ASM Metadata Utilities

One of the things I meant to write about when I started this blog was the undocumented stuff in Oracle that is publicly available. Since I used to spend a lot of time working with ASM I had an idea that I would write an article about kfed, the kernel file editor used to query (and in desperate circumstances actually change) the mysterious dark matter known as ASM Metadata.

I say mysterious, it isn’t actually that unfathomable, but I have heard a lot of people get confused between the ASM Metadata which resides at the start of each ASM disk (and contains structures such as the Partner Status Table) and the ASM “metadata” that can be backed up and restored using the commands md_backup and md_restore (essentially just information about directory structure and aliases etc in the diskgroup). As usual Oracle’s naming convention does not make things completely clear.

Anyway after a quick bit of Google-fu I’ve realised that I will have to scrap the whole idea anyway, because my ex-Oracle colleague Bane Radulović has written a great article all about kfed and then added insult to injury by eloquently explaining all about ASM Metadata.

Race you to write an article about AMDU then Bane…

Oh too late.