One of the features that take Oracle Database a head above the rest is Automatic Storage Management (ASM).

Oracle Automatic Storage Management gives Oracle Database users a simple solution for storage management that is the same across all storage platforms and servers.  When you use Oracle Automatic Storage Management, storage is considered to be a small group of storage pool, which is called ASM Disk Groups.  All files in your database are assigned to different ASM Disk Groups and Oracle Automatic Storage Management manages the organization and layout of the data so that performance is maximized and you get to avoid storage hardware failure.

Oracle Automatic Storage Management gives you an easy and convenient way to consolidate your storage, as well as simplify the task of administering it.  In short, Oracle ASM helps make the lives and work of your system and database administrators a whole lot easier.

To sum up, Oracle Automatic Storage Management offers you the following benefits:

• Automates and simplifies storage management.
• Gives you predictable availability, scalability and performance.
• Maximizes storage agility and utilization.

Oracle Automatic Storage Management even in the cloud

You can use Oracle Automatic Storage Management in your cloud environments.  Storage management will be able to adjust to the changing configurations and requirements of your applications and infrastructure that lives in the cloud.

Oracle Flex ASM

Oracle Flex ASM is a suit of features that basically change the architecture of the ASM cluster.  In the past, you would need to have an ASM instance running on every server found in a cluster.  If any one of these ASM instances were to fail, all your ASM instances in that same cluster would also fail.  With the new setup, your ASM instances would only need to run on a set of servers located in a cluster.  If one of these instances failed, Oracle would initialize a replacement ASM instance.

More features

Oracle Automatic Storage Management simplifies storage management, consolidation and provisioning by allowing you to do resource pooling, rapid elasticity, network accessibility, and rapid provisioning.  It does this by utilizing Oracle ASM Dynamic Volume Manager and Oracle ASM Cluster File System.

Oracle ASM Dynamic Volume Manager allows you to work on storage management across a variety of platforms by using a common volume management tool and a common device driver interface.  You can use ASM Dynamic Volume Manager to manage and create just about any file system, ensuring that you can reside or adapt your storage volume without having to take your storage offline.

Oracle ASM Cluster File System, on the other hand, is a POSIX, Windows and X/Open compliant file system that is used for a variety of purposes regardless of whether you have a cluster configuration or single node configuration.  You can manage your Oracle ASM Cluster File System by using operating system commands, Oracle Enterprise Manager or ASM asmcmd commands.  Other features that you would love about Oracle ASM Cluster File System are file system replication, file system tagging, point-in-time copy snapshots, advanced file system encryption, security and auditing.

Call Four Cornerstone if you would like to learn more about Oracle Automatic Storage Management and other features to help you maximize your Oracle investments.

Photo courtesy of Oracle.