Oracle ASM is a volume manager and a file system for Oracle database files.
Oracle ASM also supports a general purpose file system that can store application files and oracle database
binaries.
It provides an alternative to conventional volume managers, file systems and raw devices.
Oracle ASM distributes I/O load across all available resource to optimize performance.
In this way, it removes the need for manual I/O tuning (spreading out the database files avoids hotspots).
Oracle ASM allows the DBA to define a pool of storage (disk groups).
The Oracle kernel manages the file naming and placement of the database files on the storage pool.
Disk groups
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be overwritten).
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A Disk from a storage array (RAID): RAID present disks as Logical Unit Numbers (LUNs).
A logical volume.
A Network-attached file (NFS): Including files provided through Oracle Direct NFS (dNFS).Whole
disks, partitions and LUNs can also be mounted by ASM through NFS.
Load balance: Oracle ASM spreads the files proportionally across all of the disks in the disk group, so
the disks within a disk group should be in different physical drives.
Disks can be added or removed "on the fly" to and from disk groups.
After you add a disk, Oracle ASM performs rebalancing.
Data is redistributed to ensure that every file is evenly spread across all of the disks.
Disks can be added or removed from a disk groupwhile the database is accessing files on that disk
group (without downtime).
For each disk in a disk group, you need to specify a failure group to which the disk will belong.
A failure group is a subset of the disks in a disk group, which could fail at the same time because they
share hardware
In a normal redundancy file, Oracle ASM allocates a primary copy and a secondary copy in disks
belonging to different failure groups.
Each copy is on a disk in a different failure group so that the simultaneous failure of all disks in a failure
group does not result in data loss.
A normal redundancy disk group must contain at least two failure groups.
Splitting the various disks in a disk group across failure groups allows Oracle ASM to implment file
mirroring.
Oracle ASM implements mirroring by allocating file and file copies to different failure groups.
If you do not explicitly identify failure groups, Oracle allocates each disk in a disk group to its own failure
group.
With Oracle ASM an ASM instance besides the database instance needs to be configured on the server.
An Oracle ASM instance has an SGA and background processes, but is usually much smaller than a
database instance.
It has minimal (how much?) performance effect on a server.
Oracle ASM Instances are responsible for mounting the disk groups so that ASM files are available for
DB instances.
Oracle ASM instances DO NOT mount databases.
They only manage the metadata of the disk group and provide file layout information to the database
instances.