Cgroups improve database performance by associating a dedicated set of CPUs and memory to a database instance, limiting each instance to only those resources. The setup_processor_group.sh script is used to create cgroups on Linux systems. To bind a database instance to a cgroup, the PROCESSOR_GROUP_NAME parameter must be set to the cgroup name and the instance restarted. Best practices include configuring cgroups out of CPU threads from minimum cores/sockets and creating cgroups with at least 2 CPU cores.

1. ♨ CPU limitation per database instance
About Creating Cgroups on Linux Systems
Resource management always is a best tools for DBA to control consumption of databases that
live together in same server.
Resource consumption and limiting databases and PDBs can control on i/o, memory, cpu by
traditional or new features in oracle such as applying limit on PGA, SGA using pga aggregate
target and sga_target, sga_min_size and for controlling I/O usage we can use max_iops.
Using dbms_resource_manager package we can apply plan directives to handles cpu utilization.
In this post I demonstrate a another way to specify control CPU usage for databases that live side
by side on the same machine.
Cgroups, or control groups, improve database performance by associating a dedicated set of
CPUs to a database instance. Each database instance can only use the resources in its cgroup.
When consolidating on a large server, you may want to restrict the database to a speci
fi
c subset
of the CPU and memory. This feature makes it easy to enable CPU and memory restrictions for an
Oracle Database instance.
Use the setup_processor_group.sh script to create cgroups.
Download this script from note 1585184.1 on the Oracle
Support website.
Using PROCESSOR_GROUP_NAME to bind a database instance to CPUs or NUMA nodes
on Linux (Doc ID 1585184.1)
PURPOSE
This document provides a step-by-step guide for binding a database instance to a subset of a
server's CPUs and memory, using Linux cgroups. Cgroups provide a way to create a named set
of CPUs and memory.
A database instance that is associated with this cgroup can only use its CPUs and memory.
Using Linux cgroups, a DBA that is consolidating multiple database instances on a single server
can:
-Physically isolate database instances onto di
ff
erent CPUs
-Bind instances to speci
fi
c NUMA nodes to improve performance on NUMA-based systems.
Step 1 - Con
fi
guring the Linux cgroup
Use the available script, setup_processor_group.sh, to create and modify Linux cgroups.
You must run this script as root.
First, check the number of CPUs, the NUMA con
fi
guration, and the existing cgroups (if any) for
your system:
setup_processor_group.sh –show
Next, prepare the system to use cgroups (this command can be repeated):

2. setup_processor_group.sh –prepare
To check if the system is indeed ready:
setup_processor_group.sh –check
To create a new cgroup "mycg" for user "oracle" in group "dba" with CPUs 0 and 1, use the "-
create" option. With the "-cpu" option, you can provide either a comma-separated list or a range,
e.g. "–cpus 0-7,16-23".
setup_processor_group.sh –create –name mycg –cpus 0,1 -u:g
oracle:dba
Or, create a new cgroup "mycg" for user "oracle" in group "dba" with NUMA nodes 1 and 2, using
the "-numa_nodes" option.
You cannot use the "-create" option with both "–cpus" and "–numa_nodes".
$setup_processor_group.sh –create –name mycg –
numa_nodes 1,2 -u:g oracle:dba
To update an existing cgroup "mycg" with new values:
$setup_processor_group.sh –update -name mycg –cpus 2,3
-u:g oracle:dba
To delete the cgroup "mycg":
$setup_processor_group.sh –delete –name mycg
Step 2 - Con
fi
guring the Database
To bind a database instance to a cgroup, set the Oracle initialization parameter,
PROCESSOR_GROUP_NAME, to the name of the cgroup.
The cgroup was named through the "setup_processor_group.sh -name" option.
PROCESSOR_GROUP_NAME is a static parameter.
Therefore, the database instance must be restarted in order for the parameter to take e
ff
ect.
To verify that the database instance has successfully bound itself to the cgroup, check for this
message in the alert log:
"Instance started in processor group mycg"
When a database instance is successfully running in a cgroup, the default value of the Oracle
initialization parameter, CPU_COUNT, is set to the number of CPUs in the cgroup.
show parameter cpu_count
If you have explicitly set CPU_COUNT, you should consider clearing it so that CPU_COUNT is set
to the cgroup's value:
alter system set cpu_count = 0;

3. Use this Linux command to verify that a particular database process is running in the cgroup
(substitute <pid> with the process id).
In the output, you should see the cgroup name after the string "cpuset:/".
cat /proc/<pid>/cgroup
Use this Linux command to see all processes that are running in the cgroup (substitute <mycg>
with your cgroup name).
cat /mnt/cgroup/<mycg>/tasks
Best Practices
(1) Note that Linux cgroups allow databases and applications that are not associated with the
cgroup to use its CPU and memory.
(2) For processors with hyper-threading (e.g. x-86), con
fi
gure cgroups out of CPU threads, using
the "-cpus" option, from the minimum number of CPU cores and sockets. Do not assign the CPU
threads on a core to more than one cgroup.
These best practices enable much better isolation and performance since CPUs on a core share
many common resources, such as parts of the execution pipeline, caches, and TLBs.
For a list of the CPU threads, cores, and sockets, use the following commands:
cat /proc/cpuinfo | grep processor
(lists CPU threads)
cat /proc/cpuinfo | grep "physical id" | sort | uniq
(lists the CPU sockets)
cat /proc/cpuinfo | egrep "core id|physical id" (lists CPU cores
and sockets)
- Create cgroups with at least 2 CPU cores.
- For NUMA systems (e.g. Exadata X4-8),
con
fi
gure the cgroup from NUMA nodes, using the "-numa_nodes" option.
The "-numa_nodes" option will ensure that the database instance allocates local memory for both
SGA and PGA, resulting in improved database performance.
-When consolidating a large number of databases, consider creating a few cgroups and binding
multiple database instances to each cgroup.
For example:
◦Create one cgroup per NUMA node. Bind multiple database instances to each NUMA node's
cgroup.
◦Create 2 cgroups, one for test databases and one for standby databases.

4. Linux Cgroups vs Virtualization
Linux cgroups and virtual machines (VMs) are both e
ff
ective tools for consolidating multiple
databases on a server.
Both tools provide resource isolation by dedicating CPU and memory to a database instance.
Database instances on VMs are isolated in a similar way as database instances on separate
physical servers. While this isolation o
ff
ers many obvious advantages, it also has the following
disadvantages:
◦Oracle Clusterware must be installed for each virtual machine. Databases in cgroups can share
one instance of the Oracle Clusterware.
◦Exadata does not currently support virtualization.
Using Linux cgroups does not reduce Oracle database licensing costs. The license is based on
the number of CPUs on the server, not the database's cgroup size.
Regarding,
Alireza Kamrani
Senior RDBMS Consultant