1.3.2.2 About Oracle Automatic Storage Management

Oracle Automatic Storage Management (Oracle ASM) is the original cluster volume manager and file system used to manage Exadata storage resources.

Oracle ASM provides enhanced storage management on Exadata by:

• Striping database files evenly across all available storage cells and disks for optimal performance.
• Using mirroring and failure groups to avoid any single point of failure.
• Enabling dynamic add and drop capability for non-intrusive cell and disk allocation, deallocation, and reallocation.
• Enabling multiple databases to share storage cells and disks.

The following topics provide a brief overview of Oracle ASM on Exadata:

• Oracle ASM Disk Groups
  An Oracle Automatic Storage Management (Oracle ASM) disk group is the primary storage abstraction within Oracle ASM, and is composed of one or more grid disks.
• Oracle ASM Failure Group
  An Oracle ASM failure group is a subset of disks in an Oracle ASM disk group that can fail together because they share the same hardware.
• Maximum Availability with Oracle ASM
  Oracle recommends high redundancy Oracle ASM disk groups, and file placement configuration which can be automatically deployed using Oracle Exadata Deployment Assistant.