1. REMINDER
Check in on the
COLLABORATE mobile app
Using ACFS as a Storage for E-Business
Suite Application Stack
Prepared by:
Andrejs Karpovs
Lead Oracle Apps DBA
Tieto
Session ID#: 14814

2. About me
■ Lead Oracle Apps DBA at Tieto
■ Certifications:
▪ EBS R12 OCP, 11g RAC OCE, WLS OCA
■ Oracle Certified Master
■ Masters Degree in Computers Science
■ Speaker @ UKOUG_APPS 13, UKOUG 2012, UOGH 2012,
OUG_IRE 2012, LVOUG 2011
■ RAC Attack Ninja @ UKOUG Tech 2013, C14LV
■ Twitter: @AndrejsKarpovs
■ Blog: adbaday.wordpress.com

3. Tieto
■ Tieto is the largest Nordic IT services company providing full
life-cycle services for both private and public sectors. The
company has global presence through its product
development business and the delivery centers.
■ Tieto is committed to develop enterprises and society through
IT by realizing new opportunities in customers’ business
transformation. At Tieto, we believe in professional
development and results.
■ Founded 1968, headquartered in Helsinki, Finland and with
approximately 14 000 experts, the company operates in
approximately 20 countries with net sales at approximately
EUR 1.6 billion. Tieto’s shares are listed on NASDAQ OMX in
Helsinki and Stockholm.

4. I came here from Latvia

5. Latvia?

6. Agenda
■ ASM – Oracle Cloud Storage
■ ACFS – Oracle Cloud file system (focus)
o Background
o EBS on ACFS
o Features
o Use cases
o Demos
o Tips
o 12c New Features

7. Some Questions
■ Who has heard of Oracle Cloud Storage?
■ Who has heard of ACFS?
■ Who uses ACFS?
■ Anyone running EBS on ACFS?
5/20/2014

8. ACFS
■ = ASM Cluster file system or Automatic Storage Management
Cluster file system
■ ASM appeared with 10g
■ ACFS extension introduced in 11gR2
■ In January 2011 ACFS has been rebranded to Oracle Cloud
file system
▪ Oracle Cloud Storage = ASM + ADVM + ACFS
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9. Cloud Storage - architecture
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10. ASM Cluster File System (ACFS)
■ Introduced in Grid Infrastructure 11gR2
■ Built from the traditional ASM disk groups
■ General purpose file system
■ Uses standard file related system calls like others file
systems in the market
■ Disk creation for ACFS is performed with a typical workflow
process
■ Supported on RHEL/OEL/SLES/AIX/WINDOWS
▪ ACFS Support On OS Platforms (Certification Matrix). (Doc ID
1369107.1)
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11. Overview
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12. Demo
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13. ACFS deployment
■ Two types of ACFS file systems:
▪ CRS Managed ACFS (for example, ORACLE_HOME)
— Clusterwide by default
— Automatically creates a dependency with placed resource (DB)
▪ General Purpose ACFS
■ No structural differences
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14. ACFS Disk Space Usage
■ Preallocates large user files to improve performance when
writing data
■ Keeps local bitmaps available to reduce contention on the
global storage bitmap when searching for free space
▪ This disk space is reported as in use by tools such as the
UNIX df command even though some of it may not actually be
allocated as of yet
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15. EBS on ACFS
■ https://blogs.oracle.com/stevenChan/entry/choosing_an_ebs_
shared_file_system
▪ Does Oracle Certify Storage Systems? - No. Not any more.
▪ Does the E-Business Suite Division Certify Storage Systems? –
No. Oracle generally suggest that customers either perform their
own product testing or consult a trusted consultancy that
compares the relative merits of each product against a
consistent set of criteria.
▪ What are the EBS Requirements for a Shared Filesystem? -
Shared filesystems must be transparent to the calling
application, in this case, the E-Business Suite. In other words,
no modifications to the E-Business Suite should be necessary to
ensure compatibility with the shared filesystem.

16. Is EBS certified with ACFS?
■ No. Because Oracle Application Server 10g is not certified
with ACFS.
■ “Customers interested in running Oracle Application Server
10g (and the E-Business Suite) on ACFS are encouraged to
log SRs against the Fusion Middleware product to request
this certification. If sufficient numbers of customers request it,
they may consider it”
■ Can you still use it for, for example, $APPLCSF/$APPLLOG,
$APPLCSF/$APPLOUT, $PATCH_TOP? – Yes.

17. EBS running on ACFS (my experience)
■ Since 2009 – not faced a single issue (we are doing our own
product testing, right?)
▪ Unless there is a clusterware issue
■ Multiple audits and performance benchmarking made by
Oracle
▪ Oracle never told us we are running on unsupported
configuration
▪ Oracle never told us to migrate from ACFS based solution
▪ Oracle worked on SR’s related to EBS and ACFS
■ Didn’t find a single justification why ACFS cannot be certified
with EBS

18. EBS running on ACFS (my experience)
■ Two clusters: Database and Applications cluster
■ Both having Grid Infrastructure installed and ASM used
■ On Applications cluster EBS application stack is installed and
concurrent managers running
■ Other nodes are mounting ACFS using NFS
■ Different mount points (ACFS filesystems) created for log
files, out files, etc.

19. It is your choice…
■ Run EBS Applications stack on two node cluster and utilize
NFS for multi-node installation
■ Run EBS on three or four (or more) node cluster bypassing
NFS
■ Do not fully run the applications stack on ACFS, use it for log
file, out files, etc.

20. The Future
■ Oracle WebLogic on Shared Storage: Best Practices Oracle
Maximum Availability Architecture White Paper May 2013
▪ A shared storage installation can also be successfully performed
on Oracle’s ASM Cluster
▪ Filesystem (ACFS) and was found to be a highly performant
solution.
■ What about EBS R12.2?

21. ACFS vs OCFS2
■ R12 is certified with OCFS2
■ Oracle encourages to use ACFS whenever possible
■ ACFS is distributed as a part of Oracle Database product
whereas OCFS2 is a native Linux filesystem
■ OCFS2 is used as part of Oracle VM and new functionality
would be provided strictly in that area

22. Comparing ACFS vs OCFS2 transaction
throughput

23. Comparing ACFS vs OCFS2 CPU utilization

24. Disk and Network throughput

25. Observations
■ With 60 users, the transaction throughput with ASM was 32%
better than with OCFS2. With 100 users, the comparison
reversed and the transaction throughput was 3% better with
OCFS2 than with ASM
■ When comparing 60 users with 100 users, the CPU load was
nearly constant. OCFS2 requires a higher utilization of CPU
in absolute terms, approximately three processors compared
to a value less than two processors for ASM (four CPUs are
available)
■ There is nearly no difference between OCFS2 and ASM in
disk throughput
■ ACFS leverages ASM and CRS
▪ Manageability
▪ High Availability

26. Feature that could be used with EBS I -
ACFS Snapshots
■ Read / write snapshots from 11.2.0.3
■ First Copy-on-Write (FCOW) methodology
■ Available under .ACFS
■ Point-in-time view of a file
▪ ACFS snapshots can be very useful for file-based recovery or
for file system backups
■ Dynamic and space efficient
■ Recovery using copy and replace
■ Use case – ORACLE_HOME patching
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27. Demo
5/20/2014

28. Feature that could be used with EBS II
ACFS Replication
■ 11.2.0.3 feature
■ Enabled replication of ACFS file systems across the network
to a remote site
■ Replication logs are used to replicate from primary to standby
asynchronously
■ Supports ACFS Tagging, needs specific configuration
5/20/2014

29. Feature that could be used with EBS III
ACFS Tagging
■ Assigns a common naming attribute to a group of files
■ Selects files with tag for replication
▪ /sbin/acfsutil tag set logfiles -r /u02/logfiles/*.log
▪ /sbin/acfsutil repl init primary -s standby/standby@standby_site
tagname logfiles ...
▪ Avoids entire file system replication
■ Requires some additional rpms and configuration
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30. Feature that could be used with EBS IV
ACFS Security
■ Uses Realms, Rules, RuleSets, and Command Rules to
enforce security
▪ Modeled after Data Vault
■ Realm is a virtual container for
▪ Users
▪ Files and dirs, access defined by security filters
▪ Rules and rule sets defining access
▪ Command rules to allow/disallow operations
■ Fine grained access control
▪ Example: Grant functional consultant John read only access to
logfiles or outfiles between 9-11 pm for reporting purposes
5/20/2014

31. Feature that could be used with EBS V
ACFS Encryption
■ Enable users to encrypt data stored on disk
■ Prevents unauthorized use of data in case of data loss or
theft
■ Secure encryption keys to decode data
▪ File encryption key (FEK) – to encrypt file data
▪ Volume Encryption key (VEK) – to encrypt FEK
■ As of now, security cannot be used with replication
■ COMPATIBLE.ASM and COMPATIBLE.ADVM should be set
to 11.2.0.3
5/20/2014

32. 12c New Features
■ Highly Available NFS
■ Snapshot enhancements: Oracle ACFS read/write snapshots
have been enhanced to support snapshots created from an
existing snapshot in the same Oracle ACFS file system
(snaps of snaps) and snapshot conversions (read-only to
read/write). (use it in cloning?)
■ Flex ASM

33. Benefits
■ A better (faster and more reliable) alternative to traditional
NFS
■ Dynamic management
■ No need to separate storage administrators and ASM
administrators
■ Mount it anywhere with NFS
■ Features
■ Performance
5/20/2014

34. Tips - Manage ACFS
■ Online resize – be careful (11gR2)
▪ There is a limit of 5 extents for the file system's internal storage
bitmap. This causes any attempts to increase the file system to
fail after it has been increased four or more times.
▪ Solution - /sbin/fsck -a -v -y -t acfs /dev/asm/acfs-368
▪ Decrease FS and increase again with increase size > decrease
size
■ When mounting application tier file system to other node
using NFS, use the following nfs parameters:
▪ rw,intr,bg,hard,timeo=600,wsize=32768,rsize=32768,nfsvers=3,t
cp,nolock,acregmin=0,acregmax=0
▪ The above are recommendations based on Oracle Internal
Testing
5/20/2014

35. Licencing
■ Comes free out-of-the box with Grid Infrastructure installation
■ Free to use for Oracle DB, middleware, applications...
▪ Unless you want to store your personal files on ACFS
■ Additional features like Replication, Security and Snapshots –
requires CFS license
5/20/2014

36. Thank you!
Any questions?

37. Please complete the session
evaluation
We appreciate your feedback and insight
You may complete the session evaluation either
on paper or online via the mobile app