Bare Bones ASM

What Every DBA Needs to Know

Jay Caviness
Sr. Systems Engineer
McKesson Provider Technologies
 Topics

What is ASM?

Using ASM

Caveats and Issues

New Features in 11gR2

McKesson Provider Technologies

Largest Healthcare IS Company

Oracle Solutions Partner

McKesson Clinicals Applications

17 Applications Suites
Meds Manager
ER
Billing/Revenue Management
Nursing
NICU/PICU
About Me

Oracle DBA for 20 years

Senior Engineering DBA and Oracle Infrastructure Architect for

McKesson Provider Technologies

Administered Oracle from v5.1 11g

Beta team for 11gR2

Oracle Certified Professional

Known as the Grumpy DBA

McKesson Horizon Clinicals and ASM

Over 800 hospital deploy McKesson applications

ASM deployed starting in late 2005 (10gR1)

As of today more than 475 hospitals run Oracle ASM

- Most run Oracle RAC - over 700 clusters
- Linux, HP/UX and IBM-AIX
McKesson Horizon Clinicals Client

Starting disk space per installation: 400GB+

Growth 20%30% year over year

Retention requirements vary by HIPAA rules,

typically 7-10 years
Automated Storage Management
Why ASM

Why choose ASM?

Setup and Management

Simplicity

Scalability & Performance

Robust and Stable

 What is ASM?

Replaces conventional file systems and

volume managers

Capacity on demand
Add/drop disks online

Automatic I/O load balancing

Stripes data across disks to balance load

Automatic mirroring

Automatic Storage Easy to set up and use

Management
Works with SAN, NAS or filesystems
What ASM does do

Stripe & mirror data across multiple disks

Reduces management overhead

Provides 0, 2 or 3-way mirroring

Can store almost all types of database related

files*
What ASM does not do

Not an I/O broker or controller I/O is still managed

by the individual instances

Not a database INSTANCE_TYPE=asm

Acts as the mediator and definer

Not foolproof, luns can be removed out from under

ASM!
ASM - Setup

Install in own Oracle Home

Determine redundancy/mirroring

Determine LUN/Disk size

Partition devices

Install ASM software and start the mini-cluster

The mini-cluster

The Oracle Cluster Synchronization Services

Daemon is required for ASM even for a single
(non-RAC) database

Used for communication between ASM and

database instances

Root.sh will create an entry in /etc/inittab to

respawn cssd
ASMlib

Defines disk/luns for use with ASM

--------------------------------
---- ----------- ---------------
Only available on Linux
---------------
asm_diskgroups
service oracleasm
string DGROUP1
asm_diskstring
/dev/oracleasm
string ORCL:VOL*
init+ASM.ora

Only one ASM instance per node

--------------------------------
---- ----------- ---------------
*.asm_diskgroups=DATA'
---------------
*.asm_diskstring='ORCL:* -- linux
asm_diskgroups
*.asm_diskstring=/dev/asm_disk* -- unix
*.asm_diskstring=/dev/c0t1d1*
string DGROUP1 unix
*.asm_diskstring=/dev/sda1
asm_diskstring
*.instance_type='asm'
string ORCL:VOL*
*.processes=500 - Set to minimum of 25 + 15 *
number of databases uses ASM for storage
Diskgroups

Diskgroups are the logical storage units for ASM

One or more for all databases on a server or cluster

Often, two diskgroups are created, one for tablespace and

another for FRA

Diskgroups may also be created by SAN speed (fast, middle,

slow)
Redundancy

ASM supports three types of redundancy

External no mirroring within ASM, all at the OS level

Normal the default two way mirroring, each stripe is written

to two extents

High three way mirroring each stripe written to one primary

and two mirrored extents
Failgroups

Failgroups cannot be removed without recreating

the diskgroup.

If one failgroup is lost or offline for a period of

time, it will be re-synced when available again

Fail groups should be across different controllers

or SANs
Tools to Manage ASM

SQL*Plus

ASMCMD

Grid Control / Database Control

SRVCTL RAC only

Basic ASM Commands

Create a diskgroup:
CREATE DISKGROUP dgroup1 DISK
orcl:vol001,orcl:vol002;

Drop a diskgroup
DROP DISKGROUP dgroup1;

To drop a diskgroup which still contains data:

DROP DISKGROUP dgroup1 INCLUDING CONTENTS;
Basic ASM Commands

Add luns to a diskgroup:

ALTER DISKGROUP dgroup1 ADD DISK orcl:vol006;

Remove luns from a diskgroup:

ALTER DISKGROUP dgroup1 REMOVE DISK vol006;

Do both at the same time:

ALTER DISKGROUP dgroup1
ADD DISK
'ORCL:VOL003','ORCL:VOL004'
DROP DISK
'VOL005'
REBALANCE POWER 6;
Rebalancing

Redistribution only occurs when adding or dropping disk

Change the asm_power_limit, default 1, 0 up to 11

To modify the power limit for a disk group:

alter diskgroup dgroup1 rebalance power 11;

Check on the status via V$ASM_OPERATION

Basic ASM Commands Database level

Set for default diskgroup

db_create_file_dest=+DGROUP1

Create tablespaces without names using OMF

CREATE TABLESPACE testts DATAFILE SIZE 5g;

ALTER TABLESPACE testts ADD DATAFILE SIZE 10g;

Basic ASM Commands Database level

Set for default diskgroup for logfiles:

db_create_online_log_dest_1=+DGROUP1
db_create_online_log_dest_2=+DGROUP1

Create redo logs without names using OMF

ALTER SYSTEM ADD LOGFILE SIZE 200m;

Caveats

If ASM goes down, all instance that use ASM will

immediately crash.

Normal or high redundancy may not show the actual

disk use

Databases can remain unnoticed if not dropped

Loss of a disk (when using external redundancy) will

result in the loss of the diskgroup
ASM Myths and Legends

ASM will automatically rebalance hot spots

ASM controls file I/O

ASM must run on RAID 10

Disks/Luns must be added to a diskgroup in

multiples of 4 or 8
Quick Guide to 11gR2
New Features
 Database RAC Application 3rd Party FS

Automatic Storage Management (ASM)

ACFS Snapshot

ASM Cluster & Single

Node File System
ASM Instance (ACFS)
Managing
Oracle DB Files
Dynamic Volume Manager

ASM Files Dynamic Volumes

ASM
DB
DBDatafiles
Disk DBDatafiles
Datafiles
ACFS FS 3rd Party
Oracle Bin FS
Group OCR & Voting files
Oracle Database 11g Release 2
Automatic Storage Management (ASM)

`
SOA
The foundation for Grid
IMDB
OC4J
APACHE
Storage
Siebel PSFT
Web EBS

File
System
Binaries
DW
ODS OCR &
Voting Files

DB
Datafiles
New in 11gR2

ASM part of the clusterware

ACFS

ASMCA, ASMCMD

RAC - OCR/Voting disks in ASM

Diskgroup rename
Recommended Reading

www.oracle.com/technology/asm - Oracle White Papers

www.oracleracsig.com Oracle RAC SIG

www.oracle-base.com/articles/10g/ASMUsingASMLibAndRawDevices.php

www.juliandyke.com Author Julian Dyke

www.idevelopment.info Jeff Hunter

More information

Contact: jay.caviness@mckesson.com

Corporate: www.mckesson.com/clinicals

Personal: www.grumpy-dba.com