About Setting Up Oracle Flex ASM

During the installation process with Oracle Universal Installer (OUI), you can choose the type of the Oracle Clusterware that should be installed. The Oracle Clusterware can be an Oracle Flex ASM deployment that manages its own storage or a regular Oracle ASM cluster.

Note:

If you choose to install an Oracle Flex Cluster, Oracle Flex ASM is enabled by default because an Oracle Flex Cluster requires Oracle Flex ASM.
Clients based on releases before Oracle Database 12c Release 1 (12.1) require the local Oracle ASM clients configuration described in "Overview of Oracle Flex ASM" or an Oracle Flex ASM configuration with the Oracle ASM instance count (cardinality) set to ALL.

For information about administering Oracle Flex ASM with SRVCTL commands, refer to "Administering Oracle Flex ASM".
Oracle does not support changing Oracle Flex ASM to a standard Oracle ASM configuration.

To install an Oracle Flex ASM deployment, note the following:

Categorize the networks and choose the list of networks for use as Oracle ASM networks.

If you choose Oracle Flex ASM during a new installation, OUI requires you to choose the Oracle ASM networks.

The Oracle ASM listener resource is automatically created for each Oracle ASM network and then started on all nodes.
Enable Oracle Flex ASM if necessary.

Run Oracle ASM Configuration Assistant (ASMCA) to enable Oracle Flex ASM in a standard Oracle ASM cluster. This functionality is only available in an Oracle Grid Infrastructure configuration, not an Oracle Restart configuration. For information about converting to Oracle Flex ASM, refer to "About Converting to Oracle Flex ASM".

To determine whether an Oracle Flex ASM has been enabled, use the ASMCMD showclustermode command. For information about showclustermode, refer to "showclustermode".

The ASMCA GUI utility steps through the requirements and changes all dependencies as required, including dependencies on Oracle ACFS. ASMCA informs you if additional tasks, such as moving a server parameter file (SPFILE) or password file (ORAPWD file) to a disk group, are required before the conversion. For information about those tasks, refer to "About Backing Up_ Copying_ and Moving an Oracle ASM Initialization Parameter File" and "Managing a Shared Password File in a Disk Group".