How to mesure/benchmark performance of a new database on new server?

Question

Hi there
I have two oracle servers with following (same) details:
RHEL 5.8 64-bit
Oracle 10gR2 - 10.2.0.5.8
ASM 10gR2 - 10.2.0.5.8
Server A: RAM 32GB, 8 CPUs @ 3.00GHz
Server B: RAM 128GB, vCPUs 16 cores
Server A (physical server) already has a database A. Server B (on VMWare - yes, my client is moving all Oracle servers to VMware for whatever reason) is a new installation and new database B with exact same init params as databas A. I expdp the data from database A and impdp into database B.
As per the hardware team, the hardware is better than the old server B. I did a very basic test to check if new DB performs better than that on physical server. Here is the results:
I ran a simple query to create a new table. The original table (say, table_a) contains 1.7+ million rows and size is 2.2GB.
create table test1
as
select * from table_a;
It took 3:28mins on database B while it took only 1:55mins on database A. So the new database B seems to be performing poor (apparently). Then I looked at the explain plan (not sure if it means much because it s a very simple query) and here it is from both databases:
Database A (physical server
Plan
SELECT STATEMENT ALL_ROWS
Cost: 14,052  Bytes: 2,161,302,003  Cardinality: 16,250,391 
1 TABLE ACCESS FULL TABLE table_a
Cost: 14,052  Bytes: 2,161,302,003  Cardinality: 16,250,391 
Database B (virtual server)
Plan
SELECT STATEMENT ALL_ROWS
Cost: 59,844  Bytes: 2,161,302,003  Cardinality: 16,250,391 
1 TABLE ACCESS FULL TABLE table_a
Cost: 59,844  Bytes: 2,161,302,003  Cardinality: 16,250,391 
Questions:
1. Why is the cost different? Should I "compute statistics" on database B (virtual server)?
2. How to investigate further and find out reason for the time difference?
3. What other benchmark test can I run to make sure that I have the right database configuration?
Not sure if this is enough info - if not, please let me know what else should I provide.
The team I have to hand-over this server is refusing to accept it by saying that it is slower than the existing one.
Please advise!
Best regards

Answer 1

Wow... I am really thankful for everyone's input - this is really really appreciated!
I will try what you all have suggested. In the meantime, I did some simple test on both databases and here are the results:
Create table t1
  (1.7million rows)
Create index on
  two columns on t1
Create table t2
  500000 rows
Create Index on
  two columns on t2
Delete from t1
  (500000 rows)
Insert into t1
  500000 rows
Drop  table t2
Drop table t1
Database A
hh:mm:ss.00
hh:mm:ss.00
hh:mm:ss.00
hh:mm:ss.00
hh:mm:ss.00
hh:mm:ss.00
hh:mm:ss.00
hh:mm:ss.00
1st run
00:01:55.78
00:02:12.59
00:00:03.06
00:00:01.99
00:01:25.56
00:00:10.37
00:00:00.15
00:00:05.12
2nd run
00:01:56.27
00:02:11.54
00:00:02.89
00:00:01.09
00:01:18.39
00:00:10.20
00:00:00.17
00:00:04.87
3rd run
00:01:56.71
00:02:12.36
00:00:03.14
00:00:01.13
00:01:22.97
00:00:10.22
00:00:00.15
00:00:04.88
Database B (VM)
hh:mm:ss.00
hh:mm:ss.00
hh:mm:ss.00
hh:mm:ss.00
hh:mm:ss.00
hh:mm:ss.00
hh:mm:ss.00
hh:mm:ss.00
1st run
00:00:25:83
00:03:54.60
00:00:00.67
00:00:01.43
00:00:29.56
00:00:09.75
00:00:00.05
00:00:01.10
2nd run
00:00:24.67
00:03:05.81
00:00:00:62
00:00:01.10
00:00:31.76
00:00:08.59
00:00:00.04
00:00:00.59
3rd run
00:00:44.06
00:03:12.91
00:00:00.97
00:00:01.62
00:00:39.35
00:00:08.90
00:00:00.03
00:00:00.61
Now, the database on Server B (VMware) seems to be outperforming that on Server A except for the "Create index on two columns on t1" column.
Any clues why index creation is consistently taking longer on the database B (on VM) as compared to that on database A (physical server)?
@jgarry: I am not in a position to try SLOB (no doubt a good tool with lots of reputation) because it requires to create a new DB (which I cannot do on the existing server). I did try "HammerDB" but unfortunately it crashed on each attempt to test the load.