ASMCMD is a command line utility for managing files and directories in ASM (Automatic

Storage Management ) diskgroups. It offers Unix-style filesystem commands for managing ASM
directories and files. Prior to Oracle 10gR2, ASM had to be administered via OEM or SQL
statements while connected to a special ASM instance.
Note that ASMCMD cannot be used to create or drop diskgroups, or to add or drop disks in a
disk group. These ASM administrative tasks must be accomplished via SQL commands.
ASMCMD offers two modes of operation: interactive and non-interactive. Interactive mode
provides a shell-like environment for executing ASMCMD commands. It resembles how
SQL*Plus interactive mode works and looks like this:
C:\Temp>asmcmd
ASMCMD>
Whereas non-interactive mode works much like the srvctl and lsnsctl XE "lsnsctl" commands,
that is that one provides the base ASMCMD command, its command and any command
parameters and all on the operating system command line, like this:
C:\Temp>asmcmd ls -1
The ASMCMD commands and their parameters are very Unix-like in nature, so they will look
quite familiar to those on UNIX.

COMMAND DESCRIPTION

cd

Change directory

cp

Copy file

du

Disk space used by a directory and its subdirectories

exit

Exit the utility

find

Locate the path for all occurrences of the specified filename

help

Displays command assistance

ls

List the contents of a directory

lsct

List info about ASM clients

lsdg

List all disk groups and their attributes

lsdsk

List all physical disks visible to ASM

md_backup

Create a backup of the mounted diskgroups

md_restore

Restore the diskgroups from a backup

mkalias

Create an alias for a system generated filename

mkdir

Create directory

pwd

Print working directory (i.e. list current directory location)

remap

Repair a range of blocks on a disk

rm

Remove (i.e. delete) the specified files or directories

rmalias

Remove (i.e. delete) the specified alias

Table 6.173: ASMCMD Key Commands

When making the decision to bypass the JFS buffers with raw devices, the problem has always
been the management of the "raw" disk files, which are read directly by Oracle, into Oracle data
buffers, bypassing the OS overhead. For details on using ASM, I recommend the book "Oracle
RAC and Grid" by Madhu Tumma and Mile Ault.
Oracle introduced Automatic Storage Management (ASM) to simplify Oracle data management,
enforce the SAME (Stripe And Mirror Everywhere, RAID10), and provide a platform for file
sharing in RAC and Grid computing.
Managing raw datafiles with asmcmd
The 10g release 2 has introduced an ASM command line utility dibbed "asmcmd" to act as a
DMCL (device media control language), to manage the interface between the ASM logical data
view and the physical disk files.
The asmcmd interface is launched by first setting the environment for +ASM, then calling it with
the asmcmd command. The idea of this tool is to make administering the ASM files similar to
administering standard operating system files.