Oracle 10g Automatic Storage Management (ASM)

Initialization Parameters and ASM Instance Creation

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

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

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

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

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.

Administering ASM Disk Groups

DisksDisk 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.

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.

CREATE DISKGROUP disk_group_1 NORMAL REDUNDANCY
FAILGROUP failure_group_1 DISK
'/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;