Things to Consider when Planning the Redo logs for Oracle Database

Very basic and generic discussion from the performance point of view. Customers still have to do their due diligence in understanding redo logs, and how they work in Oracle database, before finalizing redo log configuration for their deployments.

• size them properly
  • log writer writes to a single redo log file until either it is full or a manual log switch is requested
        Oracle supports multiplexed redo logs for availability, but this behavior of writing to a file until it is full or a log switch happens, still hold
  • if the transactions generate a lot of redo before a database commit, consider large sizes in tens of gigabytes for redo logs
  • if not sized properly, it leads to unnecessary log switches, which in turn increase checkpoint activity resulting in unnecessary slow down of the database operations
        two redo logs each with at least 5G in size might be a good start. observe the log switches, checkpoints and increase (or decrease, though there is no performance benefit) the file size accordingly
  
  
• do not mix redo logs with the rest of the database or anything else
  • in a normal functioning database, most of the time, log writer simply writes redo entries sequentially to redo logs
  • any slow down in writing the redo data to logs hurt the performance of the database
  • best not to share the disks/volumes on which redo logs are hosted, with anything else
        set of disks, volumes exclusive to redo logs, that is
  
  
• ensure that the underlying disks or I/O medium used to store the redo logs are fast, optimally configured and can sustain the amount of I/O bandwidth needed to write the redo entries to the redo logs
      if those requirements are not met, it could lead to 'log file sync' waits, which will slow down the database transactions
  
  
• redo logs on non-volatile flash storage may have performance benefits over the traditional hard disk drives
  • check this blog post out, Redo logs on F40 PCIe Cards, for related discussion (keywords: 4K block size for redo logs, block alignment)