Oracle’s ASM Filter Driver Revisited

A full re-test of Oracle's ASM Filter Driver a year on – correcting earlier mistakes and giving a definitive verdict on AFD behaviour with 4k Advanced Format devices.

The Great Hypervisor Bake-off: VMware ESX vs Oracle VM

SLOB benchmark results measuring the I/O overhead of virtualisation on Violin flash – comparing VMware ESX against Oracle VM to see which hypervisor costs less in raw database performance.

Implementing Linux native multipathing or DM-MPIO together with EMC PowerPath

Running Linux DM-MPIO alongside EMC PowerPath requires careful configuration to avoid conflicts. Here's a precise walkthrough of how to make them coexist correctly.

Viewing ASM trace files in VIM: Which Way Do You Use?

A couple of people have asked me recently about a classic problem that most DBAs know: how to view ASM trace files in the VIM editor when the filenames start with a + character. To my surprise, there are actually quite a few different ways of doing it. Since it's come up, I thought I'd … Continue reading Viewing ASM trace files in VIM: Which Way Do You Use? →

Oracle 12.1.0.2 ASM Filter Driver: Advanced Format Fail

The ASM Filter Driver introduced in Oracle 12.1.0.2 as a replacement for ASMLib has a critical flaw: it fails entirely with 4k native Advanced Format devices.

Oracle 12.1.0.2 ASM Filter Driver: First Impressions

Oracle's new ASM Filter Driver in 12.1.0.2 promises cleaner I/O filtering than ASMLib – here are the initial installation findings and what to watch out for with 4k devices.

The Ultimate Guide To Oracle with Advanced Format 4k

Everything you need to know about running Oracle on Advanced Format 4k storage – a high-level overview and a full Oracle deep dive, in one place.

Oracle ASMLib: Physical and Logical Blocksize

The ORACLEASM_USE_LOGICAL_BLOCK_SIZE parameter controls how ASMLib handles 4k Advanced Format devices – here's what it does and when you need to change it.

New script for setting up multipath.conf entries

A shell script that automates the creation of Linux multipath.conf entries for storage devices – originally written for Violin arrays but applicable to other storage with minimal changes.

Oracle Fixes The 4k SPFILE Problem…But It’s Still Broken

Oracle patched the SPFILE failure on 4k devices in 11.2.0.4 – but the underlying support for Advanced Format storage remains incomplete and unreliable.