1 Introducing Oracle ACFS and Oracle ADVM

Oracle Advanced Cluster File System (Oracle ACFS) and Oracle ASM Dynamic Volume Manager (Oracle ADVM) provide key components of storage management.

This chapter describes the components of Oracle Advanced Cluster File System (Oracle ACFS) and Oracle ASM Dynamic Volume Manager (Oracle ADVM).

This chapter provides concepts and an overview of Oracle ACFS and Oracle ADVM features with the following topics:

• Changes in Oracle ACFS and Oracle ADVM

• Overview of Oracle ACFS

• Understanding Oracle ACFS Concepts

• Understanding Oracle ACFS Administration

• Overview of Oracle ASM Dynamic Volume Manager

See Also:

• Oracle Automatic Storage Management Administrator's Guide for information about Oracle Automatic Storage Management (Oracle ASM)

• Oracle ACFS Features Enabled by Compatibility Attribute Settings for information about Oracle ACFS features and disk group attribute settings

• Managing Oracle ACFS and Oracle ADVM With ASMCA for information about using Oracle ASM Configuration Assistant to administer Oracle ACFS

• Managing Oracle ADVM with ASMCMD for information about volume management commands

• Managing Oracle ACFS with Command-Line Tools for information about Oracle ACFS operating system utilities

• Using Views to Display Oracle ACFS Information for information about using views to obtain Oracle ACFS information

• Oracle Automatic Storage Management Administrator's Guide for information about the ALTER DISKGROUP ADD VOLUME SQL statement to administer volumes

Changes in Oracle ACFS and Oracle ADVM

The following are changes to Oracle Advanced Cluster File System (Oracle ACFS) and Oracle ASM Dynamic Volume Manager (Oracle ADVM) in Oracle AI Database 26ai.

• Oracle ACFS encryption now provides integration with OCI Vaults. OCI Vault Master Encryption Keys can be used to encrypt the Volume Encryption Keys of encrypted ACFS file systems. This introduces an extra level to the ACFS Encryption key hierarchy and introduces key management capabilities within OCI.
• ACFS Encryption will now allow users to migrate from OCR to OKV. ACFS users now have a centralized point for key management using Oracle Key Vault.
• A new command, acfsutil repl switchover, provides coordinated failover services.
• A new tool is provided to configure SSH keys management for ACFS Replication.
• ACFS now supports an alternative transport choice for ACFS Replication which eliminates the need to maintain SSH related host and user keys.
• PDB Snapshot Carousel on ACFS will use ACFS file based snapshots to create sparse copies.
• ACFS replication now allows for primary clusters to replicate to standby cluster on a previous or older release.
• The new command acfsutil plogconfig offers users a way to manage persistent logging configuration settings.
• ACFS can now be deployed on ARM64 hardware.

These are deprecated features for Oracle ACFS 26ai.

• The acfsutil compress command is deprecated in Oracle AI Database 26ai.
• The acfsutil snap remaster command is deprecated in Oracle AI Database 26ai.

These are desupported features for Oracle ACFS 26ai.

• Oracle ASM Filter Driver (ASMFD) is desupported on both Linux and Oracle Solaris beginning with Oracle AI Database.

  On Linux systems running kernel 5.14 or higher (including Oracle Linux, RedHat Enterprise Linux, and SUSE Linux Enterprise Server), ASMFD filtering was disabled and is unsupported. Oracle recommends moving to ASMlib v3 for those environments, as it provides equivalent functionality. For details, see My Oracle Support Document 2806979.1. Migration steps are available for Oracle Restart and Oracle Grid Infrastructure. On Oracle Solaris, ASMFD is now desupported.

• The acfsutil repl reverse command is desupported in Oracle AI Database 26ai. Use repl failover or repl switchover instead.
• Oracle Advanced Cluster File System (ACFS) on IBM AIX is desupported in Oracle AI Database 26ai.

  To align the support for the IBM AIX platform, Oracle Advanced Cluster File System (ACFS) on IBM AIX is desupported in Oracle AI Database 26ai. For data or files currently stored on an ACFS file system that cannot be stored in Oracle AI Database, you can use the IBM General Parallel File System (GPFS).

See Also:

• Oracle AI Database Licensing Information User Manual to determine whether a feature is available on your edition of Oracle AI Database.
• Oracle AI Database New Features for a complete description of the new features in this release.
• Oracle AI Database Upgrade Guide for a complete description of the deprecated and desupported features in this release.