Supported Storage Options For Oracle AI Database And Oracle Grid Infrastructure

Supported Storage Options for Oracle Grid Infrastructure

Oracle Grid Infrastructure supports Oracle ASM, ACFS, NVMe-oF, local file systems, OCFS2, certified NFS/NAS, and direct-attached storage with different capabilities for Clusterware files, database binaries, data files, and recovery files. OCR and voting files require Oracle ASM or shared file systems, while raw or block devices used directly are unsupported; supported options may be combined when their individual requirements are met.

Oracle ACFS and Oracle ADVM

Oracle ACFS extends ASM with a general-purpose cluster and single-instance file system, while Oracle ADVM provides volume management and device-driver services through which ACFS accesses ASM. ACFS and ADVM support specified Oracle Linux, Red Hat Enterprise Linux, and SUSE Linux Enterprise Server kernels, but not Linux containers, and may require kernel patches and SELinux configuration. ACFS requires ASM, cannot store Clusterware files, has database encryption and replication restrictions, and has additional limitations in Oracle Restart configurations, including unsupported ACFS resources, registries, and data-file creation.

Storage Considerations for Oracle Grid Infrastructure and Oracle RAC

Oracle Clusterware OCR and voting files must use shared storage, such as ASM disk groups or a shared file system, because nodes lacking access to a majority of voting files restart. Oracle recommends separate ASM disk groups and failure groups for RAC database and recovery files, although supported storage options can be combined when requirements are satisfied. NFS may store database files with or without Direct NFS, and RAC deployments using ASM require Grid Infrastructure and ASM on all nodes with existing ASM instances stopped during configuration.

Guidelines for Using Oracle ASM Disk Groups for Storage

During Grid Infrastructure installation, one or two ASM disk groups can be created, with the primary group holding OCR, voting files, and the ASM password file and a separate group recommended for OCR backups. Additional groups can be created later, and database, Clusterware, and recovery files may share or use separate groups depending on availability, performance, sizing, and manageability requirements. A single group is supported, but separating OCR backups and major file categories is generally preferable.

Guidelines for Configuring Oracle ASM Disk Groups on NFS

ASM disk groups can use NFS or block devices on supported NAS systems, provided mounts are available before installation and vendors certify the complete storage configuration. Direct NFS requires hard mounts, external redundancy is recommended, and dedicated Gigabit Ethernet or faster connections improve performance; ACFS and ADVM are incompatible with NFS-backed ASM disks. For quorum disks, SAN or iSCSI is preferred, while NFS deployments should use soft mounts for quorum storage and hard mounts for other ASM disks, with quorum failure groups enabling NFS use without hard mounts in appropriate extended-cluster designs.

Using Logical Volume Managers with Oracle Grid Infrastructure and Oracle RAC

Oracle Grid Infrastructure and Oracle RAC support only cluster-aware volume managers. Third-party volume managers must be verified through Oracle certification resources to ensure that they are certified and suitable for RAC deployments.

Using a Cluster File System for Oracle Clusterware Files

Since Oracle Grid Infrastructure 19c, OCR and voting files can be stored on Oracle ASM or a certified shared file system. OCFS2 is available for 64-bit Linux platforms, but Oracle does not recommend using it for Oracle Clusterware files.

About NFS Storage for Data Files

NAS systems expose shared storage through NFS, allowing supported database data files to serve both single-instance and RAC databases. Performance depends on network connectivity, so private dedicated Gigabit Ethernet or faster connections are recommended. NFS file systems must be correctly configured, mounted, and available on all required servers before installation.

About Direct NFS Client Mounts to NFS Storage Devices

Direct NFS Client integrates NFS access into Oracle software to optimize I/O, supports NFSv3, NFSv4, NFSv4.1, and pNFS, and can use a dispatcher to improve scalability and connection efficiency. It requires suitable NFS write sizes and mounts visible to both the operating-system and Direct NFS clients, with fallback to kernel NFS if dNFS cannot connect. Mount definitions are searched in Oracle home, Oracle configuration, system, and mount-table locations; only one NFS client implementation may be active per instance, and NFSv4.2 requests are downgraded to NFSv4.1.