Introduction

Oracle, founded in 1977, sold the first commercial relational database and is now the world’s leading database company and largest enterprise software company, with 2008 fiscal year revenues of more than $22 billion. This tutorial is intended to help you pass the Oracle Database 11g: Administration II exam, which will establish your credentials as an Oracle Certified Professional (OCP). The OCP certification is a prerequisite for obtaining an Oracle Certified Master (OCM) certification. you can learn the necessary skills to pass the 1Z0-053 Oracle Database 11g: Administration II exam.

Oracle Certifications

Within the administration track there are three tiers: 1. The first tier is the Oracle 11g Certified Associate (OCA). To obtain OCA certification, you must pass the 1Z0-052 Oracle Database 11g: Administration I exam. 2. The second tier is the Oracle 11g Certified Professional (OCP), which builds on and requires OCA certification. To obtain OCP certification, you must attend an approved Oracle University hands-on class and pass the 1Z0-053 Oracle Database 11g: Administration II exam. 3. The third and highest tier is the Oracle 11g Certified Master (OCM), which builds on and requires OCP certification. To obtain OCM certification, you must attend advanced-level classes and take a two-day, hands-on practical exam.

Oracle Database 11g Certified Master

The Oracle Database 11g Administration Certified Master (OCM) is the highest level of certification that Oracle offers. To become a certified master, you must first obtain OCP certification; then complete two advanced-level classes at an Oracle Education facility; pass a hands-on, two-day exam at an Oracle Education facility; and then submit the Hands On Course Requirement form. The classes and practicum exam are offered only at an Oracle Education facility and may require travel.

What Is Automatic Storage Management (ASM)?

Automatic Storage Management (ASM) provides a centralized way to manage Oracle Database disk storage. ASM is designed to simplify Oracle database storage administration. Database environments have become more and more complex, with large numbers of (and larger) datafiles, storage area networks (SANs), and high-availability requirements. ASM is somewhat like a logical volume manager, allowing you to reduce the management of Oracle files into ASM disk groups. It also provides redundancy configurations, rebalancing operations, and, when installed on top of clusterware, the ability to share database-related files. ASM stores files in disk groups, which are logical entities made up of one or more physical disk drives. ASM is good for more than just storing database datafiles. In an ASM instance, you can store database datafiles, online redo logs, archived redo logs, backup files, and data-pump dumpfiles as well as change-tracking files and control files of one or several Oracle databases, though these databases and the ASM instance must have affinity to a given machine or cluster. ASM also provides the ability to locate the flash recovery area on an ASM disk group, so your backups to disk can be made to ASM. Here are some features of ASM: Automatic software striping (RAID-0) * Load balancing across physical disks * Software RAID-1 data redundancy with double or triple mirrors * Elimination of fragmentation * Simplification of file management via support for Oracle Managed Files (OMF) * Ease of maintenance ASM fits perfectly into a Real Application Clusters (RAC) environment, but you can use ASM in a non-RAC environment too. In the following sections we will cover these ASMrelated topics: * The ASM instance * Configuring ASM disks * Accessing ASM from the database * Managing ASM * ASM data dictionary views You should be aware of a few ASM limitations: NN ASM limits you to 63 disk groups in a given storage system. A disk group is a logical storage entity that is made up of one or more physical disks (we discuss adding ASM disk groups later in this chapter). * You can have a maximum of 10,000 ASM disks in a given storage system. * Each ASM disk can be a maximum of 4 petabytes (PB) in size. * Each ASM instance can manage up to 40 exabytes of storage. * Each disk group can contain up to one million files. * Maximum file sizes vary by the type of disk group: * External-redundancy disk group: 140PB maximum file size * Normal-redundancy disk group: 42PB maximum file size * High-redundancy disk group: 15PB maximum file size