Wait Events "log file parallel write" / "log file sync" during CREATE INDEX

Question

Hello guys,
at my current project i am performing some performance tests for oracle data guard. The question is "How does a LGWR SYNC transfer influences the system performance?"
To get some performance values, that i can compare i just built up a normal oracle database in the first step.
Now i am performing different tests like creating "large" indexes, massive parallel inserts/commits, etc. to get the bench mark.
My database is an oracle 10.2.0.4 with multiplexed redo log files on AIX.
I am creating an index on a "normal" table .. i execute "dbms_workload_repository.create_snapshot()" before and after the CREATE INDEX to get an equivalent timeframe for the AWR report.
After the index is built up (round about 9 GB) i perform an awrrpt.sql to get the AWR report.
And now take a look at these values from the AWR
                                                                   Avg
                                             %Time  Total Wait    wait     Waits
Event                                 Waits  -outs    Time (s)    (ms)      /txn
log file parallel write              10,019     .0         132      13      33.5
log file sync                           293     .7           4      15       1.0
......How can this be possible?
Regarding to the documentation
-> log file sync: http://download.oracle.com/docs/cd/B19306_01/server.102/b14237/waitevents003.htm#sthref3120
Wait Time: The wait time includes the writing of the log buffer and the post.-> log file parallel write: http://download.oracle.com/docs/cd/B19306_01/server.102/b14237/waitevents003.htm#sthref3104
Wait Time: Time it takes for the I/Os to complete. Even though redo records are written in parallel, the parallel write is not complete until the last I/O is on disk.This was also my understanding .. the "log file sync" wait time should be higher than the "log file parallel write" wait time, because of it includes the I/O and the response time to the user session.
I could accept it, if the values are close to each other (maybe round about 1 second in total) .. but the different between 132 seconds and 4 seconds is too noticeable.
Is the behavior of the log file sync/write different when performing a DDL like CREATE INDEX (maybe async .. like you can influence it with the initialization parameter COMMIT_WRITE??)?
Do you have any idea how these values come about?
Any thoughts/ideas are welcome.
Thanks and Regards

Answer 1

Surachart Opun (HunterX) wrote:
Thank you for Nice Idea.
In this case, How can we reduce "log file parallel write" and "log file sync" waited time?
CREATE INDEX with NOLOGGINGA NOLOGGING can help, can't it?Yes - if you create index nologging then you wouldn't be generating that 10GB of redo log, so the waits would disappear.
Two points on nologging, though:
<ul>
it's "only" an index, so you could always rebuild it in the event of media corruption, but if you had lots of indexes created nologging this might cause an unreasonable delay before the system was usable again - so you should decide on a fallback option, such as taking a new backup of the tablespace as soon as all the nologging operatons had completed.
If the database, or that tablespace, is in +"force logging"+ mode, the nologging will not work.
</ul>
Don't get too alarmed by the waits, though. My guess is that the +"log file sync"+ waits are mostly from other sessions, and since there aren't many of them the other sessions are probably not seeing a performance issue. The +"log file parallel write"+ waits are caused by your create index, but they are happeninng to lgwr in the background which is running concurrently with your session - so your session is not (directly) affected by them, so may not be seeing a performance issue.
The other sessions are seeing relatively high sync times because their log file syncs have to wait for one of the large writes that you have triggered to complete, and then the logwriter includes their (little) writes with your next (large) write.
There may be a performance impact, though, from the pure volume of I/O. Apart from the I/O to write the index you have LGWR writting (N copies) of the redo for the index and ARCH is reading and writing the completed log files caused by the index build. So the 9GB of index could easily be responsible for vastly more I/O than the initial 9GB.
Regards
Jonathan Lewis
http://jonathanlewis.wordpress.com
http://www.jlcomp.demon.co.uk
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