Dell EMC SC Series Storage with Oracle ASM Abstract This document provides best practices and configuration options for Dell EMC™ SC Series storage in Fibre Channel environments when deploying Oracle®.
Revisions Revisions Date Description May 2011 Initial release April 2012 Content and format change January 2016 Content and format change April 2018 Content and format change Acknowledgements Author: Mark Tomczik The information in this publication is provided “as is.” Dell Inc. makes no representations or warranties of any kind with respect to the information in this publication, and specifically disclaims implied warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose.
Table of contents Table of contents Revisions.............................................................................................................................................................................2 Acknowledgements .............................................................................................................................................................2 Executive summary..................................................................................................
Executive summary Executive summary One key IT and business challenge is to manage and provision storage to accommodate the increasingly demanding requirements of a growing Oracle® database. Protecting a database and ensuring its integrity and availability is also mandatory for business success. When designing the physical structure of a database, administrators must consider different storage configuration options.
Introduction 1 Introduction Harnessing the power of Oracle ASM with the intelligence of SC Series storage yields a reliable, stable, and dynamic infrastructure that can be protected with very little effort. The following sections cover general best practices for using Oracle ASM with SC Series storage.
Introduction 1.
Technology overview 2 Technology overview 2.1 SC Series storage SC Series storage provides features that can be used in an Oracle database environment to create a robust storage solution and assist DBAs with data tiering, database performance, efficient use of storage, and database activities. For information on SC Series storage and Oracle, see the best practices document, Dell EMC SC Series Arrays and Oracle. 2.
Technology overview ASM nodes (DB and ASM instance) Node 1 Node 2 DB1 Node 3 DB1 ASM DB1 ASM Oracle interconnect DB2 ASM Node 4 DB2 ASM Fabric DATA FRA Traditional ASM configuration with dedicated ASM instance for each database server For LUNs intended for ASM, there are several tools at the OS level that can be used to manage them and provide consistent device naming and permission persistency: ASMLib, ASM Filter Driver (ASMFD), or UDEV. This document briefly reviews ASMLib.
Technology overview ASM Flex nodes (DB and ASM instance) Node 1 ASM client (DB but no ASM instance) Node 2 DB1 Node 3 DB1 ASM DB1 ASM Node 4 DB2 DB2 ASM Fabric Oracle interconnect Optional ASM network DATA FRA Flex ASM architecture with four database servers with ASM cardinality of three ASM Flex nodes (DB and ASM instance) Node 1 ASM client (DB but no ASM instance) Node 2 DB1 Node 3 DB1 ASM DB1 ASM DB2 ASM Node 4 DB2 ASM Fabric Oracle interconnect Optional ASM network DATA FR
Technology overview 2.3.2 Oracle ASMLib features Introduced in 2004, ASMLib is an optional set of tools and kernel driver that can be inserted between ASM and the hardware, and contains an application library used by the Oracle database software to access ASM disks in either a standalone or RAC configuration. ASM instances and database instances can use ASMLib as an alternative interface for disk access, yielding greater stability of equivalent workloads on standard Linux file systems.
Components of ASM 3 Components of ASM 3.1 ASM instance Starting with Oracle 10g and above, there are two types of instances: database and ASM. The ASM instance, which is generally named +ASM, is started with the INSTANCE_TYPE=ASM asm init.ora parameter. This parameter signals the Oracle initialization routine to start an ASM instance and not a standard database instance. Unlike the standard database instance, the ASM instance contains no physical files and only requires a few init.
Components of ASM groups with different redundancy settings and fail-groups if necessary. It is recommended to have at least the following disk groups: • • 3.3.1 Database data (DATA): Where active database files such as data files, control files, online redo logs, archive redo logs, and change-tracking files used in incremental backups are stored.
ASM best practices with SC Series storage 4 ASM best practices with SC Series storage For best practices with Dell EMC SC Series storage and ASM, see the document, Dell EMC SC Series Arrays and Oracle.
ASM best practices with SC Series storage If partitioned devices are used, attempting to expand the size of a disk that is not the primary partition requires advanced knowledge of Linux systems and Oracle backups and should only be done after careful planning and consideration. This includes making sure a valid backup exists of the entire database.
Conclusion 5 Conclusion In summary, ASM provides a simplified storage management interface for DBAs while SC Series storage technologies provide ease of use for storage provisioning and management for system administrators. These technologies simplify the management of database resources and storage resources. This allows DBAs and system administrators more time to concentrate on other important tasks and reduce the overlap of responsibilities.
Flex ASM client query A Flex ASM client query The following 12c query shows what database instances are being serviced by the ASM instance that executed the following query: set linesize 180 set pagesize 60 col col col col col col col col col col col col group_number instance_name db_name cluster_name status state name type total_mb allocation_unit_size offline_disks voting_files format format format format format format format format format format format format 99 a8 a8 a12 a9 a7 a7 a6 999,999 9,999,9
Flex ASM client query The following is sample output of the prior query: Alloc Grp Num --1 1 2 2 2 3 3 Inst Nm -------+ASM1 -MGMTDB +ASM1 prd1 prd2 prd1 prd2 DB Name -------+ASM _mgmtdb +ASM prd prd prd prd Clu Nm -----------rac-cluster rac-cluster rac-cluster rac-cluster rac-cluster rac-cluster rac-cluster Status --------CONNECTED CONNECTED CONNECTED CONNECTED CONNECTED CONNECTED CONNECTED Unit Sz ---------1,048,576 1,048,576 1,048,576 1,048,576 1,048,576 1,048,576 1,048,576 State ------MOUNTED MOUNT
Other useful commands for an ASM environment B Other useful commands for an ASM environment The following commands can be useful in an ASM configuration. For a complete list of commands, refer to the references in appendix D. Component Description srvctl modify asm -count Change cardinality of Flex ASM instances to srvctl config asm Display ASM configuration srvctl status asm -detail Display status of ASM on all nodes crsctl status res ora.
512 byte and 4K byte sectors C 512 byte and 4K byte sectors Since consumer-grade HDDs were first introduced in the early 1980s, 512 byte sectors were used. But as areal density requirements kept increasing on disks, there was a need to increase the sector size. By 2011, all hard drive manufactures committed to ship new hard drive platforms that supported a new format called Advanced Format (AF).
Technical support and resources D Technical support and resources Dell.com/support is focused on meeting customer needs with proven services and support. Dell TechCenter is an online technical community where IT professionals have access to numerous resources for Dell EMC software, hardware, and services. Storage Solutions Technical Documents on Dell TechCenter provide expertise that helps to ensure customer success on Dell EMC storage platforms. D.
