Conversion to Flex ASM with asmca takes 5 minutes

By Franck Pachot

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In 12c Oracle recommands Flex ASM. You can opt for it at Grid Infrastructure installation, but it’s very easy to convert to it later from asmca. It has to configure

[grid@racp1vm1 ~]$ asmcmd showclustermode
ASM cluster: Flex mode disabled

In ASMCA if you are not in Flex ASM then you have the button to convert to it from the first tab. A listener will run on each node, so you define the port and the interface:

On my laptop with the lab environment from the dbi services Grid Infrastructure / RAC training workshop running the converttoFlexASM.sh as root took 5 minutes.

When it’s finished, you restart asmca and see that the convert button is not there anymore:

you can see it from asmcmd as well:

[grid@racp1vm1 ~]$ asmcmd showclustermode
ASM cluster : Flex mode enabled

I can shutdown the ASM instance on node 2 (not from node 1 as I’ve run asmca from it):

Both nodes have the flex ASM listener:

[grid@racp1vm1 ~]$ crsctl status resource -t
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Name           Target  State        Server                   State details
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Local Resources
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
ora.ASMNET1LSNR_ASM.lsnr
               ONLINE  ONLINE       racp1vm1                 STABLE
               ONLINE  ONLINE       racp1vm2                 STABLE
ora.CRS_DG.dg
               ONLINE  ONLINE       racp1vm1                 STABLE
               OFFLINE OFFLINE      racp1vm2                 STABLE
ora.DATA.dg
               ONLINE  ONLINE       racp1vm1                 STABLE
               OFFLINE OFFLINE      racp1vm2                 STABLE
ora.DATA2.MYACFSVOL.advm
               ONLINE  ONLINE       racp1vm1                 Volume device /dev/a
                                                             sm/myacfsvol-160 is
                                                             online,STABLE
               ONLINE  ONLINE       racp1vm2                 Volume device /dev/a
                                                             sm/myacfsvol-160 is
                                                             online,STABLE
ora.DATA2.dg
               ONLINE  ONLINE       racp1vm1                 STABLE
               OFFLINE OFFLINE      racp1vm2                 STABLE

Note that the diskgroups are OFFLINE in node 2 because I stopped the ASM instance, but the ACFS filesystem is still up, thanks to flex ASM.