Oracle RAC CR Block Requests Test

Data blocks requested from the Global Cache are of two types: current and consistent-read (CR) blocks. When you update data in the database, Oracle Database must locate the most recent version of the data block that contains the data, which is called the current block. If you perform a query, only data committed before the query began is visible to the query. Data blocks that were changed after the start of the query are reconstructed from data in the undo segments, and the reconstructed data is made available to the query in the form of a consistent-read block.

Whenever a session requests for a CR block, Oracle first checks whether it has that block in its local cache. If the block does not exist in the local cache but is available in the remote cache, then it is transferred from the remote to local cache via the interconnect. The time that elapses between when a CR block is requested and when the session receives it should be tracked continuously, so that global cache block access latencies (if any) are detected proactively and resolved promptly. Use the Oracle CR Block Requests test to perform this tracking.

This test, at configured intervals, monitors requests for CR blocks and reports how long it took for the requests to be serviced by the buffer caches. This sheds light on request processing delays (if any).

Target of the test : Oracle RAC

Agent deploying the test : An internal agent

Outputs of the test : One set of results for every Oracle cluster.

Configurable parameters for the test
  1. TEST PERIOD - How often should the test be executed.
  2. Host – The host for which the test is to be configured.
  3. Port - The port on which the server is listening.
  4. orasid - The variable name of the oracle instance.

  5. service name - A ServiceName exists for the entire Oracle RAC system. When clients connect to an Oracle cluster using the ServiceName, then the cluster routes the request to any available database instance in the cluster. By default, the service name is set to none. In this case, the test connects to the cluster using the orasid and pulls out the metrics from that database instance which corresponds to that orasid. If a valid service name is specified instead, then, the test will connect to the cluster using that service name, and will be able to pull out metrics from any available database instance in the cluster.

    To know the ServiceName of a cluster, execute the following query on any node in the target cluster:

    select name, value from v$parameter where name =’service_names’

  6. User – In order to monitor an Oracle database server, a special database user account has to be created in every Oracle database instance that requires monitoring. A Click here hyperlink is available in the test configuration page, using which a new oracle database user can be created. Alternatively, you can manually create the special database user. When doing so, ensure that this user is vested with the select_catalog_role and create session privileges.

    The sample script we recommend for user creation (in Oracle database server versions before 12c) for eG monitoring is:

    create user oraeg identified by oraeg ;

    create role oratest;

    grant create session to oratest;

    grant select_catalog_role to oratest;

    grant oratest to oraeg;

    The sample script we recommend for user creation (in Oracle database server 12c) for eG monitoring is:

    alter session set container=<Oracle_service_name>;

    create user <user_name>identified by <user_password> container=current default tablespace <name_of_default_tablespace> temporary tablespace <name_of_temporary_tablespace>;

    Grant create session to <user_name>;                                 

    Grant select_catalog_role to <user_name>;

    The name of this user has to be specified here.

  7. Password – Password of the specified database user
  8. Confirm password – Confirm the password by retyping it here.
  9. ISPASSIVE – If the value chosen is yes, then the Oracle server under consideration is a passive server in an Oracle cluster. No alerts will be generated if the server is not running. Measures will be reported as “Not applicable’ by the agent if the server is not up.

  10. To make diagnosis more efficient and accurate, the eG Enterprise suite embeds an optional detailed diagnostic capability. With this capability, the eG agents can be configured to run detailed, more elaborate tests as and when specific problems are detected. To enable the detailed diagnosis capability of this test for a particular server, choose the On option. To disable the capability, click on the Off option.

    The option to selectively enable/disable the detailed diagnosis capability will be available only if the following conditions are fulfilled:

    • The eG manager license should allow the detailed diagnosis capability
    • Both the normal and abnormal frequencies configured for the detailed diagnosis measures should not be 0.
Measurements made by the test
Measurement Description Measurement Unit Interpretation

Average cr block request time:

Indicates the time taken to service requests for cr blocks.

 

Centisecs

Ideally the value of this measure should be low.

A high value for this measure is indicative of high latencies while accessing global cache blocks. This can be caused by any of the following:

  • A high number of requests caused by SQL statements that are not tuned.
  • A large number of processes in the queue waiting for CPU, or scheduling delays.
  • Slow, busy, or faulty interconnects. In these cases, check your network connection for dropped packets, retransmittals, or cyclic redundancy check (CRC) errors.

When global cache requests cause a performance problem, optimizing SQL plans and the schema to improve the rate at which data blocks are located in the local buffer cache, and minimizing I/O is a successful strategy for performance tuning.