ASM – Automatic Storage Management
It’s an oracle 10g feature. ASM is same as normal database instead of storing a DB files on normal filesystem. It will store a file an ASM managed file system, which will give disk redundancy. It only prevents a disk failure not the instance failure.
ASM uses a disk group to store the oracle files. A disk group is a collection of disks.
It supports single-instance and (Oracle RAC) configurations.
ASM only supports for external disk. External disk should be a raw disk, mostly a RAID.
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ASM is a volume manager and a file system for Oracle database files that supports single-instance Oracle Database and Oracle Real Application Clusters (Oracle RAC) configurations.
Oracle ASM uses disk groups to store data files; an Oracle ASM disk group is a collection of disks that Oracle ASM manages as a unit. Within a disk group, Oracle ASM exposes a file system interface for Oracle database files. The content of files that are stored in a disk group is evenly distributed to eliminate hot spots and to provide uniform performance across the disks. The performance is comparable to the performance of raw devices.
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, Oracle ASM automatically redistributes the file contents and eliminates the need for downtime when redistributing the content.
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RAID – Redundancy array of independent disk –
Types: RAID – 0, 1 & 5. In RAID 5 – Normal parity (Striping + Mirroring) & Distributed parity (It will distribute the data)
ASM only supports for external disk. External disk should be a raw disk.
Ex:
/dev/sdb ,/dev/sdc, /dev/sdd etc..
Read & write will be fast for raw disks. Since, normal disk will have OS disk level configuration etc.
We can do file mirroring and striping by using ASM.
Create volume in storage.
Create LUN.
EX: Storage team task
Storagehost> df –Ah
Aggr1 100T 500T 5ooT
Storagehost> vol create vol_data1 aggr1 150g
snapdrive storage create –lun Storagehost:/vol/vol_data1/lun2 -lunsize 100g
Lun created – /dev/sdb
DBAs requirement to storage team: 10*100 dedicated raw disk
Change the owner of all disks 10 disks.
chown –R oracle:oinstsll /dev/sdb etc..
Note: We can also change the internal disk as external by using converting.
ASM components
Disk group – It is a logical one, more than one physical disk can be divided as a logical group.
Minimum two disk group needed for the database.
DG1 – CRD file
DG2 – Flash recovery area (Archive, RMAN backup etc)
In diskgroup, we can add and remove disks.
For adding and removing, rebalancing will be run, since it’s a RAID.
DISK
It’s a physical disk. Data will be stored here.
A disk can be a shared, more than one diskgroup. For that we need to use force option.
Ex: D1 — DG1 & DG2.
| Normal DB | ASM DB |
| /opt/ * dbf, log etc | /dev/sdb/ * NO |
| It’s a physical mount point | It’s a raw disk, create disk group to use |
ASM Instance – It is used to mount and manage the disk group.
+ASM – It is instance.
A server can have only one ASM instance.
We can have more disk group and DB instance.
ASM instances mount disk groups to make ASM files available to database instances; ASM instances do not mount databases.
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.
EX:
Linux server 1:
| +ASM | DB |
| DG1 | Muthu DB |
| DG2 | “ |
| DG3 | Rajesh DB |
| DG4 | “ |
| DG5 | Test DB |
| DG6 | “ |
Parameter file of ASM:
Init+ASM.ora or spfile+ASM.ora – $ORACLE_HOME/dbs
$ vi init+ASM.ora
Instance_type = ASM (rdbms – for normal db)
Db_unique_name = +ASM
- all the other normal database parameters.
ASM parameters:
- ASM_diskgropus=’DG1’,’DG2’,’DG3’,’DG4’,’DG5’,’DG6’
- ASM_disk_strings=’/dev/sdb’,’/dev/sdc, … etc
- ASM_power_limit= [o-11] – 1 is default.
0- is diable, 1 – slow , 2- fast … 11 – super fast. It is for rebalancing.
Note: Rebalancing will be slow down the Database. It should be done in maintenance time.
Manual ASM instance creation:
$ export ORACLE_SID= +ASM
$ orapwd file = $ORACLE_HOME/dbs/orapw+ASM password=sys
$ sqlplus /nolog
Sql> startup pfile= ‘/opt/init=ASM.ora’
Sql> create spfile from pfile=’/optinit+ASM.ora’;
Sql> shutdown immediate
Sql> startup
Manning ASM disk group
- Failover group
- Rebalancing
Failover group
Types of ASM Disk groups:
Mirroring options
- None (External) – No mirroring
- Normal (2 mirroring allowed)
- High ( 3 – Mirroring)
All the disks should be same size. For external extent can be different size.
External redundancy disk creation
Sql> create diskgroup dg1 external redundancy disk ‘/dev/sdb’,’ /dev/sdc’, /dev/sdd’;
Normal redundancy disk creation
Sql> create diskgroup dg1 normal redundancy
Failgroup fg1 disk ‘/dev/sdb’,’ /dev/sdc’, /dev/sdd’
Failgroup fg2 disk ‘/dev/sde’,’ /dev/sdf’, /dev/sdg’;
high redundancy disk creation
Sql> create diskgroup dg1 high redundancy
Failgroup fg1 disk ‘/dev/sdb’,’ /dev/sdc’, /dev/sdd’
Failgroup fg2 disk ‘/dev/sde’,’ /dev/sdf’, /dev/sdg’
Failgroup fg2 disk ‘/dev/sdh’,’ /dev/sdi’, /dev/sdj’;
Adding disk into DG
Sql> alter diskgroup dg1 add disk = ‘/dev/sdk’, ‘/dev/sdl’, ‘/dev/sdm’;
Sql> alter diskgroup dg1 drop add disk = ‘/dev/sdk’, ‘/dev/sdl’;
Note: Rebalancing will be done for adding & dropping disks. This can be run by RBAL BG.
Scenario
ASM power limit is zero. I need to delete a disk, but without data loss. Since 0 – will not rebalance.
For that we need to set a power limit for particular disk group.
Sql> alter diskgroup dg1 rebalance power 10;
Sql> alter diskgroup dg2 drop disk ‘/dev/sdk,..’;
How to mount a disk group:
Ex: normal Db df –h
ASM – DG1
Sql> alter diskgroup dg1 mount;
Sql> alter diskgroup dg1 dismount;
Sql> drop diskgroup dg1;
Sql> alter diskgroup dg1 including contents;
How to create a ASM using a GUI
For version 10g & 11g R1
$ dbca
— Configure ASM –Sys password –Create –Dgname: DG1–External– Choose disk –ok
Components
ASM files:
It’s a physical file. To manage we have methods.
- OMF – Oracle managed files – from 9i
- UMF – User managed files
| Types | Normal | ASM |
| UMF | sql> create tablespace <tools> datafile ‘/opt/oracle/tools.dbf’ size 100m; | sql> create tablespace <tools> datafile ‘+DG1’ size 100m; |
| OMF | sql> create tablespace <tools>; | sql> create tablespace <tools>; |
For OMF – Oracle will create a file in the default file location.
Show parameter db_create_file_dest;
ASM filename:
It’s a fully qualified name. It will take it automatically.
Syntax: <+dgname>/<dbname>/<filetype>/<tag.file#.incarnation>
(Disk group, DB, .dbf or log, tbs name, file#, 8 digit number)
Sql> create tablespace tools datafile ‘+DG1’ size 100m;
Sql> select filename from dba_data_files where tablespace_name=’tools’;
Result: +DG1/Muthu/datafile/tools.01.17171314. – FQN.
You can also give a filepath /opt/oracle..
You can also change to valid name by using alias name.
Alias ASM filename
$ export ORACLE_SID=+ASM
Sql> alter diskgroup dg1 add alias file ‘+DG1/Muthu/datafile/tools.dbf’ for ‘+DG1/Muthu/datafile/tools.01.17171314’;
Sql> alter diskgroup dg1 drop file ‘+DG1/Muthu/datafile/tools.dbf’;
ASM instance startup & shutdown
Startup:
- ASM instance
- Database instance
Shutdown
- Database instance
- ASM instance
| Normal DB | ASM |
| Physical mount point | Logical |
| /opt/*.dbf,.log | +DG1/*.dbf,.log |
| $ cd /opt | $export ORACLE_SID=+ASM |
| $ ls | $ asmcmd |
| asmcmd> ls |
In 11G R2 onwards, we cannot use DBCA to create an ASM disk group.
10G & 11G R1, Database and ASM will be in single ORACLE OHME.
Ex: /opt/oracle/product/10.2.0/db_1
11G R2, DB — oracle software/database & ASM — Grid infrastructure software — ASM
Software:
DB:
p1….10f7.zip
p1….20f7.zip
ASM: p1….30f7.zip – 900MB.
For installation, we need to install ASM software first and then databases. We need to create two users for that and both will be in different OH.
ASM Home
/opt/app/grid/product/11/2.0/gridhome
Database Home
/opt/app/grid/product/11/2.0/dbhome
$ export ORACLE_HOME & ORACLR_PATH or change it in the bash_profile.
$ asmca – ASM configuration assistance
Enter Sys password — same as like pervious one 10g.
For DB creation, wherever we give a location, we need to give a disk group name instead.
ASM V$ Views
V$asm_diskgroup, v$asm_disk, v$asm_alias, v$asm_file, v$asm_operation ,… etc
ASM alert log file: 11g /opt/oracle/diag/ASM/+ASM/trace/Alert_+ASM.log
