AdvFS Overview

In this chapter the AdvFS filesystems will be created for users' home directories and Oracle data files. AdvFS provides a Direct I/O feature that allows Oracle to read and write to filesystems without the overhead of a UNIX file system buffer cache. Oracle buffers database blocks, so the operating system does not need to buffer these too. For applications other than Oracle, UBC is beneficial. The performance of Direct I/O is similar to raw I/O performance with the benefit of simplified file management. For clusters the cluster file system (CFS) is shared with all members. Traditionally, each user had separate home directories and Oracle binaries common only to the individual node. CFS allows users to have the same home directory structure every time they connect to the cluster. Oracle can be installed once, making management easier.

Quick Summary

• Create a new file domain

• Create a fileset

• Add entry to fstab

• Mount the fileset/domain

• View file domain information

• AdvFS Management

Direct I/O

Tru64 UNIX 5.1 supports a feature that allows read and write I/O operations to bypass the unified buffer cache (UBC). This...