Oracle Grid Infrastructure and Oracle ASM: Configuration changes in 11g R2



  • Oracle 11g Release 2 introduced the Oracle Grid Infrastructure installation.
  • Prior to 11g R2, Oracle Automatic Storage Management (ASM) software was automatically installed when you installed the Oracle database software.
  • Since 11g R2, if you you need to use Oracle ASM you need first to install the Oracle Grid Infrastructure Software.

In a single instance database environment
  • An Oracle Grid Infrastructure installation includes:
  1. Oracle Automatic Storage Management (ASM),
  2. the Listener and
  3. Oracle Restart


  • A New method of installing Automatic Storage Management (ASM) with Oracle 11g R2:
    • In a cluster configuration: Oracle ASM shares an Oracle home with Oracle Clusterware
    • In a single instance datbase configuration: Oracle ASM shares an Oracle home with Oracle Restart.
  • To upgrade an existing Oracle ASM installation:
    • Upgrade Oracle ASM by running an OGI upgrade

For a clustered environment
  • An Oracle Grid Infrastructure installation includes:
    1. Oracle Clusterware
    2. Oracle Automatic Storage Management (ASM), and
    3. the Listener









About Oracle ASM:
  • Oracle ASM is a volume manager and file system.
  • Like other volume managers, Oracle ASM group disks into one or more disk groups.
  • While the administrator manages the disk groups, these operate like black boxes and the placement of datafiles within each disk group is automatically managed by Oracle.

  • Separation between database and ASM administration:
    • Oracle ASM administration requires SYSASM privilege.
    • Besides creating a division of responsibilities between ASM and Database administration, this also helpt to prevent that different databases using the same storage accidentally overwrite each others files.

  • Starting in Oracle 11g R2, Oracle ASM can also store Oracle Cluster Registry and voting disks files.
  • Oracle ASM Cluster File System (ACFS) is a new file system and storage management design that extentds Oracle ASM technology to support data that cannot be stroed in Oracle ASM (both in single instance and cluster configurations).
  • ACFS is installed with Oracle Grid Infrastructure.


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