Overview of Disks, Disk Groups, and Failure Groups

You configure Oracle ASM by creating disk groups that become the default location for files created in the database. The disk group type determines how Oracle ASM mirrors files. When you create a disk group, you indicate whether the disk group is a normal redundancy disk group (2-way mirroring for most files by default), a high redundancy disk group (3-way mirroring), or an external redundancy disk group (no mirroring by Oracle ASM). You use an external redundancy disk group if your storage system does mirroring at the hardware level, or if you have no need for redundant data. The default disk group type is normal redundancy.

A disk group consists of a grouping of disks that are managed as a unit. These disks are referred to as Oracle ASM disks. An Oracle ASM disk can be a disk device, a partition, or a network-attached file.

When an Oracle ASM instance starts, it automatically discovers all available Oracle ASM disks. Discovery is the process of finding all disks that were prepared for Oracle ASM by your system administrator, examining their disk headers, and determining which disks belong to disk groups and which are available for assignment to disk groups. Oracle ASM discovers disks in the paths that are listed in an initialization parameter, or if the parameter is NULL, in an operating system–dependent default path.

Failure groups define Oracle ASM disks that share a common potential failure mechanism. An example of a failure group is a set of small computer system interface (SCSI) disks sharing the same SCSI controller. Failure groups are used to determine which Oracle ASM disks to use for storing redundant copies of data. For example, if 2-way mirroring is specified for a file, then Oracle ASM automatically stores redundant copies of file extents in separate failure groups. Failure groups apply only to normal and high redundancy disk groups. You can define the failure groups in a disk group when you create or alter the disk group, or let Oracle ASM automatically place each disk into its own failure group. For most systems, the default failure groups work well to prevent data loss.