Automatic Storage Management

Oracle Automatic Management (ASM) is officially released for Oracle databases supported by SAP. The Oracle Exadata Database Machine is based exclusively on ASM. Oracle ASM is now the recommended storage platform for the Oracle 11g RAC database with SAP systems. As of release 7.20, BR*Tools has comprehensive support for ASM.

SAP databases with ASM are installed under the OS user oracle. The environment configuration for the new OS user is described in SAP Note 1554661 . The OS user ora<dbname> is no longer required and can be deleted. This results in numerous changes in the configuration of BR*Tools. The new configuration is described in SAP Note 1598594.

Major Effects of ASM on BR*Tools

• Backup, restore, and recovery

• Tablespace management

• File management

Minor Effects of ASM on BR*Tools

• Instance management

• Check and verification

Other areas of BR*Tools are not affected by ASM.

ASM databases (data files and archive log file) can only be backed up with the Oracle Recovery Manager (RMAN).

For all actions in which new database files are created, we recommend you to specify an ASM disk group - for example, +DATA1. This means that Oracle Managed Files (OMF) are created. This is the recommended standard for ASM tablespace files. You can also specify an ASM alias, which causes BRSPACE to automatically create the sub-directory containing the alias (if not already present).

Since the Oracle Exadata Database Machine is based on ASM, the same prerequisites, recommendations, and restrictions are also valid. There is also the problem of local Oracle homes since Exadata does not use shared homes, as in the standard Real Application Cluster (RAC) installation. This affects the BRCONNECT functions cleanup (clean up DBA logs and tables) and check (database check). Other DBA functions are not affected and can still be performed globally for the entire database from a single instance. For more information, see SAP Note 1627541 .

We recommend that you use the OS user oracle and the OS group oinstall to install the Oracle 11g software for RAC and ASM on UNIX systems. This affects the configuration of BR*Tools on the database server. It is no longer possible to use BR*Tools in the standard configuration - for example, with BRBACKUP owner ora<dbname> + S bit. This leads to errors such as backup actions failing due to authorization problems. For more information, see SAP Note 1598594 .

SAP Note 1627541