An individual password file for Oracle Database or Oracle ASM can reside on a designated Oracle ASM disk group. Having the password files reside on a single location accessible across the cluster reduces maintenance costs and situations where passwords become out of sync.
You can use a password file located on a disk group for authentication only if the Oracle ASM instance is running and the designated disk group is mounted. Otherwise, operating system authentication must be used to bootstrap the startup of the Oracle ASM instance and stack.
The COMPATIBLE.ASM disk group attribute must be set to at least 12.1 for the disk group where the password is to be located. The SYSASM privilege is required to manage the Oracle ASM password file. The SYSDBA privilege on Oracle ASM is required to manage the database password file.
The shared password file in a disk group is managed by ASMCMD commands, the ORAPWD tool, and SRVCTL commands. ORAPWD supports the creation of password files on an Oracle ASM disk group. All other password file manipulation is performed with ASMCMD or SRVCTL commands.
Before running commands, such as ORAPWD, to create a password file, ensure that the ORACLE_SID and ORACLE_HOME environmental variables have been set properly. For example, before setting the password file for Oracle ASM, set the ORACLE_SID and ORACLE_HOME environmental variables to ensure that you can connect to the local Oracle ASM instance. For information about environmental variables and connecting to an Oracle ASM instance, refer to "Connecting To and Starting Up an Oracle ASM Instance".
SRVCTL provides commands to manage a password file in a disk group, such as the following commands for updating and displaying the location of the password file:
$ srvctl modify asm -pwfile location $ srvctl modify database -db dbname -pwfile location $ srvctl config asm