3/11/2017 ORACLE-BASE - Automatic Storage Management (ASM) in Oracle Database 10g

In summary ASM provides the following functionality:

Manages groups of disks, called disk groups.
Manages disk redundancy within a disk group.
Provides near-optimal I/O balancing without any manual tuning.
Enables management of database objects without specifying mount points and filenames.
Supports large files.
It is worth taking a quick look at the following section of the documentation to familiarize yourself with the basic requirements
recommendations for ASM.
Recommendations for Storage Preparation

Initialization Parameters and ASM Instance Creation

The initialization parameters that are of specific interest for an ASM instance are:
INSTANCE_TYPE - Set to ASM or RDBMS depending on the instance type. The default is RDBMS.
DB_UNIQUE_NAME - Specifies a globally unique name for the database. This defaults to +ASM but must be altered if you intend to
run multiple ASM instances.
ASM_POWER_LIMIT -The maximum power for a rebalancing operation on an ASM instance. The valid values range from 1 to 11,
with 1 being the default. The higher the limit the more resources are allocated resulting in faster rebalancing operations. This value
is also used as the default when the POWER clause is omitted from a rebalance operation.
ASM_DISKGROUPS - The list of disk groups that should be mounted by an ASM instance during instance startup, or by the ALTER
DISKGROUP ALL MOUNT statement. ASM configuration changes are automatically reflected in this parameter.
ASM_DISKSTRING - Specifies a value that can be used to limit the disks considered for discovery. Altering the default value may
improve the speed of disk group mount time and the speed of adding a disk to a disk group. Changing the parameter to a value
which prevents the discovery of already mounted disks results in an error. The default value is NULL allowing all suitable disks to
be considered.
Incorrect usage of parameters in ASM or RDBMS instances result in ORA-15021 errors.
To create an ASM instance first create a file called "init+ASM.ora" in the "/tmp" directory containing the following information.

INSTANCE_TYPE=ASM

Next, using SQL*Plus connect to the ide instance.

export ORACLE_SID=+ASM
sqlplus / as sysdba

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Create an spfile using the contents of the "init+ASM.ora" file.

SQL> CREATE SPFILE FROM PFILE='/tmp/init+ASM.ora';

File created.

Finally, start the instance with the NOMOUNT option.

SQL> startup nomount

ASM instance started

Total System Global Area 125829120 bytes

Fixed Size 1301456 bytes
Variable Size 124527664 bytes
Database Buffers 0 bytes
Redo Buffers 0 bytes
SQL>

The ASM instance is now ready to use for creating and mounting disk groups. To shutdown the ASM instance issue the following
command.

SQL> shutdown
ASM instance shutdown
SQL>

Once an ASM instance is present disk groups can be used for the following parameters in database instances ( INSTANCE_TYPE=RDBMS )
to allow ASM file creation:
DB_CREATE_FILE_DEST
DB_CREATE_ONLINE_LOG_DEST_n
DB_RECOVERY_FILE_DEST
CONTROL_FILES
LOG_ARCHIVE_DEST_n
LOG_ARCHIVE_DEST
STANDBY_ARCHIVE_DEST

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Startup and Shutdown of ASM Instances

ASM instance are started and stopped in a similar way to normal database instances. 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.
NOMOUNT - Starts the ASM instance without mounting any disk groups.
OPEN - This is not a valid option for an ASM instance.

The options for the SHUTDOWN command are:

NORMAL - 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 doesn't wait for sessions to exit.
TRANSACTIONAL - Same as IMMEDIATE .
ABORT - The ASM instance shuts down instantly.

Administering ASM Disk Groups

There are a few basic points to consider when planning to use ASM:
In most cases you will only need two disk groups (DATA and FRA), where DATA holds all database related files and FRA holds the
fast recovery area, including multiplexed copies on online redo logs and controlfiles. Typically, the FRA disk group will be twice the
size of the DATA disk group, since it must hold all backups.
Oracle recommend a minimum of 4 LUNs per disk group, with LUNs using hardware RAID and external redundancy if possible.
All LUNs within a disk group should be the same size and have the same performance characteristics.
LUNs should be made up from disks dedicated to Oracle, not shared with other applications.
Now let's look at basic administration of disk groups.

Disks
Disk groups are created using the CREATE DISKGROUP statement. This statement allows you to specify the level of redundancy:
NORMAL REDUNDANCY - Two-way mirroring, requiring two failure groups.
HIGH REDUNDANCY - Three-way mirroring, requiring three failure groups.
EXTERNAL REDUNDANCY - No mirroring for disks that are already protected using hardware mirroring or RAID. If you have hardware
RAID it should be used in preference to ASM redundancy, so this will be the standard option for most installations.
In addition failure groups and preferred names for disks can be defined. If the NAME clause is omitted the disks are given a system
generated name like "disk_group_1_0001". The FORCE option can be used to move a disk from another disk group into this one.

CREATE DISKGROUP disk_group_1 NORMAL REDUNDANCY

FAILGROUP failure_group_1 DISK
'/devices/diska1' NAME diska1
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/devices/diska1 NAME diska1,
'/devices/diska2' NAME diska2
FAILGROUP failure_group_2 DISK

'/devices/diskb1' NAME diskb1,

'/devices/diskb2' NAME diskb2;

Disk groups can be deleted using the DROP DISKGROUP statement.

DROP DISKGROUP disk_group_1 INCLUDING CONTENTS;

Disks can be added or removed from disk groups using the ALTER DISKGROUP statement. Remember that the wildcard "*" can be used
to reference disks so long as the resulting string does not match a disk already used by an existing disk group.

-- Add disks.
ALTER DISKGROUP disk_group_1 ADD DISK
'/devices/disk*3',
'/devices/disk*4';

-- Drop a disk.
ALTER DISKGROUP disk_group_1 DROP DISK diska2;

Disks can be resized using the RESIZE clause of the ALTER DISKGROUP statement. The statement can be used to resize individual disks,
all disks in a failure group or all disks in the disk group. If the SIZE clause is omitted the disks are resized to the size of the disk
returned by the OS.

-- Resize a specific disk.

ALTER DISKGROUP disk_group_1
RESIZE DISK diska1 SIZE 100G;

-- Resize all disks in a failure group.

ALTER DISKGROUP disk_group_1
RESIZE DISKS IN FAILGROUP failure_group_1 SIZE 100G;

-- Resize all disks in a disk group.

ALTER DISKGROUP disk_group_1
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RESIZE ALL SIZE 100G;

The UNDROP DISKS clause of the ALTER DISKGROUP statement allows pending disk drops to be undone. It will not revert drops that have
completed, or disk drops associated with the dropping of a disk group.

ALTER DISKGROUP disk_group_1 UNDROP DISKS;

Disk groups can be rebalanced manually using the REBALANCE clause of the ALTER DISKGROUP statement. If the POWER clause is omitted
the ASM_POWER_LIMIT parameter value is used. Rebalancing is only needed when the speed of the automatic rebalancing is not
appropriate.

ALTER DISKGROUP disk_group_1 REBALANCE POWER 5;

Disk groups are mounted at ASM instance startup and unmounted at ASM instance shutdown. Manual mounting and dismounting can
be accomplished using the ALTER DISKGROUP statement as seen below.

ALTER DISKGROUP ALL DISMOUNT;

ALTER DISKGROUP ALL MOUNT;
ALTER DISKGROUP disk_group_1 DISMOUNT;
ALTER DISKGROUP disk_group_1 MOUNT;

Templates
Templates are named groups of attributes that can be applied to the files within a disk group. The following example show how
templates can be created, altered and dropped.

-- Create a new template.

ALTER DISKGROUP disk_group_1 ADD TEMPLATE my_template ATTRIBUTES (MIRROR FINE);

-- Modify template.
ALTER DISKGROUP disk_group_1 ALTER TEMPLATE my_template ATTRIBUTES (COARSE);

-- Drop template.
ALTER DISKGROUP disk_group_1 DROP TEMPLATE my_template;

Available attributes include:

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UNPROTECTED - No mirroring or striping regardless of the redundancy setting.

MIRROR - Two-way mirroring for normal redundancy and three-way mirroring for high redundancy. This attribute cannot be set for
external redundancy.
COARSE - Specifies lower granuality for striping. This attribute cannot be set for external redundancy.
FINE - Specifies higher granularity for striping. This attribute cannot be set for external redundancy.

Directories
A directory heirarchy can be defined using the ALTER DISKGROUP statement to support ASM file aliasing. The following examples show
how ASM directories can be created, modified and deleted.

-- Create a directory.
ALTER DISKGROUP disk_group_1 ADD DIRECTORY '+disk_group_1/my_dir';

-- Rename a directory.
ALTER DISKGROUP disk_group_1 RENAME DIRECTORY '+disk_group_1/my_dir' TO '+disk_group_1/my_dir_2';

-- Delete a directory and all its contents.

ALTER DISKGROUP disk_group_1 DROP DIRECTORY '+disk_group_1/my_dir_2' FORCE;

Aliases
Aliases allow you to reference ASM files using user-friendly names, rather than the fully qualified ASM filenames.

-- Create an alias using the fully qualified filename.

ALTER DISKGROUP disk_group_1 ADD ALIAS '+disk_group_1/my_dir/my_file.dbf'
FOR '+disk_group_1/mydb/datafile/my_ts.342.3';

-- Create an alias using the numeric form filename.

ALTER DISKGROUP disk_group_1 ADD ALIAS '+disk_group_1/my_dir/my_file.dbf'
FOR '+disk_group_1.342.3';

-- Rename an alias.
ALTER DISKGROUP disk_group_1 RENAME ALIAS '+disk_group_1/my_dir/my_file.dbf'
TO '+disk_group_1/my_dir/my_file2.dbf';

D l t li
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-- Delete an alias.
ALTER DISKGROUP disk_group_1 DELETE ALIAS '+disk_group_1/my_dir/my_file.dbf';

Attempting to drop a system alias results in an error.

Files
Files are not deleted automatically if they are created using aliases, as they are not Oracle Managed Files (OMF), or if a recovery is
done to a point-in-time before the file was created. For these circumstances it is necessary to manually delete the files, as shown below.

-- Drop file using an alias.

ALTER DISKGROUP disk_group_1 DROP FILE '+disk_group_1/my_dir/my_file.dbf';

-- Drop file using a numeric form filename.

ALTER DISKGROUP disk_group_1 DROP FILE '+disk_group_1.342.3';

-- Drop file using a fully qualified filename.

ALTER DISKGROUP disk_group_1 DROP FILE '+disk_group_1/mydb/datafile/my_ts.342.3';

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