Direct NFS speeds up Data Pump
Oracle introduced the Direct NFS feature in Oracle Database 11gR1. This provides improved performance over regular kernel NFS for the Oracle database. I like to think of it as NFS on steroids. It can be used for datafiles with certified, archivelogs, RMAN backups and Data Pump files. There are a lot of merits to Direct NFS including direct I/O and better scalability. Kevin Closson has documented quite a few of them on his blog. However, I just wanted to demonstrate how this feature provided significant improvement for our Data Warehouse loading process. Our database platform is AIX 6.1. Both source and target databases are Oracle 11gR2. The ERP database is a single-instance database and DWH is running on a 2-node RAC. Recently we moved our source database (ERP) from one datacenter to another separated by a WAN. In the initial setup, the dump files were exported to a local JFS2 filesystem on the ERP database server and mounted on the DWH over NFS. Befo...