1 Introduction to Automatic Storage Management (ASM)

Overview of Oracle Automatic Storage Management (ASM)

ASM is a volume manager and a file system for Oracle database files ASM is recommended filesystem for RAC and Single instance and it is alternative to conventional volume managers, file systems, and raw devices. ASM is a new type of filesystem which was introduced with Oracle 10g. ASM for storing database files. This provides direct I/O to the file Oracle creates a separate instance for this purpose. ASM simplifies administration of Oracle related files by allowing the administrator to reference disk groups rather than individual disks and files, which are managed by ASM. ASM uses disk groups to store datafiles, an ASM disk group is a collection of disks that ASM manages as a unit. You can add or remove disks from a disk group while a database continues to access files from the disk group. When you add or remove disks from a disk group, ASM automatically redistributes the file contents and eliminates the need for downtime when redistributing the content. The ASM volume manager functionality provides flexible server-based mirroring options. The ASM normal and high redundancy disk groups enable two-way and three-way mirroring respectively. You can use external redundancy to enable a Redundant Array of Inexpensive Disks (RAID) storage subsystem to perform the mirroring protection function. ASM also uses the Oracle Managed Files (OMF) feature to simplify database file management. Benefits of ASM Provide efficient management of storage Provide integrated cluster file system and volume management capabilities Prevents accidental file deletion Prevents fragmentation and hence no need to relocate data to reclaim space Available for both single instance and RAC instance Automatic I/O load balancing as data is striped across disks and better performance Stripes files rather than logical volumes Enables online disk reconfiguration and dynamic rebalancing Provides adjustable rebalancing speed Provides file based redundancy Supports only Oracle files Its cluster aware

What is supported in ASM

Only Oracle files are supported: * Database files * Control files * Online redo log files * Archived redo log files * Flash recovery area files * RMAN files (image copy and backup) These files are NOT supported: * Installation files (in ORACLE_HOME, CRS_HOME) * ORACLE_BASE files( including alert log, trace files, etc) * CRS voting disk and OCR files * Output data from UTL_FILE * Any user or application specific files(e.g. XML or Java files) * Oracle 9i external table files

Why ASM ?
Some of the storage management features with ASM include

Striping Mirroring Asynchronous I/O Direct I/O SAME and Load Balancing Is automatically installed as part of the base code set

ASM includes striping and mirroring to provide balanced and secure storage. The level of redundancy and the granularity of the striping can be controlled using templates. The new ASM functionality can be used in combination with existing raw and cooked file systems, along with OMF and manually managed files. Pre-Requisite for ASM Need CSS demon for creating an ASM instance(CSS service is responsible for synchronizing ASM and RDBMS instances.) $ps- ef | grep css In RAC it is done by Oracle Clusterware In single instance environment, we have to run #$ORACLE_HOME/bin/localconfig add Need additional atleast 100M memory for ASM instance

Features of ASM instance Dont mount the database but manage metadata required metadata to make ASM files available for DB instance DB instance access ASM files directly and contact ASM instance only for the layout of ASM files Smaller than DB instance < 100m Contains no physical files like logfiles/controlfiles or data files Requires only the init.ora file for startup Instance name is +ASM or +ASM 1.n(RAC) This is the new feature of 10g DATABASE --- C/R/D files <---- OS ---- Hard disk With the help of OS we are storing into Hard disk. Oracle has given their own file system i.e ASM. If we go with ASM 10 to 15 % performance will increased. DATABASE <------ ASM <------ Hard disk ASM is responsible to store and manage database files such as control, data, redo log files, spfile(not pfile) Archivelog file directly in the hard disk without taking help of OS, why b/c ASM itself acts as a file system. Here hard disk means raw disk(not formatted hard disk) Key points ASM is free which comes with oracle software. It acts as a logical volume manager(LVM). ASM operates on raw device(unformatted SATA Hard disk). A db can consists ASM files and OS files as well. We cannot take backup of ASM files by using user managed from OS, with the help of oracle utilites such as OEM, RMAN we can take backup of ASM database files. Root directory of ASM is + . Oracle uses two instances 1. RDBMS instance 2. ASM instance ASM Instance

ASM instance is a special type of oracle instance that are responsible to store and manage ASM files which are present in the ASM disk groups. An ASM has a SGA and background processes that are similar to those of Oracle Database. However, because ASM performs fewer tasks than a database, an ASM SGA is much smaller than a database SGA. In addition, ASM has a minimal performance effect on a server. ASM instances mount disk groups to make ASM files available to database instances. ASM instances do not mount databases. ASM metadata is the information that ASM uses to control a disk group and the metadata resides within the disk group. ASM metadata includes the following information:

The disks that belong to a disk group The amount of space that is available in a disk group The filenames of the files in a disk group The location of disk group datafile data extents A redo log that records information about atomically changing data blocks

ASM and database instances require shared access to the disks in a disk group. ASM instances manage the metadata of the disk group and provide file layout information to the database instances. ASM instances can be clustered using Oracle Clusterware; there is one ASM instance for each cluster node. If there are several database instances for different databases on the same node, then the database instances share the same single ASM instance on that node. If the ASM instance on a node fails, then all of the database instances on that node also fail. Unlike a file system failure, an ASM instance failure does not require restarting the operating system. In an Oracle RAC environment, the ASM and database instances on the surviving nodes automatically recover from an ASM instance failure on a node.

ASM Disk Groups

A disk group consists of multiple disks and is the fundamental object that ASM manages. Each disk group contains the metadata that is required for the management of space in the disk group. Files are allocated from disk groups. Any ASM file is completely contained within a single disk group. However, a disk group might contain files belonging to several databases and a single database can use files from multiple disk groups. For most installations you need only a small number of disk groups, usually two, and rarely more than three.

Mirroring and Failure Groups

Mirroring protects data integrity by storing copies of data on multiple disks. The disk group type determines the mirroring levels with which Oracle creates files in a disk group.

When you create a disk group, you specify an ASM disk group type based on one of the following three redundancy levels:

Normal for 2-way mirroring High for 3-way mirroring External to not use ASM mirroring, such as when you configure hardware RAID for redundancy

The disk group type determines the mirroring levels with which Oracle creates files in a disk group. The redundancy level controls how many disk failures are tolerated without dismounting the disk group or losing data. ASM mirroring is more flexible than traditional RAID mirroring because you can specify the redundancy level for each file. Two files can share the same disk group with one file being mirrored while the other is not. When ASM allocates an extent for a normal redundancy file, ASM allocates a primary copy and a secondary copy. ASM chooses the disk on which to store the secondary copy in a different failure group other than the primary copy. Failure groups are used to place mirrored copies of data so that each copy is on a disk in a different failure group. The simultaneous failure of all disks in a failure group does not result in data loss. After a disk group is created, you cannot alter the redundancy level of the disk group. To change the redundancy level of a disk group, create another disk group with the appropriate redundancy and then move the files to the new disk group. Oracle recommends that you create failure groups of equal size to avoid space imbalance and uneven distribution of mirror data. If you omit the failure group specification, then ASM automatically places each disk into its own failure group. Normal redundancy disk groups require at least two failure groups. High redundancy disk groups require at least three failure groups. Disk groups with external redundancy do not use failure groups.

About ASM Disks

ASM disks are the storage devices that are provisioned to ASM disk groups. Examples of ASM disks include:

A disk or partition from a storage array An entire disk or the partitions of a disk Logical volumes Network-attached files (NFS)

When you add a disk to a disk group, you either assign a disk name or the disk is given an ASM disk name automatically. This name is different from the name used by the operating system. In a cluster, a disk may be assigned different operating system device names on different nodes, but

the disk has the same ASM disk name on all of the nodes. In a cluster, an ASM disk must be accessible from all of the instances that share the disk group. If the disks are the same size, then ASM spreads the files evenly across all of the disks in the disk group. This allocation pattern maintains every disk at the same capacity level and ensures that all of the disks in a disk group have the same I/O load. Because ASM load balances among all of the disks in a disk group, different ASM disks should not share the same physical drive. Allocation Units facilation Every ASM disk is divided into allocation units (AU). An AU is the fundamental unit of allocation within a disk group. A file extent consists of one or more AU. An ASM file consists of one or more file extents. When you create a disk group, you can set the ASM AU size to be between 1 MB and 64 MB in powers of two, such as, 1, 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, or 64.

ASM Files
Files that are stored in ASM disk groups are called ASM files. Each ASM file is contained within a single ASM disk group. Oracle Database communicates with ASM in terms of files. This is identical to the way Oracle Database uses files on any file system. You can store the following file types in ASM disk groups:

Control files Datafiles, temporary datafiles, and datafile copies SPFILEs Online redo logs, archive logs, and Flashback logs RMAN backups Disaster recovery configurations Change tracking bitmaps Data Pump dumpsets

Note: Oracle executables and ASCII files, such as alert logs and trace files, cannot be stored in ASM disk groups. ASM automatically generates ASM file names as part of database operations, including tablespace creation. ASM file names begin with a plus sign (+) followed by a disk group name. You can specify user-friendly aliases for ASM files and create a hierarchical directory structure for the aliases. Extents

The contents of ASM files are stored in a disk group as a set, or collection, of data extents that are stored on individual disks within disk groups. Each extent resides on an individual disk. Extents consist of one or more allocation units (AU). To accommodate increasingly larger files, ASM uses variable size extents. The initial extent size is equal to the allocation unit size and it increases by a factor of 8 and 64 at predefined thresholds. This feature is automatic for newly created and resized datafiles when the disk group compatibility attributes are set to Oracle Release 11 or higher. ASM Striping ASM striping has two primary purposes:

To balance loads across all of the disks in a disk group To reduce I/O latency

Coarse-grained striping provides load balancing for disk groups while fine-grained striping reduces latency for certain file types by spreading the load more widely. To stripe data, ASM separates files into stripes and spreads data evenly across all of the disks in a disk group. The stripes are equal in size to the effective AU. The coarse-grained stripe size is always equal to the AU size. The fine-grained stripe size always equals 128 KB; this provides lower I/O latency for small I/O operations such as redo log writes. File Templates Templates are collections of attribute values that are used to specify file mirroring and striping attributes for an ASM file when it is created. When creating a file, you can include a template name and assign desired attributes based on an individual file rather than the file type. A default template is provided for every Oracle file type, but you can customize templates to meet unique requirements. Each disk group has a default template associated with each file type.

ASM Disk Group Administration

An ASM instance requires an ASM_DISKSTRING initialization parameter value to specify its discovery strings. The pathnames that an operating system accepts are always usable as discovery strings.

About Mounting Disk Groups

A disk group must be mounted by a local ASM instance before database instances can access the files in the disk group. Mounting the disk group requires discovering all of the disks and locating the files in the disk group that is being mounted.

You can explicitly dismount a disk group. Oracle reports an error if you attempt to dismount a disk group when any of the disk group files are open. It is possible to have disks fail in excess of the ASM redundancy setting. If this happens, then the disk group is forcibly dismounted. This shuts down any database instances that are using the disk group.

About Adding and Dropping Disks

The discovery string specifies the disk or disks that you can add. These disks include disks that are already in the disk group as well as new disks. You can add a disk to an existing disk group to add space and to improve throughput. The disks that you add must be discovered by every ASM instance using the ASM_DISKSTRING parameter. After you add a disk, ASM rebalancing operations move data onto the new disk. To minimize the rebalancing I/O, it is more efficient to add multiple disks at the same time. You can drop a disk from a disk group if it fails or to re-provision capacity. You can also manually drop a disk that has excessive soft errors before the disk fails. Use the ASM disk name to drop a disk, not the discovery string device name. If an error occurs while writing to a disk, then Oracle drops the disk automatically. Online Storage Reconfigurations and Dynamic Rebalancing Rebalancing a disk group moves data between disks to ensure that every file is evenly spread across all of the disks in a disk group. When all of the files are evenly dispersed, all of the disks are evenly filled to the same percentage; this ensures load balancing. Rebalancing does not relocate data based on I/O statistics nor is rebalancing started as a result of statistics. ASM rebalancing operations are controlled by the size of the disks in a disk group. ASM automatically initiates a rebalance after storage configuration changes, such as when you add, drop, or resize disks. The power setting parameter determines the speed with which rebalancing operations occur. You can manually start a rebalance to change the power setting of a running rebalance. A rebalance is automatically restarted if the instance on which the rebalancing is running stops; databases can remain operational during rebalancing operations. A rebalance has almost no effect on database performance because only one megabyte at a time is locked for relocation and only writes are blocked.

2 Preparing Storage for ASM

When preparing your storage to use ASM, first determine the storage option for your system and then prepare the disk storage for the specific operating system.

Preparing Disks for ASM

You can create an ASM disk group using one of the following storage resources:

Raw disk partitionA raw partition can be the entire disk drive or a section of a disk drive. However, the ASM disk cannot be in a partition that includes the partition table because the partition table can be overwritten. Logical unit numbers (LUNs)Using hardware RAID functionality to create LUNs is a recommended approach. Storage hardware RAID 0+1 or RAID5, and other RAID configurations, can be provided to ASM as ASM disks. Raw logical volumes (LVM)LVMs are supported in less complicated configurations where an LVM is mapped to a LUN, or an LVM uses disks or raw partitions. LVM configurations are not recommended by Oracle because they create a duplication of functionality. Oracle also does not recommended using LVMs for mirroring because ASM already provides mirroring. NFS filesASM supports NFS files as ASM disks. Oracle Database has built-in support for the network file system (NFS) and does not depend on OS support for NFS. Although NFS and ASM have overlapping functionality, ASM can load balance or mirror across NFS files.

The procedures for preparing storage resources for ASM are: 1. Identify or create the storage devices for ASM by identifying all of the storage resource device names that you can use to create an ASM disk group. For example, on Linux systems, device names are typically presented from the /dev directory with the /dev/device_name_identifier name syntax. 2. Change the ownership and the permissions on storage device resources. For example, the following steps are required on Linux systems: o Change the user and group ownership of devices to oracle:dba o Change the device permissions to read/write o On older Linux versions, you must configure raw device binding After you have configured ASM, ensure that disk discovery has been configured correctly by setting the ASM_DISKSTRING initialization parameter. Note: Setting the ownership to oracle:dba is just one example that corresponds to the default settings. A non-default installation may require different settings. In general, the owner of the disk devices should be the same as the owner of the Oracle binary. The group ownership should be OSDBA of the ASM instance, which is defined at installation.

ASM and Multipathing

Multipathing solutions provide failover by using redundant physical path components. These components include adapters, cables, and switches that reside between the server and the storage subsystem. If one or more of these components fails, then applications can still access their data,

eliminating a single point of failure with the Storage Area Network (SAN), Host Bus Adapter, interface cable, or host port on a multiported storage array. Multipathing is a software technology implemented at the operating system device driver level. Multipathing creates a pseudo device to facilitate the sharing and balancing of I/O operations across all of the available I/O paths. Multipathing also improves system performance by distributing the I/O load across all available paths. This provides a higher level of data availability through automatic failover and failback. Although ASM is not designed with multipathing functionality, ASM does operate with multipathing technologies. Multipathing technologies are available from many sources. Storage vendors offer multipathing products to support their specific storage products, while software vendors usually develop multipathing products to support several server platforms and storage products.

Using ASM with Multipathing

ASM produces an error if ASM discovers multiple disk device paths. Because a single disk can appear multiple times in a multipath configuration, you must configure ASM to discover only the multipath disk. With ASM, you can ensure the discovery of a multipath disk by setting the value of the initialization parameter ASM_DISKSTRING equal to the name of the pseudo device that represents the multipath disk. For example, if you are using EMC PowerPath multipathing software, you might set ASM_DISKSTRING to '/dev/rdsk/emcpower*'. When I/O is sent to the pseudo device, the multipath driver intercepts it and provides load balancing to the underlying subpaths. When using ASMLIB with ASM on Linux, you can ensure the discovery of the multipath disk by configuring ASM to scan the multipath disk first or to exclude the single path disks when scanning.

Recommendations for Storage Preparation

The following are guidelines for preparing storage for use with ASM:

Configure two disk groups, one for the datafile and the other for the Flash Recovery Area. For availability purposes, one is used as a backup for the other. Ensure that LUNs, which are disk drives of partitions, that ASM disk groups use have similar storage performance and availability characteristics. In storage configurations with mixed speed drives, such as 10K and 15K RPM, I/O distribution is constrained by the slowest speed drive. Be aware that ASM data distribution policy is capacity-based. LUNs provided to ASM have the same capacity for each disk group to avoid an imbalance. Use the storage array hardware RAID 1 mirroring protection when possible to reduce the mirroring overhead on the server. Use ASM mirroring redundancy in the absence of a hardware RAID, or when you need host-based volume management functionality, such as

mirroring across storage systems. You can use ASM mirroring in configurations when mirroring between geographically-separated sites over a storage interface. Hardware RAID 1 in some lower-cost storage products is inefficient and degrades the performance of the array. ASM redundancy delivers improved performance in lower-cost storage products.

Maximize the number of disks in a disk group for maximum data distribution and higher I/O bandwidth. Create LUNs using the outside half of disk drives for higher performance. If possible, use small disks with the highest RPM. Create large LUNs to reduce LUN management overhead. Minimize I/O contention between ASM disks and other applications by dedicating disks to ASM disk groups for those disks that are not shared with other applications. Choose a hardware RAID stripe size that is a power of 2 and less than or equal to the size of the ASM allocation unit. Avoid using a Logical Volume Manager (LVM) because an LVM would be redundant. However, there are situations where certain multipathing or third party cluster solutions require an LVM. In these situations, use the LVM to represent a single LUN without striping or mirroring to minimize the performance impact. For Linux, when possible, use the Oracle ASMLIB feature to address device naming and permission persistency.

ASMLIB provides an alternative interface for the ASM-enabled kernel to discover and access block devices. ASMLIB provides storage and operating system vendors the opportunity to supply extended storage-related features. These features provide benefits such as improved performance and greater data integrity.

Storage Considerations for Database Administrators

If you are a database administrator who is responsible for configuring your system's storage, then you need to consider not only the initial capacity of your system, but also your plans for future growth. ASM simplifies the task of accommodating growth. However, your growth plans can affect choices such as the size of the LUNs that are presented as ASM disks. You need to also consider that I/O performance depends your host bus adapter (HBA) and your storage fabric, not just the storage disks. As you scale up the number of nodes in a cluster, you also need to scale up the storage subsystem. For high availability, storage is only one component. Within storage, Oracle recommends that you configure the database work area to be separate from the recovery area. You also need a method to protect against disk failures by using hardware mirroring or host-based mirroring from a normal or high redundancy disk group. Furthermore, you also need to consider multipathing for HBAs and the fabric when considering storage availability. With ASM mirroring, the failure group configuration also affects high availability.

3 Administering ASM Instances

Administering an ASM instance is similar to administering an Oracle Database instance, but the process requires fewer procedures. You can use Oracle Enterprise Manager and SQL*Plus to perform ASM instance administration tasks.

Operating With Different Releases of ASM and Database Instances Simultaneously

ASM in Oracle Database 11g supports both older and newer software versions of Oracle database instances. Both forward and backward compatibility is maintained between Oracle Database 10g and 11g, For compatibility between Oracle Clusterware and ASM, the Oracle Clusterware release must be greater than or equal to the ASM release. There are additional compatibility considerations when using disk groups with different releases of ASM and database instances. When using different software versions, the database instance supports ASM functionality of the earliest release in use. For example:

A 10.1 database instance operating with an 11.1 ASM instance supports only ASM 10.1 features. An 11.1 database instance operating with a 10.1 ASM instance supports only ASM 10.1 features.

The V$ASM_CLIENT view contains the SOFTWARE_VERSION and COMPATIBLE_VERSION columns.

The SOFTWARE_VERSION column contains the software version number of the database or ASM instance for the selected disk group connection. The COMPATIBLE_VERSION column contains the setting of COMPATIBLE parameter of the database or ASM instance for the selected disk group connection.

You can query the V$ASM_CLIENT view on both ASM and database instances.

Configuring Initialization Parameters for an ASM Instance

To install and initially configure an ASM instance, use Oracle Universal Installer (OUI) and Database Configuration Assistant (DBCA). After an ASM instance has been installed, the final ASM configuration can be performed. You only need to configure a few ASM-specific instance initialization parameters. The default values are sufficient in most cases.

Initialization Parameter Files for an ASM Instance

When installing ASM for a single-instance Oracle Database, DBCA creates a separate server parameter file (SPFILE) and password file for the ASM instance. When installing ASM in a clustered ASM environment where the ASM home is shared among all of the nodes, DBCA creates an SPFILE for ASM. In a clustered environment without a shared ASM home, DBCA creates a text-based initialization parameter file (PFILE) for ASM on each node. You can use an SPFILE or PFILE as the ASM instance parameter file. If you use an SPFILE in a clustered ASM environment, then you must place the SPFILE on a shared raw device or on a cluster file system. If you do not use a shared ASM home, then the ASM instance uses a PFILE. The same rules for file name, default location, and search order that apply to database initialization parameter files also apply to ASM initialization parameter files
$ORACLE_HOME/dbs/spfile+ASM.ora

Setting ASM Initialization Parameters

The INSTANCE_TYPE initialization parameter is the only required parameter in the ASM instance parameter file. The ASM* parameters use suitable defaults for most environments. You cannot use parameters with names that are prefixed with ASM* in database instance parameter files. Some database initialization parameters are also valid for an ASM instance initialization file. In general, ASM selects the appropriate defaults for database parameters that are relevant to an ASM instance. Automatic Memory Management for ASM Automatic memory management automatically manages the memory-related parameters for both ASM and database instances with the MEMORY_TARGET parameter. Automatic memory management is enabled by default on an ASM instance, even when the MEMORY_TARGET parameter is not explicitly set. The default value used for MEMORY_TARGET is acceptable for most environments. This is the only parameter that you need to set for complete ASM memory management. Oracle strongly recommends that you use automatic memory management for ASM. If you do not set a value for MEMORY_TARGET, but you do set values for other memory related parameters, Oracle internally calculates the optimum value for MEMORY_TARGET based on those memory parameter values. You can also increase MEMORY_TARGET dynamically, up to the value of the MEMORY_MAX_TARGET parameter, just as you can do for the database instance. Although it is not recommended, you can disable automatic memory management by either setting the value for MEMORY_TARGET to 0 in the ASM parameter file or by running an ALTER SYSTEM SET MEMORY_TARGET=0 statement. When you disable automatic memory management, Oracle reverts to auto shared memory management and automatic PGA memory management. The behaviors of all of the automatic memory management parameters in ASM instances is the same as in Oracle Database instances.

Note: 1. For a Linux environment, automatic memory management cannot work if /dev/shm is not available or is undersized. For more information, see Oracle Database Administrator's Reference for Linux and UNIX. For information about platforms that support automatic memory management, see Oracle Database Administrator's Guide. 2.The minimum MEMORY_TARGET for ASM is 256 MB. If you set MEMORY_TARGET to 100 MB, then Oracle increases the value for MEMORY_TARGET to 256 MB automatically.

ASM Parameter Setting Recommendations

ASM_DISKGROUPS The ASM_DISKGROUPS initialization parameter specifies a list of the names of disk groups that an ASM instance mounts at startup. Oracle ignores the value that you set for ASM_DISKGROUPS when you specify the NOMOUNT option at startup or when you issue the ALTER DISKGROUP ALL MOUNT statement. The default value of the ASM_DISKGROUPS parameter is a NULL string. If the parameter value is NULL or is not specified, then ASM does not mount any disk groups. The ASM_DISKGROUPS parameter is dynamic. If you are using a server parameter file (SPFILE), then you should not need to manually alter the value of ASM_DISKGROUPS. ASM automatically adds a disk group to this parameter when the disk group is successfully created or mounted. ASM also automatically removes a disk group from this parameter when the disk group is dropped or dismounted.
SQL> ALTER SYSTEM SET ASM_DISKGROUPS = 'CONTROLFILE, DATAFILE, LOGFILE, STANDBY'

When using a text initialization parameter file (PFILE), you must edit the initialization parameter file to add the name of any disk group that you want mounted automatically at instance startup. You must remove the name of any disk group that you no longer want automatically mounted.
ASM_DISKGROUPS = CONTROLFILE, DATAFILE, LOGFILE, STANDBY

Note: Issuing the ALTER DISKGROUP...ALL MOUNT or ALTER DISKGROUP...ALL DISMOUNT commands does not affect the value of ASM_DISKGROUPS. ASM_DISKSTRING The ASM_DISKSTRING initialization parameter specifies a comma-delimited list of strings that limits the set of disks that an ASM instance discovers. The discovery strings can include wildcard characters. Only disks that match one of the strings are discovered. The same disk cannot be discovered twice.

For example, on a Linux server that does not use ASMLIB, to limit the discovery process to only include disks that are in the /dev/rdsk/ directory, set ASM_DISKSTRING to:
/dev/rdsk/*

The asterisk is required. To limit the discovery process to only include disks that have a name that ends in disk3 or disk4, set ASM_DISKSTRING to:
/dev/rdsk/*disk3, /dev/rdsk/*disk4

The ? character, when used as the first character of a path, expands to the Oracle home directory. Depending on the operating system, when you use the ? character elsewhere in the path, it is a wildcard for one character. The default value of the ASM_DISKSTRING parameter is a NULL string. A NULL value causes ASM to search a default path for all disks in the system to which the ASM instance has read and write access. The default search path is platform-specific. ASM cannot use a disk unless all of the ASM instances in the cluster can discover the disk through one of their own discovery strings. The names do not need to be the same on every node, but all disks must be discoverable by all of the nodes in the cluster. This may require dynamically changing the initialization parameter to enable adding new storage. ASM_POWER_LIMIT The ASM_POWER_LIMIT initialization parameter specifies the default power for disk rebalancing. The default value is 1 and the range of allowable values is 0 to 11 inclusive. A value of 0 disables rebalancing. Higher numeric values enable the rebalancing operation to complete more quickly, but might result in higher I/O overhead. ASM_PREFERRED_READ_FAILURE_GROUPS The ASM_PREFERRED_READ_FAILURE_GROUPS initialization parameter value is a commadelimited list of strings that specifies the failure groups that should be preferentially read by the given instance. This parameter is generally used only for clustered ASM instances and its value can be different on different nodes. For example: diskgroup_name1.failure_group_name1, ... The ASM_PREFERRED_READ_FAILURE_GROUPS parameter setting is instance specific. This parameter is only valid for clustered ASM instances and the default value is NULL. Note: The ASM_PREFERRED_READ_FAILURE_GROUPS parameter is valid only in Oracle RAC environments.

DB_CACHE_SIZE You do not need to set a value for the DB_CACHE_SIZE initialization parameter if you use automatic memory management. The setting for the DB_CACHE_SIZE parameter determines the size of the buffer cache. This buffer cache is used to store metadata blocks. The default value for this parameter is suitable for most environments. DIAGNOSTIC_DEST The DIAGNOSTIC_DEST initialization parameter specifies the directory where diagnostics for an instance are located. The value for an ASM instance is of the form: diagnostic_dest=/diag/asm/db_name/instance_name For an ASM instance, db_name defaults to +asm. INSTANCE_TYPE The INSTANCE_TYPE initialization parameter must be set to ASM for an ASM instance. This is a required parameter and cannot be modified. The following is an example of the INSTANCE_TYPE parameter in the initialization file:
INSTANCE_TYPE = ASM

LARGE_POOL_SIZE You do not need to set a value for the LARGE_POOL_SIZE initialization parameter if you use automatic memory management. The setting for the LARGE_POOL_SIZE parameter is used for large allocations. The default value for this parameter is suitable for most environments. PROCESSES You do not need to set a value for the PROCESSES initialization parameter if you use automatic memory management. The PROCESSES initialization parameter affects ASM, but generally you do not need to modify the setting. The default value provided is usually suitable. REMOTE_LOGIN_PASSWORDFILE The REMOTE_LOGIN_PASSWORDFILE initialization parameter specifies whether the ASM instance checks for a password file. This parameter operates the same for ASM and database instances.

SHARED_POOL_SIZE You do not need to set a value for the SHARED_POOL_SIZE initialization parameter if you use automatic memory management. The setting for the SHARED_POOL_SIZE parameter determines the amount of memory required to manage the instance. The setting for this parameter is also used to determine the amount of space that is allocated for extent storage. The default value for this parameter is suitable for most environments.

Disk Group Attributes

Disk group attributes are essentially parameters that are bound to a disk group, rather than an instance.
AU_SIZE COMPATIBLE.ASM COMPATIBLE.RDBMS DISK_REPAIR_TIME

Administering ASM Instances

Administering ASM Instances with Server Control Utility
In addition to the ASM administration procedures that this section describes, you can use Server Control Utility (SRVCTL) in clustered ASM environments to perform the following ASM administration tasks:

Add and remove ASM instance records in the Oracle Cluster Registry (OCR) Enable, disable, start, and stop ASM instances Display the ASM instance configuration and status

Starting Up an ASM Instance

You start an ASM instance similar to start an Oracle database instance with some minor differences.

To connect to an ASM instance with SQL*Plus, set the ORACLE_SID environment variable to the ASM SID. The default ASM SID for a single-instance database is +ASM, and the default SID for ASM for an Oracle RAC node is +ASMnode_number where node_number is the number of the node The initialization parameter file must contain the following entry:
INSTANCE_TYPE = ASM

This parameter indicates that an ASM instance, not a database instance, is starting.

When you run the STARTUP command, rather than trying to mount and open a database, this command attempts to mount the disk groups specified by the initialization parameter ASM_DISKGROUPS. If you have not entered a value for ASM_DISKGROUPS, then the ASM instance starts and Oracle displays an error that no disk groups were mounted. You can then mount disk groups with the ALTER DISKGROUP...MOUNT command. ASM provides a MOUNT FORCE option to enable ASM disk groups to be mounted in normal or high redundancy modes even though some ASM disks may be unavailable to the disk group at mount time. The default behavior without the FORCE option is to fail to mount a disk group that has damaged or missing disks. To successfully mount with the MOUNT FORCE option, ASM must be able to find at least one copy of the extents for all of the files in the disk group. In this case, ASM can successfully mount the disk group, but with potentially reduced redundancy. If all disks are available, then using the FORCE option causes the MOUNT command to fail as well. This discourages unnecessary and improper use of the feature. ASM puts the unavailable disks in an offline mode if ASM is unable to access them. ASM then begins timing the period that these disks are in an offline mode. If the disk offline time period exceeds the timer threshold, then ASM permanently drops those disks from the disk group. You can change the offline timer after a disk is put in an offline state by using the ALTER DISKGROUP OFFLINE statement. The MOUNT FORCE option is useful in situations where a disk is temporarily unavailable and you want to mount the disk group with reduced redundancy while you correct the situation that caused the outage. Note: An ASM instance mounts an incomplete disk group differently depending on the specified compatibility as discussed under the heading "Disk Group Compatibility".

The associated Oracle database instance does not need to be running when you start the associated ASM instance.

The options for the STARTUP command are:

FORCE Performs a SHUTDOWN ABORT before restarting the ASM instance. MOUNT Starts the ASM instance and mounts the disk groups specified by the ASM_DISKGROUPS parameter. This is the default if no command parameter is NOMOUNT Starts the ASM instance without mounting any disk groups. OPEN This is not a valid option for an ASM instance. RESTRICT Parameter

specified.

Starts up an instance in restricted mode that enables access only to users with both the CREATE SESSION and RESTRICTED SESSION system privileges. The RESTRICT clause can be used in combination with the MOUNT, NOMOUNT, and OPEN clauses. In restricted mode, database instances cannot use the disk groups. In other words, databases cannot open files that are in that disk group. Also, the disk group cannot be mounted by any other instance in the cluster. Mounting the disk group in restricted mode enables only one ASM instance to mount the disk group. This mode is useful to mount the disk group for repairing configuration issues. About Restricted Mode You can use the STARTUP RESTRICT command to control access to an ASM instance while you perform maintenance. When an ASM instance is active in this mode, all of the disk groups that are defined in the ASM_DISKGROUPS parameter are mounted in RESTRICTED mode. This prevents databases from connecting to the ASM instance. In addition, the restricted clause of the ALTER SYSTEM statement is disabled for the ASM instance. The ALTER DISKGROUP diskgroupname MOUNT statement is extended to enable ASM to mount a disk group in restricted mode. When you mount a disk group in RESTRICTED mode, the disk group can only be mounted by one instance. Clients of ASM on that node cannot access that disk group while the disk group is mounted in RESTRICTED mode. The RESTRICTED mode enables you to perform maintenance tasks on a disk group in the ASM instance without interference from clients. Rebalance operations that occur while a disk group is in RESTRICTED mode eliminate the lock and unlock extent map messaging that occurs between ASM instances in an Oracle RAC environment. This improves the overall rebalance throughput. At the end of a maintenance period, you must explicitly dismount the disk group and remount it in normal mode. Cluster Synchronization Services Requirements for ASM The Cluster Synchronization Services (CSS) daemon provides cluster services for ASM, communication between the ASM and database instances, and other essential services. When DBCA creates a database, the CSS daemon is usually started and configured to start upon restart. If DBCA created the database, then you must ensure that the CSS daemon is running before you start the ASM instance.
CSS Daemon on UNIX and Linux Computers

To determine if the CSS daemon is running, run the command crsctl check cssd. If Oracle displays the message CSS appears healthy, then the CSS daemon is running. Otherwise, to start the CSS daemon and configure the host to always start the daemon upon restart, do the following: 1. Log in to the host as the root user. 2. Ensure that the entry $ORACLE_HOME/bin is in your PATH environment variable.

3. Run the following command:

localconfig add CSS Daemon on Microsoft Windows Computers

You can also use the crsctl and localconfig commands to check the status of the CSS daemon or to start it. To use Windows GUI tools to determine whether the CSS daemon is properly configured and running, double-click the Services icon in the Windows Control Panel and locate the OracleCSService service. The service's status should be Started and its startup type should be Automatic. Note: Refer to your Windows documentation for information about how to start a Windows service and how to configure it for automatic startup.

Shutting Down an ASM Instance

The ASM shutdown process is initiated when you run the SHUTDOWN command in SQL*Plus. Before you run this command, ensure that the ORACLE_SID environment variable is set to the ASM SID so that you can connect to the ASM instance. Depending on your operating system and whether you installed ASM in a separate ASM home, you might have to change other environment variables before starting SQL*Plus. Oracle strongly recommends that you shut down all database instances that use the ASM instance before attempting to shut down the ASM instance. The options for the SHUTDOWN command are:

The ASM instance waits for all connected ASM instances and SQL sessions to exit then shuts down. IMMEDIATE The ASM instance waits for any SQL transactions to complete then shuts down. It doesnt wait for sessions to exit. TRANSACTIONAL Same as IMMEDIATE. ABORT The ASM instance shuts down instantly.
NORMAL

ASM Background Processes

The following background processes are an integral part of Automatic Storage Management:

ARBn performs the actual rebalance data extent movements in an Automatic Storage Management instance. There can be many of these processes running at a time, named ARB0, ARB1, and so on. ASMB runs in a database instance that is using an ASM disk group. ASMB communicates with the ASM instance, managing storage and providing statistics. ASMB

can also run in the ASM instance. ASMB runs in ASM instances when the ASMCMD cp command runs or when the database instance first starts if the SPFILE is stored in ASM. GMON maintains disk membership in ASM disk groups. MARK marks ASM allocation units as stale following a missed write to an offline disk. This essentially tracks which extents require resync for offline disks. RBAL runs in both database and ASM instances. In the database instance, it does a global open of ASM disks. In an ASM instance, it also coordinates rebalance activity for disk groups.

Also, there are ASM slave processes that run periodically to perform a specific task. The slave processes are not technically background processes. The V$BGPROCESS view that displays information about background processes

Using ASM Rolling Upgrades

ASM rolling upgrades enable you to independently upgrade or patch clustered ASM nodes without affecting database availability, thus providing greater uptime. Rolling upgrade means that all of the features of a clustered ASM environment function when one or more of the nodes in the cluster uses different software versions. Note: Rolling upgrades only apply to clustered ASM instances, and you can only perform rolling upgrades on environments with Oracle Database 11g or later. In other words, you cannot use this feature to upgrade from Oracle Database 10g to Oracle Database 11g. Before you patch or upgrade the ASM software on a node, you must place the ASM cluster into rolling upgrade mode. This enables you to begin an upgrade and operate your environment in multiversion software mode.
ALTER SYSTEM START ROLLING MIGRATION TO '11.1.0.7.0';

The instance from which you run this statement verifies whether the value that you specified for number is compatible with the current installed version of your software. When the upgrade begins, the behavior of the clustered ASM environment changes, and only the following operations are permitted on the ASM instance:

Disk group mount and dismount Database file open, close, resize, and delete Limited access to fixed views and fixed packages

Oracle disables all global views when a clustered ASM environment is in rolling upgrade mode.(only local views available)

After the rolling upgrade has been started, you can shut down each ASM instance and perform the software upgrade. On start up, the updated ASM instance can rejoin the cluster. When you have migrated all of the nodes in your clustered ASM environment to the latest software version, you can end the rolling upgrade mode. If a disk goes offline when the ASM instance is in rolling upgrade mode, then the disk remains offline until the rolling upgrade has ended. Also, the timer for dropping the disk is stopped until the ASM cluster is out of rolling upgrade mode. You can also use the same procedure to roll back node upgrades if you encounter problems with the upgrade. The ASM functionality is compatible with the lowest software version that is on any of the nodes in the cluster during an upgrade. The upgrade fails if there are rebalancing operations occurring anywhere in the cluster. You must wait until the rebalance completes before attempting to start a rolling upgrade. In addition, as long as there is one instance active in the cluster, the rolling upgrade state is preserved. If a rolling upgrade is in progress in a clustered ASM environment and if any new ASM instance joins the cluster, then the new ASM instance is notified that the cluster is in rolling upgrade mode.
SELECT SYS_CONTEXT('sys_cluster_properties','cluster_state') FROM DUAL;

To perform the upgrade after your instances restart, you must re-run the commands to restart the rolling upgrade operation. When the rolling upgrade completes, run the following SQL statement:
ALTER SYSTEM STOP ROLLING MIGRATION;

After you run this statement, Oracle performs the following operations:

Validates that all of the members of the cluster are at the same software version. If there are one or more ASM instances that have different versions, then Oracle displays an error and the cluster continues to be in rolling upgrade mode. Updates the cluster-wide state so that the ASM instances are no longer in rolling upgrade mode; the ASM instances begin supporting the full clustered ASM functionality. Rebalance operations that were pending are restarted if the setting for the ASM_POWER_LIMIT parameter enables this.

Patching ASM Instances

For Oracle RAC environments, if you configure ASM in a home that is separate from the Oracle Database home, then when you apply patches you must apply them in a specific order. You must first ensure that your Oracle Clusterware version is at least equal to the version of the patch that you are applying. This may require you to patch the Oracle Clusterware home first. Then apply the patch to the ASM home, and finally, apply the patch to the Oracle Database home.

Note: You must apply the patch to the ASM home before you apply it to the Oracle Database home.

Authentication for Accessing ASM Instances

The ASM and database instances must have equivalent operating system access rights. For example, the ASM instance and the database instance must have identical read and write permissions. For UNIX systems, this is typically provided through shared UNIX group membership. On Windows systems, the ASM service can run as Administrator. An ASM instance does not have a data dictionary, so the only way to connect to an ASM instance is by using one of three system privileges, SYSASM, SYSDBA, or SYSOPER. There are three modes of connecting to ASM instances:

Local connection using operating system authentication Local connection using password authentication Remote connection by way of Oracle Net Services using password authentication

Note: If you create an ASM instance using Database Configuration Assistant (DBCA), or if you create the ASM instance using Database Upgrade Assistant (DBUA), then the user SYS should have SYSASM privileges.

About the SYSASM Privilege for ASM

SYSASM is a system privilege that enables the separation of the SYSDBA privilege from the ASM privilege. Access to the SYSASM privilege is granted by membership in an operating system group that is designated as the OSASM group. This is similar to SYSDBA and SYSOPER privileges. You can designate one group for all of these system privileges, or you can designate separate groups for each operating system privilege. You can divide system privileges during ASM installation, so that database administrators, storage administrators, and database operators each have distinct operating system privilege groups. Table 3-1 Operating System Authentication Groups for ASM Group OSASM OSDBA for ASM Privilege Granted to Members SYSASM privilege, which provides full administrative privilege for the ASM instance. SYSDBA privilege on the ASM instance. This privilege grants access to data stored on ASM, and in the current release, grants the SYSASM administrative

Group

Privilege Granted to Members privileges.

OSOPER for SYSOPER privilege on the ASM instance. ASM

If you do not want to divide system privileges access into separate operating system groups, then you can designate one operating system group as the group whose members are granted access as OSDBA, OSOPER, OSASM, and OSDBA for ASM, and OSOPER for ASM privileges. The default operating system group name for all of these is dba. Whether you create separate operating system privilege groups or use one group to provide operating system authentication for all system privileges, you should use SYSASM to connect to and administer an ASM instance. In Oracle 11g release 1, both SYSASM and SYSDBA are supported privileges; however, if you use the SYSDBA privilege to administer an ASM instance, then Oracle will write warning messages to the alert log, indicating that the SYSDBA privilege is deprecated on an ASM instance for administrative commands. In a future release, the privilege to administer an ASM instance with SYSDBA will be removed. Connecting to an ASM instance as SYSASM grants you full access to all of the available ASM disk groups and management functions.

Accessing an ASM Instance

The SYS user is created by default by DBCA during installation process with all three system privileges. Use the following statement to connect locally to an ASM instance using operating system authentication:
sqlplus / AS SYSASM

Use the following statement to connect locally using password authentication:

sqlplus SYS AS SYSASM

Use the following statement to connect remotely using password authentication:

sqlplus sys@\"myhost.mydomain.com:1521/asm\" AS SYSASM

Use the following statement to connect to an ASM instance with SYSDBA privilege:
sqlplus / AS SYSDBA

Oracle writes messages to the alert log if you issue ASM administrative commands that will be accessible only to the SYSASM privilege in future releases.

Creating Users with the SYSASM Privilege

When you are logged in to an ASM instance as SYSASM, you can use the combination of CREATE USER and GRANT SQL statements to create a new user who has the SYSASM privilege. These commands update the password file for the local ASM instance. Similarly, you can revoke the SYSASM privilege from a user using the REVOKE command, and you can drop a user from the password file using the DROP USER command.
SQL> CREATE USER new_user IDENTIFIED by new_user_passwd; SQL> GRANT SYSASM TO new_user; SQL> CONNECT new_user AS SYSASM; Enter password: SQL> REVOKE SYSASM FROM new_user; SQL> DROP USER new_user;

Operating System Authentication for ASM

Membership in the operating system group designated as the OSASM group provides operating system authentication for the SYSASM system privilege. OSASM is provided exclusively for ASM. However, you can add other users. Members of the OSASM group are authorized to connect using the SYSASM privilege and have full access to ASM. On Linux and UNIX systems, the default operating system group designated as OSASM, OSOPER, and OSDBA is dba. On Windows systems, the default name designated as OSASM, OSOPER, and OSDBA is ora_dba. Note: The user who is the software owner for the Oracle Database home, that Oracle documentation describes as the oracle user must be a member of the group that is designated as the OSDBA group for the ASM home. This is automatically configured when ASM and an Oracle Database share the same Oracle home. If you install the ASM and database instances in separate homes, then you must ensure that you create a separate OSDBA group for ASM, and that you designate the correct group memberships for each OSDBA group. Otherwise, the database instance will not be able to connect to the ASM instance.

Password File Authentication for ASM

Password file authentication for ASM can work both locally and remotely. To enable password file authentication, you must create a password file for ASM. A password file is also required to enable Oracle Enterprise Manager to connect to ASM remotely.

If you select the ASM storage option, then DBCA creates a password file for ASM when it initially configures the ASM disk groups. Similar to a database password file, the only user added to the password file when DBCA creates it is SYS. To add other users to the password file, you can use the CREATE USER and GRANT commands. If you configure an ASM instance without using DBCA, then you must manually create a password file and GRANT the SYSASM privilege to user SYS.

Migrating a Database to Use ASM

Oracle provides several methods for migrating your database to ASM. Using ASM will enable you to realize the benefits of automation and simplicity in managing your database storage. You can use the following methods to migrate to ASM as described in this section: Note: You must upgrade to at least Oracle Database 10g before migrating your database to ASM.

Using Oracle Enterprise Manager to Migrate Databases to ASM

Enterprise Manager enables you to perform cold and hot database migration with a GUI. You can access the migration wizard from the Enterprise Manager Home page under the Change Database heading.

Manually Migrating to ASM Using Oracle Recovery Manager

You can use Oracle Recovery Manager (RMAN) to manually migrate to ASM. You can also use RMAN to migrate a single tablespace or datafile to ASM.

Migrating to ASM Best Practices White Papers on Oracle Technology Network (OTN)
The Oracle Maximum Availability Architecture (MAA) Web site provides excellent best practices technical white papers based on different scenarios, such as:

Minimal Downtime Migration to ASM Platform Migration using Transportable Tablespaces Platform Migration using Transportable Database

4 Administering ASM Disk Groups

Managing Automatic Storage Management (ASM) Disk Groups

Creating Disk Groups

The CREATE DISKGROUP SQL statement is used to create disk groups. When creating a disk group, you need to:

Assign a unique name to the disk group. Specify the redundancy level of the disk group.

If you want ASM to mirror files, you specify the redundancy level as NORMAL REDUNDANCY (2way mirroring by default for most file types) or HIGH REDUNDANCY (3-way mirroring for all files). You specify EXTERNAL REDUNDANCY if you do not want mirroring by ASM.

Specify the disks as belonging to specific failure groups. Specify the disks that are to be formatted as ASM disks belonging to the disk group. Optionally specify disk group attributes, such software compatibility or allocation unit size.

ASM programmatically determines the size of each disk. If for some reason this is not possible, or if you want to restrict the amount of space used on a disk, you are able to specify a SIZE clause for each disk. ASM creates operating systemindependent names for the disks in a disk group that you can use to reference the disks in other SQL statements. Optionally, you can provide your own name for a disk using the NAME clause. Disk names are available in the V$ASM_DISK view. Note: A disk cannot belong to multiple disk groups. a disk might have failed and was dropped from its disk group. After the disk is repaired, it is no longer part of any disk group, but ASM still recognizes that the disk had been a member of a disk group. You must use the FORCE flag to include the disk in a new disk group. In addition, the disk must be addressable, and the original disk group must not be mounted. Otherwise, the operation fails. Note: Use caution when using the FORCE option to add a previously used disk to a disk group; you might cause another disk group to become unusable. The CREATE DISKGROUP statement mounts the disk group for the first time, and adds the disk group name to the ASM_DISKGROUPS initialization parameter if a server parameter file is being used. If a text initialization parameter file is being used and you want the disk group to be automatically mounted at instance startup, then you must remember to add the disk group name to the ASM_DISKGROUPS initialization parameter before the next time that you shut down and restart the ASM instance.

How to create a disk group? Sql> CREATE DISKGROUP mygrp NORMAL REDUNDENCY DISK /dev/sda6,/dev/sda14, ATTRIBUTE 'au_size'='4M', // Diskgroup created The NAME clause enable you to explicitly assign names to the disks rather than the default systemgenerated names. The system-generated names are in the form diskgroupname_nnnn, where nnnn is the disk number for the disk in the disk group. When creating the disk group, the values of following disk group attributes were explicitly set:
AU_SIZE specifies the size of the allocation unit for the disk group. COMPATIBLE.ASM determines the minimum software version for any ASM 'compatible.asm' = '11.1', 'compatible.rdbms' = '11.1';

instance that uses a disk group COMPATIBLE.RDBMS determines the minimum software version for any database instance that uses a disk group.

Sql> select name,state from v$diskgroup; // mygrp How to drop a disk group? Sql> drop diskgroup mygrp including contents; We can drop diskgroups only when it is in the mount stage. Sql> alter diskgroup mygrp mount; Sql> select name,state from v$diskgroup;