RE: Oracle's ASSM

From: <oracle-l-bounce_at_freelists.org>
Date: Tue, 13 Sep 2005 07:47:17 -0700
Message-ID: <B9782AD410794F4687F2B5B4A6FF3501021D4AA0@ex1.ms.polyserve.com>

We're thinking of moving from dedicated database instances, with the plethora of management problems associated therein to a couple of RAC environments for fault tolerance (IE server failure) and load balancing among the servers as the basics. Oracle is telling us that ASM or OMF whichever you like is a mandatory part thereof.

 
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

       And what we are trying to tell you is that these are not
synonyms.
      OMF works in any filesystem AND inside ASM. ASM automatically
manages
      the contents of raw partitions (or large files on NAS). 

      ASM is mandatory for only 1 product, Standard Edition One(SE1) The
SE1 product
      is limited to a total of 4 processors CLUSTERWIDE.

      Are you really sure you need RAC to properly respond to server
failure?
      Why not just a fast hot failover scenario? Yes, RAC has TAF, but
TAF
      only works for SELECT statements. If your middle tier is smart
enough to
      "reconnect and resubmit" when a SQL failure is due to server
disconnect, 
      failover might be sufficient as it is for many IT shops.

Kevin Closson
Chief Architect
Oracle Database Solutions
PolyServe
http://www.polyserve.com/products.php

This poses a number of problems. First of which is damanagement which wants a change control form every time a data file does an auto extend. And a number of tablespaces that we don not want extending because we put data therein that is to be archived off to CDROM, consequently it's necessary for the process loading these tablespaces to error out every once in a while. Now I've never been an advocate of anything new that Oracle pops out of the factory until it's had some filed experience, read that as Not in it's first version. And I'm very skeptical of not knowing what is in what tablespace, especially when a hot disk pops up. We've used stripping and raid in the past with some really undesirable side effects, like mass writes taking forever and having to add more devices than we have to extend a mount point, and the resulting device additions to all of our Business Continuation Volumes. Basically trying that again is a definite no-no around here. True everyone says disk is cheap, unless you don't have them available.

	From: Niall Litchfield [mailto:niall.litchfield_at_gmail.com] 
	Sent: Tuesday, September 13, 2005 3:28 AM
	To: Goulet, Dick
	Cc: oracle-l_at_freelists.org
	Subject: Re: Oracle's ASSM
	
	
	On 9/12/05, Goulet, Dick <DGoulet_at_vicr.com> wrote: 
	
		Quick question, is anyone out there using Oracle's
Automated System
		Storage Management software for production databases?  



	I think you mean ASM  - Automatic Storage Management, not ASSM

- Automatic Segment Space Management. ASM is the one with a different instance to manage physical storage of data. If you do mean this then yes we are using it in RAC environment (10gSE so its mandated). Seems to work reasonably well so far.

		Not the
		tablespace level stuff, but the create a mount point &
let Oracle decide 
		the file names, etc...



	technically wouldn't that be Oracle Managed Files or OMF? You

can do this on a plain file system quite simply since (IIRC 9i Release 1).

		  I'm interested in knowing if your using it with
		a single instance database or a RAC system or both. 


	 See above.
	


		Dick Goulet
		Senior Oracle DBA
		Oracle Certified DBA
		--
		http://www.freelists.org/webpage/oracle-l
		




	-- 
	Niall Litchfield
	Oracle DBA
	http://www.niall.litchfield.dial.pipex.com

<http://www.niall.litchfield.dial.pipex.com>

--
http://www.freelists.org/webpage/oracle-l

Received on Tue Sep 13 2005 - 09:49:18 CDT