Creating, Copying, and Moving an SPFILE Into a Disk Group

If the COMPATIBLE.ASM disk group attribute is set to 11.2 or greater for a disk group, you can create, copy, or move an Oracle ASM SPFILE into the disk group.

For example, after upgrading an instance from Oracle ASM 11g Release 1 (11.1) to Oracle ASM 11g Release 2 (11.2), you could place the Oracle ASM SPFILE in a disk group that has COMPATIBLE.ASM set to 11.2. For information about disk group compatibility attributes, see "Disk Group Compatibility".

In the following steps, assume an Oracle ASM 11g Release 2 (11.2) instance is using a PFILE stored in $ORACLE_HOME/dbs/asmpfile.ora. You can use the SQL CREATE SPFILE statement to create an SPFILE from a PFILE stored in a local or shared file system. If a PFILE does not exist, then it could be created with the SQL CREATE PFILE statement.

To create an SPFILE in a disk group, perform the following steps:

  1. Connect to the Oracle ASM instance.

    For example:

    $ sqlplus / as sysasm

  2. Create an SPFILE in a disk group that has COMPATIBLE.ASM set to 11.2 with the SQL CREATE SPFILE statement.

    For example, create an Oracle ASM SPFILE from the existing PFILE.

    SQL> CREATE SPFILE = '+DATA/asmspfile.ora' 
       FROM PFILE = '$ORACLE_HOME/dbs/asmpfile.ora';

    The CREATE SPFILE statement also updates the Grid Plug and Play (GPnP) profile. You can check the location of the Oracle ASM SPFILE in the GPnP profile with the ASMCMD spget command. See "spget".

  3. Restart the Oracle ASM instance so that the instance reads the SPFILE in the new location.

    For information on shutting down and starting up an Oracle ASM instance, see "About Starting Up an Oracle ASM Instance" and "About Shutting Down an Oracle ASM Instance".