Storage Management Strategies

One of the most important aspects of a database is the storage system it is housed on and how it is managed. Advances in CPU, memory, and disk systems have allowed us to extend database technology to meet the needs of myriad data-intensive workloads. Indeed, advances in hardware continue to move at a fast pace. CPUs have for many years progressed according to Moore’s Law. Memory density and memory capacity follow a similar path, and we are now seeing solid-state disk drives that will eventually allow us to host an entire database in memory. Although technology advances allow us to do more, they also allow us to ignore the fundamental principles of good storage and database design. We have seen poorly designed databases run twice as fast on new hardware, and we have also witnessed well-designed databases see little or no performance improvement on the latest hardware. In this chapter, we will cover the various storage options that are available, how best to configure your database on the storage selected, I/O best practices, and finally high availability options.