Use Oracle Automatic Storage Management (Oracle ASM) or Oracle Automatic Storage Management Cluster File System (Oracle ACFS) for database files storage.

Database file systems are used exclusively for storing database files, and they include separate file systems for data files and archive files or backups. You determine the type of database storage when you create the database.

About Oracle ASM Database Storage

With Oracle ASM, database datafiles are stored in DATA disk group. On X8-2, X7-2S, X7-2M, and X6-2 S/M/L systems, which do not have REDO disk group, redo and archive files are stored in RECO disk group. X7-2-HA and other older High-Availability systems have dedicated disks for REDO disk group; redo logs are stored in the REDO disk group.

Reserved storage is the amount of Oracle Automatic Storage Management (Oracle ASM) storage required to restore redundancy in the event of a disk failure. If you use the reserve storage capacity, then the system continues to run, and it is protected through Oracle ASM mirroring. However, in the event of a disk failure, the system is then running in a non-protected and degraded mode. In this event, you must replace disks immediately. If there is no reserved space available, then rebalance cannot restore redundancy after a disk failure.

If you specify mirroring for a file, then Oracle ASM automatically stores redundant copies of the file extents in separate failure groups. Failure groups apply to normal, high, and flex redundancy disk groups. You can define the failure groups for each disk group when you create or alter the disk group.

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About Oracle ACFS Database Storage

With Oracle ACFS, an Oracle ACFS file system is created from DATA disk group for each database to store datafiles, and an Oracle ACFS file system is created from RECO disk group for redo and fast recovery area for all databases.

Each database created under ACFS has it own mount points, /u02/app/oracle/oradata/dbid. When you delete a database, you should clean up the files.

Storage Configuration Options

When Oracle Database Appliance is deployed, you can configure how the storage capacity is shared between DATA disk group and RECO disk group. You can choose anywhere from 10% to 90% for DATA and the remainder for RECO. The amount of usable storage is determined by the percentage configured for DATA. You can run the command asmcmd lsdg to determine the usable storage on the DATA disk group. You can also run the command odacli list-dbstorages command to determine the storage available.