ASM versus Filesystems

I've been an AIX Admin for years, I'm a junior Oracle DBA and I apologize if the ASM Topic has come up lately. As an AIX Admin, using filesystems seems the best option for me.

Reading up on Oracle's ASM technology, it looks like this could be a great option, primarily for performance reasons. Oracle would then own more real estate, so it can use its tools to better tune the entire system. Its almost too good to be true.

But what are the caveats?

AIX Filesystems offer me control on filesystems/directory sizes, increased performance and systems control. Filesystems are nice when managing backups too. With the advent of the NAS/SAN, maybe I can just hand it all over to Oracle.

Any body not like ASM out there?

Thank you,
Patrick.
 

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