Oracle Database Tips by Donald Burleson

Oracle10g Grid Computing with RAC
Chapter 5 - Preparing Shared Storage

Oracle Disk Manager

Oracle Disk Manager (ODM) is Oracle's innovative I/O and file management infrastructure. Oracle Disk Manager is a very significant development in the way Oracle manages and interfaces with the I/O activity. The ODM interface is a set of API calls that Oracle co-developed with Veritas for incorporating underlying volume managers and file systems. Implementation of the ODM interface in a file system or a logical volume manager provides many benefits, including simplified file administration, improved file integrity, and reduced system overhead.

ODM is completely transparent from an application/DBA perspective. It is an improvement over standard Unix I/O. The ODM interface allows the Oracle kernel to allocate/release disk space, manage tablespaces, and read/write disk blocks directly. Oracle encourages customers to use file system or volume managers that are ODM compliant.

Oracle automatically takes advantage of the ODM interface when the underlying file system or logical volume manager becomes ODM-enabled. A file is considered an ODM file if it is in a file system that supports an ODM interface. ODM is also compatible with Oracle9i and 10g. Many of the leading file system and volume manager providers have incorporated the ODM interface in their products. Well known examples include Veritas Database Edition (Advanced Cluster for Oracle) and Polyserve Matrix Server. Several ODM semantics have been included in the DAFS v1.0 protocol specifications offered by Network Appliance Filers.

Let's take a look at some of the ODM features:

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We require a 12 month service commitment and include the following services:

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• Twenty Four hour Oracle emergency support
• Reporting and resolving all serious Oracle alert log messages
• Free use of the BC TablePack, ServerPack and AuditPack services
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• Four hours of free remote DBA support every month. You can use these free hours for any DBA activity, including database analysis, system design, production migrations or personal mentoring.

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