With a new installation of Oracle Database and Oracle ASM, you can initially create your database and select the Oracle ASM storage option. If you have an existing Oracle Database that stores database files in the operating system file system, then you can migrate some or all of your data files to Oracle ASM storage.
Oracle provides several methods for migrating your database to Oracle ASM. Using Oracle ASM enables you to realize the benefits of automation and simplicity in managing your database storage. To migrate to Oracle ASM, you can use the methods described in the following sections:
You can use Oracle Recovery Manager (RMAN) to manually migrate to Oracle ASM. You can also use RMAN to migrate a single tablespace or data file to Oracle ASM.
For more information, see Performing Oracle ASM Data Migration with RMAN.
The Oracle Maximum Availability Architecture (MAA) website provides excellent best practices technical white papers based on different scenarios, such as:
Minimal Downtime Migration to Oracle ASM
Platform Migration using Transportable Tablespaces
Platform Migration using Transportable Database
For information about Oracle ASM best practices for migrating to Oracle ASM from environments that do not use Oracle ASM, refer to the documentation at the MAA link on Oracle Technology Network:
http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/database/features/availability/maa-096107.html