 network

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
|                                                                                Network                                                                    |
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
                                              RECV                                  |                                 SENT                                  |
                                                                                    |                                                                       |
                       TCP                     UDP                     NFS          |          TCP                     UDP                     NFS          |
            | NB                 KB | NB                 KB | NB                 KB | NB                 KB | NB                 KB | NB                 KB |
            | --                 -- | --                 -- | --                 -- | --                 -- | --                 -- | --                 -- |
BVDB        | 3810            18934 | 0                   0 | 0                   0 | 2059             1787 | 0                   0 | 0                   0 |
NOT_A_DB    | 3                  24 | 0                   0 | 0                   0 | 4                   2 | 0                   0 | 0                   0 |
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

As you can see the NFS traffic has been replaced by a TCP traffic at the database level.

Remarks

  • In this post the word database stands for “all the foreground and background processes linked to an oracle database”.
  • In a consolidated environment, having a view per database can be very useful.
  • This script helps to display the traffic per database and also reports the one that is not related to databases (“NOT_A_DB”).
  • The probes documentation can be found here.

Conclusion

We are able to track the I/O and the Network traffic at the database level.