Datasheet

Automatic Storage Management (ASM) provides a central-

ized way to manage Oracle Database disk storage. The Oracle

Database 11g OCP exam will test your knowledge of ASM,

and thus ASM is the ﬁrst topic we will tackle in this book.

In this chapter, we will discuss what ASM is, how to conﬁgure an ASM instance, how

to manage an ASM instance, and ﬁnally, how to use ASM from within an Oracle database.

As is true in the rest of this book, we will conclude with a review of the chapter, and we

will tell you, in the section “Exam Essentials,” what you need to know about ASM for the

exam. Finally, we will present chapter review questions and answers so you can determine

whether you have gained sufﬁcient knowledge of ASM to pass the Oracle Database 11g

OCP exam.

On with the show!

Exam objectives are subject to change at any time without prior notice and

at Oracle’s sole discretion. Please visit Oracle’s Training and Certification

website (

http://www.oracle.com/education/certification/) for the

most current exam-objectives listing.

What Is ASM?

ASM is designed to simplify Oracle database storage administration. Database environ-

ments have become more and more complex, with large numbers of (and larger) dataﬁles,

storage area networks (SANs), and high-availability requirements. ASM is somewhat like a

logical volume manager, allowing you to reduce the management of Oracle ﬁles into ASM

disk groups. It also provides redundancy conﬁgurations, rebalancing operations, and, when

installed on top of clusterware, the ability to share database-related ﬁles.

ASM stores ﬁles in disk groups, which are logical entities made up of one or more physi-

cal disk drives. ASM is good for more than just storing database dataﬁles. In an ASM

instance, you can store database dataﬁles, online redo logs, archived redo logs, backup

ﬁles, and data-pump dumpﬁles as well as change-tracking ﬁles and control ﬁles of one or

several Oracle databases, though these databases and the ASM instance must have afﬁnity

to a given machine or cluster. ASM also provides the ability to locate the ﬂash recovery area

on an ASM disk group, so your backups to disk can be made to ASM.

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