10gR2 Rac deployment.

Question

Hi All;
I have to deploy Oracle 10gR2 Rac on SAN .U all ppl know that for rac deployment oracle use Oracle Cluster file system deploying OCFS to a shared disk device like a SAN allows database files to be shared between multiple instances.Another disk management system new to Oracle 10g is named Automatic Storage Management (ASM).I want to know that can we use ASM on SAN.At this time I dont want to use OCFS on SAN.Plz reply me ASAP...
Thanx in advance.
Asif
Lahore pakistan.

Answer 1

Yes, this is exactly what ASM is designed to accomplish.
Read up: http://download-east.oracle.com/docs/cd/B19306_01/server.102/b14231/storeman.htm#sthref1624
"Automatic Storage Management (ASM) is an integrated file system and volume manager expressly built for Oracle database files. ASM provides the performance of raw I/O with the easy management of a file system. It simplifies database administration by eliminating the need for you to directly manage potentially thousands of Oracle database files. It does this by enabling you to divide all available storage into disk groups. You manage a small set of disk groups and ASM automates the placement of the database files within those disk groups."
"In a clustered environment, each node runs an ASM instance, and the ASM instances communicate with each other on a peer-to-peer basis. This is true for both Real Application Clusters (RAC) environments, and non-RAC clustered environments where multiple single-instance databases across multiple nodes share a clustered pool of storage that is managed by ASM. If a node is part of a Real Application Clusters (RAC) system, the peer-to-peer communications service is already installed on that server. If the node is part of a cluster where RAC is not installed, the Oracle Clusterware, Cluster Ready Services (CRS), must be installed on that node.
An ASM instance on a node in a cluster can manage storage simultaneously for one or more RAC database instances and one or more single instance databases."