Using ASM’s Cluster File System (ACFS) & Dynamic Volume Manager (ADVM) on a Single Node

         Oracle 11gR2 ASM supports a new type of file called a “volume file” which may be created in its own DISK GROUP or which may share space in another disk group. Volume files are externalized to the Unix operating system by the oracleadvm device driver and appear dynamically as special files in the /dev/asm directory.

These volumes may be used as block devices, may contain a file system such as an ext3 system or the ASM cluster file system, or ACFS may be used in which case the oracleacfs driver is also used for IO to the file system.

 

In Single node configurations these Oracle supplied device drivers are not loaded automatically, but the system administrator may use the acfsload utility in the $ORACLE_HOME/bin directory of the Grid Infrastructure installation from where the ASM instance executes. This may be done as follows:

# /u01/app/11.2.0.2/grid/bin/acfsload start

Alternatively creating a script, which is invoked automatically by init at system startup, and setting the script as a service may automate this. The script which would be placed in the /etc/init.d directory and which could be called for example “acfsdrivers” would look something like this to perform the load silently:

#!/bin/bash # chkconfig: 2345 30 21 # description: Load Oracle ACFS drivers at system boot /u01/app/11.2.0.2/grid/bin/acfsload start -s

 

To automate this at boot time one would do the following as root:

# chmod u+x /etc/init.d/acfsdrivers

# chkconfig --add acfsdrivers