Creating and Removing ACFS

Oracle Automatic Storage Management Cluster File System (Oracle ACFS) is a multi-platform, scalable file system, and storage management technology that extends Oracle Automatic Storage Management (Oracle ASM) functionality to support customer files maintained outside of Oracle Database.

Creating ACFS

1. Set the diskgroup attribute parameters. Compatible.asm and compatible.advm should be >= 11.2

$ sqlplus  / as sysasm
SQL> alter diskgroup flash set attribute 'compatible.asm'='11.2';
SQL> alter diskgroup flash set attribute 'compatible.advm'='11.2';

2. Create a volume in the appropriate diskgroup

SQL> alter diskgroup flash add volume volume1 size 1g;

This could also be done using asmcmd. Volume device could be identified with

select volume_name,volume_device from v$asm_volume;
VOLUME_NAME    VOLUME_DEVICE
-------------- ---------------------
VOLUMNE1       /dev/asm/volumne1-398

This could also confirmed with ls /dev/asm/*

3. Create a file system on the created volume

# mkfs -t acfs /dev/asm/volumne1-398
mkfs.acfs: version                   = 11.2.0.2.0
mkfs.acfs: on-disk version           = 39.0
mkfs.acfs: volume                    = /dev/asm/volumne1-398
mkfs.acfs: volume size               = 1073741824
mkfs.acfs: Format complete.

(Update 2013/10/30)
mkfs could also be run as grid user provided that user has the permission on the device

[grid@rhel6m1 ~]$ ls -l /dev/asm/volume1-149
brwxrwx---. 1 root asmadmin 252, 76289 Oct 30 15:31 /dev/asm/volume1-149
[grid@rhel6m1 ~]$  mkfs -t acfs /dev/asm/volume1-149
mkfs.acfs: version                   = 11.2.0.3.0
mkfs.acfs: on-disk version           = 39.0
mkfs.acfs: volume                    = /dev/asm/volume1-149
mkfs.acfs: volume size               = 1073741824
mkfs.acfs: Format complete.

4. Register the file system with

acfsutil registry -a /dev/asm/volumne1-398 /opt/acfsvol

/opt/acfsvol will be the mountpoint for this file system.

5. Mount the file system

# mount -t acfs /dev/asm/volumne1-398 /opt/acfsvol

ASMCMD> volinfo -G flash VOLUMNE1
Diskgroup Name: FLASH

         Volume Name: VOLUMNE1
         Volume Device: /dev/asm/volumne1-398
         State: ENABLED
         Size (MB): 1024
         Resize Unit (MB): 256
         Redundancy: UNPROT
         Stripe Columns: 4
         Stripe Width (K): 128
         Usage: ACFS
         Mountpath: /opt/acfsvol

6. Change ownership to Oracle user to allow oracle user processes to use the file system

# chown oracle:oinstall /opt/acfsvol

6. As oracle user create a file in the mount point

cd /opt/acfsvol
touch x

In a RAC system the volume will be mounted on all nodes after server reboots and requires selinux to be permissive.




Removing ACFS

1. Unmount the file system

# umount /opt/acfsvol

2. De-register the file system

# acfsutil registry -d /opt/acfsvol
acfsutil registry: successfully removed ACFS mount point /opt/acfsvol from Oracle Registry

3. Drop the volumne from the diskgroup

SQL> alter diskgroup flash drop volume volume1;

Diskgroup altered.

SQL> select volume_name,volume_device from v$asm_volume;

no rows selected