Automatic Storage Management for Oracle database 11g - Term Paper Example

AUTOMATIC STORAGE MANAGEMENT FOR ORACLE DATABASE 11G Automatic Storage Management for Oracle database 11g Affiliation Introduction In the past few years, there have emerged a large number of changes in ways how data is stored and managed in databases. In fact, the value of data itself has completely changed from a useless resource with predetermined efficiency, consistency and capability to a very useful asset that can in reality play a significant role in how data is stored and managed by the organizations. Despite the growing functionalities and capabilities of data management systems, traditional storage management systems could not help the organizations in leveraging their data management capabilities efficiently. Hence, the outcome emerged in the form of underutilization and overprovisioning. On the other hand, increasingly changing needs and requirements of organizations and data management systems are forcing the IT industry and researchers to discover effective techniques for data management and storage (Roussos, 2007; Joshi & Chalaka, 2006). However, the integration of autonomic features in data management system improves the performance of data management process by increasing effectiveness, speed, consistency and accurateness, eventually presenting fault free infrastructure for data management and storage. Without a doubt, these autonomic features are believed to be critical in Database Management Systems (DBMSs) for the reason that these autonomic systems take the approach of what instead of how. Additionally, a wide variety of tool and applications can be employed by database management systems for the management of storage (Chaudhuri & Narasayya, 2001; Raza, Mateen, Hussain, & Awais, 2009). In this scenario, automatic storage management provides an excellent support for the rearrangement of dire groups to unaffected space of the disk (Raza, Mateen, Sher, Awais, & Hussain, 2010; Lightstone, Lohman, & Zilio, 2002). Oracle Data base 11g contains a wonderful feature known as Oracle Automatic Storage Management that follows the principle of combines stripe and mirror everywhere (SAME). In addition, Oracle Automatic Storage Management is responsible for managing groups of data storage in disk groups that can collect and store database files from a number of databases (Townsend, 2011; HP, 2008). This paper presents a detailed analysis of oracle automatic storage management for Oracle 11g. The basic purpose of this research is to present an analysis of automatic storage management in the context of its working, its features and capabilities. This research will summarize the concepts discussed in other researches. Automatic Storage Management (ASM) for Oracle Database 11g In Oracle 11g, Automatic Storage Management (ASM) is designed to simplify the management of Oracle related files by facilitating the database administrators to reference disk groups instead of files and disks separately, which can be administrated through automatic storage management. Basically, the functionalities and capabilities offered by the automatic storage management are believed to be an extension of the OMF (Oracle Managed Files) features which further comprise mirroring and striping in order to provide secure and impartial storage management. In addition, a wide variety of templates are used to control the extent of the granularity and redundancy of the mirroring and striping. Though, Oracle provides a variety of default templates for each type of file stored by ASM, however extra templates can also be developed according to needs of the organizations. In addition, failure groups are also established in a disk group in order to accommodate the varying needs of the databases and required intensity of redundancy. If a database uses a two-way mirroring then it will require a disk group to establish and maintain two failure groups in order that individual files can be written and stored at two places (Oracle-Base2, 2013; Abraham, Bagal, Bauer, Belden, Bridge, & Chan, 2012). Additionally, the ASM capabilities offered by the latest version of Oracle 11g can be integrated with old cooked and raw file systems, in conjunction with traditionally managed files and OMF. The entire functionality of ASM is supported by an ASM instance. Though, it is not a complete database instance, but only a small part of the memory or set of structures and that is why it is very small and trivial. In addition, disk groups are the most important elements of automatic storage management. In this scenario, each of these disk groups is further divided into a number of physical disks and all these disks work as a single component. In this scenario, these physical disks are acknowledged as ASM disks, on the other hand the files stored inside these disks are acknowledged as ASM files. Moreover, the names of files and their storage locations are managed by the automatic storage management. In fact, new easy to use directory structures and aliases can be established and managed to easily locate these files (Oracle-Base2, 2013; Abraham, Bagal, Bauer, Belden, Bridge, & Chan, 2012). Oracle’s automatic storage manager solution follows a unique mechanism for database storage management. Basically, this mechanism enables a single database to stripes each data file inside it all the way through all the accessible storage. Several researchers such as (Dutta, Rangaswami, & Kundu, 2008; Mehta & DeWitt, 1997; Kephart & Chess, 2003) agree that Oracle ASM does not require moving data dynamically for the reason that the stripy structure of each file stored throughout all disk drives completely manage I/O load (Dutta, Rangaswami, & Kundu, 2008; Mehta & DeWitt, 1997; Kephart & Chess, 2003). Moreover, ASM files can also be integrated with various other storage management practices for instance third-party file systems and raw disks. In this scenario, this feature makes simpler the incorporation of ASM files into pre-existing infrastructures. Additionally, Oracle Enterprise Manager also contains a functionality that allows the database administrators to transfer non-ASM files to ASM. In fact, ASM also offers user-friendly interfaces in the form of the ASMCMD command-line interface, SQL Plus and Oracle Enterprise Manager to support the configuration of these items (Oracle, 2012). However, while configuring the systems storage, an organization should think about the preliminary capability of the system and its strategies for potential development. Without a doubt, Oracle database11g ASM provides an excellent support for the accommodation of future growth but, the development plans and implementation strategies of an organization can have an effect on decisions, for instance what size should be assigned to the Oracle ASM disks. In addition, an organization should also keep in mind that performance of I/O operations heavily relies on the relationship between the host and storage disks, rather only the storage disks. In this scenario, when an organization increases the nodes in a cluster, it should increase number of storage subsystems as well (Oracle2, 2012; Oracle-Base2, 2013; Oracle-Base, 2013). Storage Resources for Disk Groups Database administrators can use any one of the following ways to create an Oracle database 11g ASM disk group (Oracle2, 2012; Oracle-Base2, 2013; Oracle-Base, 2013): Disk Partition A disk partition can be either a part of a disk drive or the complete disk drive. In this scenario, the Oracle ASM disk cannot be partitioned in a way that it encompasses the partition table for the reason that this partition table can be modified or overwritten. Logical Unit Number (LUN) A logical unit number (LUN) is a kind of disk that is provided to a system through a storage array. In this scenario, Oracle 11g supports hardware RAID feature for the creation of. In addition, a number of other storage hardware configurations such as RAID 0+1 or RAID5 can also be presented to Oracle ASM in the form of Oracle ASM disks. Logical Volume A logical volume can be used in less complex environments in which a logical volume employs disks or a LUN is referenced to a logical volume or raw partitions are formed. In view of the fact that logical volumes make a repetition of functionality hence Oracle does not recommend the use of logical volume configurations. In addition, the use of logical volume managers for mirroring is also not recommended by oracle for the reason that Oracle ASM offers mirroring. Network File System (NFS) NFS files can be used to create an Oracle ASM disk group, together with Oracle Direct NFS (DNFS), in addition to complete disks, LUNs and partitions. In this scenario, the NFS files which are provided to a disk group can come from a number of NFS servers with the purpose of offering elastic capacity planning and effective load balancing. Though, direct NFS can provide an excellent support for store data files, however Oracle Clusterware files do not support it. Hence, for the successful installation of Oracle RAC (Oracle Real Application Clusters) on Windows operating system by means of Direct NFS, database administrators should also have access to a shared storage method in addition to NFS for Oracle Clusterware files. In addition, automatic storage management requires the database administrators to recognize the database storage inaccessible by a users program as well as assign it to free condition. In this scenario, a mechanism is used to determine and maintain a count of the references according to users programs against each cell, in view of the fact that the storage is identified as inaccessible if a count is zero. On the other hand, reentrant structures are believed to be self-referencing structure; for this reason they don’t contain a cell with a count of zero, although the complete composition is inaccessible. A variation of standard reference counting can be employed with the purpose of administering the de-allocation of a huge group of commonly employed reentrant structures, comprising mutual as well as circularly linked lists. However, in this de-allocation process, all the cells of a potentially reentrant structure are identified as a single unit. In this scenario, the group membership of each cell is identified through the information associated with each cell. Moreover, cell of this group which are referenced externally are identified as a group. On the other hand, internal references (which are pointed from one cell of the group to other} are not reference counted. Furthermore, all the cells of the group can be de-allocated when the external reference becomes zero (Bobrow, 1980; Dutta, Rangaswami, & Kundu, 2008). Major Functionalities of ASM Some of the major functionalities offered by ASM can be (Oracle-Base2, 2013; Abraham, Bagal, Bauer, Belden, Bridge, & Chan, 2012): ASM is responsible for manages and controlling groups of disks, known as disk groups. ASM is responsible for dealing with the aspects associated with the disk redundancy within a disk group. It does not require any manual tuning in order to provide near-optimal I/O balancing. It also an excellent support for the management of database instances and objects without asking for filenames and storing locations. It provides an excellent support for storing and maintaining large files. ASM Architecture The second released of Oracle Database11g allows for the integration of automatic storage management with Grid Infrastructure. On the other hand, in previous releases of Oracle Database, ASM appeared as a part of it however in the latest releases it comes as a part of Grid Infrastructure. As a result, the installation of Grid Infrastructure becomes essential for the configuration of an ASM instance. The architecture of ASM is demonstrated by figure2. As discussed above, ASM allows the creation of a disk group that is referred as storage for files, Voting disk, instance and backup files, OCR, and SPFILE for ASM. In this scenario, a disk group encompasses of a large number of disk drives and is identified and managed by ASM as a single component. In addition, any file (no matter where it is stored in a disk group) is shared among all the disk drives contained by the disk group. One of the most important features of ASM is its support as clustering tool that is not accessible to only a single SMP machine however this functionality can be equally accessible for a number of Oracle Real Application Clusters. In this architecture, ASM instance activates the ASM feature. In this scenario, ASM instance is different from DB instance. Basically, the ASM instance is responsible for dealing with data mapping information stored in a disk group by making use of metadata that outlines the structure of ASM files. On the other hand, ASM instance provides the data mapping information to the DB instance for determining and providing access to data files stored in disk group (Fujitsu Limited, 2013; Oracle, 2007). Figure 1ASM Architecture, Image Source: (Fujitsu Limited, 2013) Automatic Storage Management Best Practices Some of the best practices with regards to Oracle automatic storage system are outlined below (Fujitsu Limited, 2013; Dutta & Rangaswami, STORM: An Approach to Database Storage Management in Clustered Storage Environments, 2007; Guinepain & Gruenwald, 2006): High Availability and High Reliability The automatic storage system of Oracle Database11g offers a mirroring functionality that can increase the availability of Oracle database. In this scenario, high-availability functionalities together with its RAID method can be employed to further increase availability and reliability. Additionally, the ETERNUS DX storage system can carry out a number of processes such as retry by switching, failure detection and substitution of ineffective elements alongside when database processes are in progress. Database Acceleration If the RAID mechanism is combined with the ASM striping feature it can improve the performance of database. As discussed above, the ASM striping functionality of Oracle 11g is responsible for assigning data to all parts of the disks inside a disk group which increases the throughput of disk. In additions, in variety of database actions can require performance tuning after initiation of a process. In view of the fact that Oracle database 11g ASM manages accesses to file by assigning file points to all the disks hence it does not require any manual tuning. Additionally, Oracle 11g ASM contains a RAID migration functionality that allows database administrators to set performance tuning using other method. ASM Disk Group Configuration The size of data files is huge and these files can require simultaneous backup and quick retrieval. Therefore, the database administrators must use Advanced Copy feature for taking the regular backup of these huge data files. . Backup of Operational Information A variety of management information, data repositories and operational information are contained by both the Advanced Copy Manager as well as The ETERNUS SF Manager. These repositories and operational information are believed to be very critical because without these data both Advanced Copy Manager and the ETERNUS SF Manager cannot perform their desired functionality. On the other hand, in case of a lack of storage area capacity because of a continuing process and an unanticipated disaster, there can appear a considerable change in operational status of a process. Hence, database administrators should regularly back up these data. Conclusion This paper has presented a detailed analysis of Automatic storage management for Oracle 11g database. Oracle Data base 11g contains a wonderful feature known as Oracle Automatic Storage Management that follows the principle of combines stripe and mirror everywhere (SAME). In Oracle 11g, Automatic Storage Management is designed to simplify the management of Oracle related files by facilitating the database administrators to reference disk groups instead of files and disks separately, which can be administrated through automatic storage management. In addition, Automatic Storage Management for Oracle 11g database is responsible for managing groups of data storage in disk groups that can collect and store database files from a number of databases. The ASM capabilities offered by the latest version of Oracle 11g can be integrated with old cooked and raw file systems, in conjunction with traditionally managed files and OMF. The entire functionality of ASM is supported by an ASM instance. ASM files can also be integrated with various other storage management practices for instance third-party file systems and raw disks. In this scenario, this feature makes simpler the incorporation of ASM files into pre-existing infrastructures. This paper has discussed some of the important aspects of automatic storage management. This paper has presented a detailed analysis of ASM architecture and working. This paper has discussed the ways the capabilities of ASM can be further improved. 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