How to backup ASM?

From: Laurenz Albe <invite_at_spam.to.invalid>
Date: 02 Dec 2005 08:35:00 GMT
Message-ID: <1133512498.890372@proxy.dienste.wien.at>

I recently experimented with ASM and ran into a problem that neither the manuals nor a web search could solve for me.

My problem is: How do I backup the ASM instance? There has to be some metadata in an ASM instance, since the SPFILE only contains the names of the disk groups. There should be a way to backup the metadata, right?

I created an ASM instance and, in a database that already existed, I created an ASM tablespace (this is version 10.1.0.3).

I created a table with some data in that tablespace, then I made a datafile copy backup with RMAN.

Then I went ahead and zeroed the ASM disks with dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/whatever

As was to be expected, the database complained. I shutdown the database, started in in mount mode, took the datafile offline and restored and recovered it with RMAN. The database was happy after that.

The ASM instance, however, is corrupted. I don't have the system at hand, but when I start it it complains that it doesn't have a quorum for the disk group (I don't have the system any more, but I believe it was ORA-15063). How do you prevent such a situation?

Thanks for any suggestions,
Laurenz Albe Received on Fri Dec 02 2005 - 02:35:00 CST