8.1.7 Creating Files on a NAS Device for Use with Oracle Automatic Storage Management

If you have a certified NAS storage device, then you can create zero-padded files in an NFS mounted directory and use those files as disk devices in an Oracle ASM disk group.

1. If necessary, create an exported directory for the disk group files on the NAS device.
2. Switch user to root.
3. Create a mount point directory on the local system.

   For example:

   # mkdir -p /mnt/oracleasm
   

4. To ensure that the NFS file system is mounted when the system restarts, add an entry for the file system in the mount file /etc/fstab.

   See Also:

   My Oracle Support Note 359515.1 for updated NAS mount option information:

   https://support.oracle.com/CSP/main/article?cmd=show&type=NOT&id=359515.1

5. Enter a command similar to the following to mount the NFS on the local system:

   # mount /mnt/oracleasm
   

6. Choose a name for the disk group to create, and place it under the mount point.
   For example, if you want to set up a disk group for a sales database:

   # mkdir /mnt/oracleasm/sales1
   

7. Use commands similar to the following to create the required number of zero-padded files in this directory:

   # dd if=/dev/zero 
   of=/mnt/oracleasm/sales1/disk1 bs=1024k 
   count=1000
   

   This example creates 1 GB files on the NFS file system. You must create one, two, or three files respectively to create an external, normal, or high redundancy disk group.

   Note:

   Creating multiple zero-padded files on the same NAS device does not guard against NAS failure. Instead, create one file for each NAS device and mirror them using the Oracle ASM technology.
8. Enter commands similar to the following to change the owner, group, and permissions on the directory and files that you created:

   # chown -R grid:asmadmin /mnt/oracleasm
   # chmod -R 660 /mnt/oracleasm
   

   In this example, the installation owner is grid and the OSASM group is asmadmin.
9. During Oracle Database installations, edit the Oracle ASM disk discovery string to specify a regular expression that matches the file names you created.

   For example:

   /mnt/oracleasm/sales1/