ASM disk management on AIX 5.3

Hi,

We are using Oracle/RAC 10GR2 with ASM for disk management of diskspace

used by the database. ASM requires that the disks are NOT included in a

volume group and also uses the first block of the disk to store essential information. RAC 10GR2 does not need HACMP anymore. This setup imposes a serious problem for AIX systemmanagement: 1) It is difficult to distinguish disks on the AIX servers since they are not part of a volume group.
2) The usage of the first block by Oracle implies that chdev may not be

used to create a PVID, since chdev overwrites the first block. If chdev

is being used on a ASM disk, Oracle can not read that disk, and the database is lost.
3) Since ASM disks are writable by all servers in the cluster, reserve_policy is switched off, the probability that a disk is by accident used for a volume group is not unthinkable, with fatal consequences for the database.
4) Changes in SAN configuration may imply that existing devices have to

be rearranged with rmdev. Rmdev removes disk devices and other devices nodes in /dev having equal major/minor number. Using sybolic names for hdisk devices in the Oracle database by creating devices nodes in /dev is not a viable option.

Question:
Does anybody recognise these issues, and is there a workaround so that ASM gets better integrated into standard AIX system management ?.

Thanks in advance.

Erik Received on Mon May 01 2006 - 02:44:36 CDT