Hotsos Symposium 2012 Speaker Spotlight - Baron Schwartz

The Hotsos Symposium 2012 Speaker Spotlight is focusing on Baron Schwartz this week. We think you'll find his topic and abstract interesting. If you have not signed up for Symposium yet, you'll want to do so by December 31, 2011 to take advantage of discounted registration pricing. Visit registration to sign up. To view a list of the additional speakers, please go to the Speaker page.

Baron Schwartz is the Chief Performance Architect at Percona. He is the lead author of High Performance MySQL, and creator of Maatkit and other open-source tools for MySQL database administration. He is an Oracle ACE, and has spoken internationally on performance and scalability analysis and modeling for MySQL, PostgreSQL, and on system performance in general.

Presentation Title: Measuring and Forecasting Scalability and Performance form Network Traffic

Abstract: TCP network traffic is a good lightweight way to analyze and model system performance and scalability. This talk demonstrates a variety of performance and scalability analysis techniques on a single sample of TCP packet headers from a production database. No packet payload is necessary; the analysis relies exclusively on correlating inbound and outbound packets and their arrival times. This makes it practical to gather data from nearly any system with a call-and-response TCP protocol, such as the Oracle database or an HTTP web server. Packet headers are not regarded as privileged data in most organizations, which helps avoid red tape.

The talk demonstrates two techniques: time-series analysis of the data to determine whether there are performance problems or opportunities in the server.s behavior, and using the data as input to Neil Gunther's Universal Scalability Law to forecast both scalability and performance at load levels beyond what is measured. Both techniques are accomplished with readily-available open-source tools, including some authored by the presenter. The emphasis is on achieving practical results, not on deep mathematical explanations. The techniques demonstrated can help practitioners assess a server without great expenditures of time and effort.

We hope to see you at Symposium!

Hotsos Laredo 4.2.0.0 Released

Hotsos is pleased to announce a new release of Laredo this week. For existing customers, Laredo 4.2.0.0 can be obtained from: https://portal.hotsos.com/products/Laredo/releases.

This version adds support for Windows 7 and the ability to select which Oracle home to use on systems where multiple homes exist.

If you are upgrading from a prior version, please uninstall it before installing version 4.2.0.0.

Laredo is a great tool to help analyze the performance impact of Oracle database changes before they’re put into production. Use Laredo to review schema, Oracle parameter, and statistics changes as well as upgrades.

To find out more about Laredo or for a demo, contact Sales at +1.817.488.6200, option 2 or by email at sales@hotsos.com.

Hotsos Symposium 2012 Speaker Spotlight - Andy Zitelli

Hotsos Symposium 2012 will be held March 4-8, 2012 in Irving, TX. There will be 31 speakers and 36 sessions dedicated to Oracle performance. Where else can you get this kind of in-depth discussion dedicated to Oracle performance? Plus, Jonathan Lewis is hosting the optional Training Day. Register today! You don't want to miss the 10th anniversary of Hotsos Symposium.

Title: Is Oracle 10046 Tracing Still Relevant?

Abstract: Oracle databases include instrumentation which provides a detailed chronological accounting of activities inside individual database sessions. Commonly referred to as 10046 tracing, this instrumentation has been used as a powerful tool for Oracle performance problem diagnosis and software debugging since the late 1990's. In recent years, Oracle has released other diagnostic tools, which collect a broad range of details regarding runtime activities throughout a database. Tools like ASH, AWR, V$ performance views and Oracle Enterprise Manager automatically collect and expose a wide range of runtime measurements. A commonly asked question is whether these more recent tools have replaced 10046 tracing?

This presentation will describe the differences between the details provided by 10046 tracing and those provided by Oracle's other tools. It will show why 10046 trace data is fundamentally different than the data provided by any of Oracle's other diagnostic tools. One of the key differences is between the methods used for data collection. 10046 trace data collects details based on state changes within individual database sessions. Other tools provide summarized data based on periodic sampling. Sampled results are good enough for investigating many problems but can be prone to significant omissions and inaccuracies.

Biography: Andrew Zitelli has over thirty years of experience as a software developer, data architect and performance analyst. He has served as a consultant to the aerospace, semiconductor, steel, and pharmaceutical industries. Andrew is proficient working with a broad range of operating systems and languages and has over 25 years experience working with ten different relational database products, including 20 years working with Oracle. He holds MS and BA degrees in Computer Science.

Andy has previously presented at Hotsos Symposia in 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010 and 2011, as well as other recent conferences in California, Texas and Michigan. Andy is a member of the OakTable Network.

Don't miss it!

Hotsos Symposium 2012 Speaker Spotlight - Andrey Nikolaev

Hotsos Symposium 2012 will be held March 4-8, 2012 in Irving, TX. There will be 31 speakers and 36 sessions dedicated to Oracle performance. Where else can you get this kind of in-depth discussion dedicated to Oracle performance? Plus, Jonathan Lewis is hosting the optional Training Day. Register today! You don't want to miss the 10th anniversary of Hotsos Symposium.

Biography: Andrey Nikolaev was first met with Oracle 5 in 1988. Since that time his professional interests have evolved from high performance particle physics computing, through application development, to database performance consulting, but always stay centered on performance. Working in RDTEX, Russian First Line Support company, he devotes his time to tuning and diagnosing the largest Oracle databases in Russia. As an Oracle University trainer, Andrey taught the full spectrum of Oracle database administration courses.

Topic: Mutex Internals

Abstract: KGX mutexes is new type of spinlocks used in the latest Oracle versions. Despite being known since 2005, mutex is still Terra incognita. The mutex contention is frequently observed in high concurrency OLTP environments.

Using oradebug and DTrace, this presentation explores how mutex operates, spins, and sleeps. It will show how Oracle instruments the mutex operations; discuss parameters and statistics related to mutex performance diagnostics and tuning.

Hotsos Symposium 2012 Speaker Spotlight - Alex Gorbachev

The Hotsos Symposium 2012 Speaker Spotlight is focused on Alex Gorbachev.

Biography: Few DBAs are as well equipped as Alex to handle any kind of database scenario. Alex has architected and designed numerous successful database solutions addressing challenging business requirements. Alex is a respected figure in the Oracle world and a sought-after leader and speaker at Oracle conferences around the globe. He regularly publishes articles on the Pythian blog and runs online webinars. Alex is a member of OakTable Network and an Oracle ACE Director.

Today, Alex is working at The Pythian Group. He started at Pythian in Ottawa, leading a team of database experts before moving to Australia to embrace the challenges of setting up company business in the East Asia/Pacific region. Now he's back in Ottawa as Pythian's Chief Technology Officer, continuing to bridge the gap between business and technology. The search for the perfect fit between technology, engineering talents and business processes is what keeps him up at night.

Before joining Pythian, Alex developed and administered Oracle databases and applications for Lukoil, the Russian petrochemicals giant. Later, he led design and implementation of high-availability mission-critical databases for Amadeus in Germany, the leading Global Distribution System and biggest processor of travel bookings in the world.

Alex is an Oracle Ace Director.

Topic: Benchmarking Oracle Performance with ORION

Abstract: Every time Alex demonstrates charts he produces during IO benchmarks with ORION tool (Oracle I/O Numbers), he hears "Wow! How do you create these?"

In this presentation, Alex will provide practical tips and tricks on how to benchmark your storage subsystem and capacity, how to stress test it, and determine the limits. You will learn how easy it is to setup ORION benchmark and collect I/O performance characteristics of your platform and assess scalability of small random IOs, impact of writes on I/Operformance, impact of different RAID levels, how backups can affect your OTLP traffic, performance of outer areas of disks vs inner areas, compare SSD with HDD performance, and etc. Because ORION test scenarios are very repeatable, it's a great measuring tool in your Measure, Analyze, Change, Measure cycle.

Now...do you really want to miss this presentation, or any of the others listed on our website? Register today! Hotsos Symposium 2012...be there.

Hotsos Symposium 2012 Speakers Selected

Hotsos is pleased to announce that the speakers and topics have been chosen for Hotsos Symposium 2012.

This is our tenth anniversary, and we are very happy that many of our favorite speakers are returning for 2012. We also look forward to meeting our new presenters, too. Symposium topics are all about Oracle performance and range from Exadata to APEX to virtualization to Mutex internals and everything in-between.

Please visit our Speaker page for a complete list of presenters and topics. For more detailed information about each presenter or topic, merely click the name of the speaker or the title of the topic.

Early bird registration is available until December 31st so sign up today!

For more information, please send an email to symposium@hotsos.com or call 817.488.6200x520.

We hope to see you at Sym!

Please Be Patient - Hotsos Symposium Speakers To Be Announced Soon!

We're sure you were all looking forward to our Hotsos Symposium 2012 speaker announcement today, but we had the largest crop of abstracts EVER! We are still tinkering with the final selection to make sure we offer you the best topics and presenters. In the meantime, we've decided on a theme for the Symposium party, and it's "Steampunk". Visit Events to find out more!