About Oracle Automatic Storage Management

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About Oracle Automatic Storage Management

    OracleAutomatic Storage Management (Oracle ASM) is an integrated,high-performance database file system and disk manager. You useOracle ASM instead of an operating system file system to store yourOracle Database files and, optionally, other files.

   Oracle ASM is based on theprinciple that the database should manage storage instead ofrequiring an administrator to do it. Oracle ASM eliminates the needfor you to manage potentially thousands of database files. OracleASM groups the disks in your storage system into one or more diskgroups. You manage a small set of disk groups, and Oracle ASMautomates the

placement of the database files within those disk groups.

   Oracle ASM provides thefollowing benefits:

•Striping—Oracle ASM spreads data evenly across all disks in adisk group to optimize performance and utilization. This evendistribution of database files eliminates the need for regularmonitoring and I/O performance tuning.For example, if there are sixdisks in a disk group, then pieces of each Oracle ASM file arewritten to all six disks. These pieces are known as extents. Inthis scenario, these pieces come in 1 MB chunks. When a databasefile is created, it is striped (divided into extents anddistributed) across the six disks,

and allocated disk space on all six disks increases evenly. Whenreading the file, file extents are read from all six disks inparallel, greatly increasing performance.

 

•Mirroring—Oracle ASM can increase availability by optionallymirroring any file. Oracle ASM mirrors at the file level, unlikeoperating system mirroring, which mirrors at the disk level.Mirroring means keeping redundant copies, or mirrored copies, ofeach extent of the file to help avoid data loss caused by diskfailures. The mirrored copy of each file extent is always kept on adifferent disk from the original copy. If a disk fails, then OracleASM can continue to access affected files by accessing mirroredcopies on the surviving disks in the disk group.

 

Oracle ASM supports 2-way mirroring, where each file extent getsone mirrored copy, and 3-way mirroring, where each file extent getstwo mirrored copies.

 

•Online storage reconsideration and dynamic rebalancing—OracleASM permits you to add or remove disks from your disk storagesystem while the database is operating. When you add a disk, OracleASM automatically redistributes the data so that it is evenlyspread across all disks in the disk group, including the new disk.This redistribution is known as rebalancing. It is done in thebackground and with minimal impact to database performance. Whenyou request to remove a disk, Oracle ASM first rebalances the diskgroup by evenly relocating all file extents from the disk beingremoved to the other disks in the disk group.

 

•Managed file creation and deletion—Oracle ASM further reducesadministrative tasks by enabling files stored in Oracle ASM diskgroups to be Oracle Managed Files. Oracle ASM automatically assignsfile names when files are created, and automatically deletes fileswhen they are no longer needed. For information about OracleManaged Files, see Oracle Database Administrator's Guide.Oraclerecommends that you use Oracle ASM for your database file storage,instead of raw devices or the operating system file system.However, databases can have a mixture of Oracle ASM files andnon-Oracle ASM files. Oracle Enterprise Manager includes a wizardthat enables you to migrate non-Oracle ASM database files to OracleASM.

 

The Oracle ASM Instance

 

Oracle ASM is implemented as a special kind of Oracle instance,with its own System Global Area and background processes. TheOracle ASM instance is tightly integrated with the databaseinstance. Every server running one or more database instances thatuse Oracle ASM for storage has an Oracle ASM instance. In an OracleReal Application Clusters environment, there is one Oracle ASMinstance for each node, and the Oracle ASM instances communicatewith each other on a

peer-to-peer basis. Only one Oracle ASM instance is required foreach node, regardless of the number of database instances on thenode.

 

Administering Oracle ASM

 

You administer Oracle ASM with Oracle Enterprise ManagerDatabase Control (Database Control). To administer the Oracle ASMinstance and Oracle ASM disk groups, you must connect to the OracleASM instance as a user who has been granted the SYSASM systemprivilege. You can also administer Oracle ASM with Oracle AutomaticStorage Management Command Line utility (ASMCMD) and SQL*Plusstatements.When you create the Oracle ASM instance either duringinstallation or using Oracle Automatic Storage ManagementConfiguration Assistant (ASMCA), the SYSASM

is granted to the specified Oracle ASM administrator user.