Dell SC Series Storage with Oracle ASM Dell Engineering January 2016 A Dell Best Practices Revisions Date Description May 2011 Initial release April 2012 Content and format change January 2016 Content and format change THIS WHITE PAPER IS FOR INFORMATIONAL PURPOSES ONLY, AND MAY CONTAIN TYPOGRAPHICAL ERRORS AND TECHNICAL INACCURACIES. THE CONTENT IS PROVIDED AS IS, WITHOUT EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND. © 2016 Dell Inc. All rights reserved. Dell, the DELL logo, and the DELL badge are trademarks of Dell Inc. Other trademarks and trade names may be used in this document to refer to either the entities claiming the marks and names or their products. Dell disclaims any proprietary interest in the marks and names of others. 2 Dell SC Series Storage with Oracle ASM | CML1111 Table of contents 1 Introduction ................................................................................................................................................................................ 5 1.1 Objective........................................................................................................................................................................... 5 1.2 Audience ........................................................................................................................................................................... 6 2 Technology Overview ............................................................................................................................................................... 7 2.1 SC Series storage ............................................................................................................................................................ 7 2.1.1 Features ............................................................................................................................................................................ 7 2.1.2 Benefits of Oracle databases on SC Series storage .................................................................................................. 9 2.2 Oracle Technology ......................................................................................................................................................... 9 2.2.1 Oracle ASM features ....................................................................................................................................................... 9 2.2.2 Oracle Flex ASM features ............................................................................................................................................. 10 2.2.3 Oracle ASMLib Features ............................................................................................................................................... 12 2.2.4 Benefits of ASM, Flex ASM and ASMLib ..................................................................................................................... 12 3 Components of ASM ............................................................................................................................................................... 14 3.1 ASM Instance ................................................................................................................................................................. 14 3.2 ASMLIb ............................................................................................................................................................................ 14 3.3 Disk Groups .................................................................................................................................................................... 15 3.3.1 ASM Disk Group Redundancy ..................................................................................................................................... 15 3.3.2 ASM Recovery ................................................................................................................................................................ 15 4 ASM best practices with Dell SC Series storage ................................................................................................................. 16 4.1 SAN and zoning ............................................................................................................................................................. 16 4.2 SC LUN sizes and quantity........................................................................................................................................... 16 4.3 SC Series volume (LUN) creation for ASM disk groups .......................................................................................... 16 4.4 SC Series storage profiles ............................................................................................................................................ 17 4.5 SC Series Replay profiles .............................................................................................................................................. 18 4.6 Multipath I/O .................................................................................................................................................................. 21 4.7 ASM disk groups ............................................................................................................................................................ 22 4.8 ASM disk group redundancy ....................................................................................................................................... 22 5 Conclusion ................................................................................................................................................................................ 23 A Flex ASM client query .............................................................................................................................................................. 24 B Other useful commands for an ASM environment ............................................................................................................ 26 C Example: Oracle 12c with Flex ASM setup in UEK6 ........................................................................................................... 27 3 Dell SC Series Storage with Oracle ASM | CML1111 D 512 byte vs 4KB byte sectors ................................................................................................................................................. 42 E Additional resources ................................................................................................................................................................ 43 4 Dell SC Series Storage with Oracle ASM | CML1111 1 Introduction Managing and provisioning storage for optimal configurations that accommodate the changing and increasingly demanding requirement of a growing Oracle® database is a key challenge for IT and vital to business success. Protecting a database and ensuring its integrity and availability is also mandatory for the enterprise and business. When designing the physical structure of a database, database administrators must consider different storage configuration options. Storage solutions must facilitate high performance I/O and provide protection against failure of storage hardware such as disks and host bus adapters (HBAs). Growing and changing workloads require a dynamic storage configuration that provides a way to automate storage related tasks so that the risk of human error is reduced. The Oracle Automatic Storage Management (ASM) feature simplifies storage provisioning and data layout challenges. The Dell™ Storage Center Thin Provisioning and Dynamic Block Architecture software can work in combination with ASM to allow Oracle data to be easily accessible, provide a Data Life Cycle management structure and have Dynamic Capacity in less time than other traditional storage solutions. Harnessing the power of Oracle ASM with the intelligence of Dell SC Series storage yields a reliable, stable and dynamic infrastructure that can be protected with very little effort. Moreover, business applications can take advantage of all the disks in an SC Series storage solution. 1.1 Objective Although this document is not a comprehensive user guide, it provides some steps and general best practices to combine Oracle Automatic Storage Manager (ASM), Oracle Flex ASM, and Oracle unbreakable enterprise Linux® kernel (UEK6) with SC Series storage. After reviewing this document, the reader will be more informed on possible storage solutions and best practices to address Oracle database storage needs. Keep in mind that the suggestions and possible solutions presented in this document should be reviewed and adjusted for individual environments. Dell advises customers to understand the type of storage needs required by the business before designing and implementing a solution. For detailed information on any part of the Oracle installation and configuration used in this paper, refer to the information provided at the My Oracle Support site. Oracle ASM tuning, converting between standard legacy ASM deployments and Flex ASM deployments, Flex clusters, and Oracle proxy ASM Instance are beyond the scope of this document. See the reference in Appendix E at the end of this document for additional information. 5 Dell SC Series Storage with Oracle ASM | CML1111 1.2 Audience This document is intended for DBAs, system administrators, storage administrators, and architects seeking to design, implement and