Oracle Automatic Storage Management (ASM)

Oracle Automatic Storage Management (ASM) is Oracle's alternative to conventional

• volume managers,
• file systems and
• raw devices

ASM is both, a volume manager and a file system. The file system was exclusively designed to be used by Oracle.

ASM stores (ASM) files in ASM disk groups.

An ASM file belongs to one disk group - but a disk group might contain files from different databases.

A database can spread its files on multiple disk groups.

ASM might also uses OMF.