Oracle Cloud File System

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Oracle Cloud File System [1] (CloudFS) is a storage management suite developed by Oracle Corporation. CloudFS consists of a cluster file system called ASM Cluster File System (ACFS), and a cluster volume manager called ASM Dynamic Volume Manager (ADVM) initially released in August 2007.

Oracle Corporation American multinational computer technology corporation

Oracle Corporation is an American multinational computer technology corporation headquartered in Redwood Shores, California. The company sells database software and technology, cloud engineered systems, and enterprise software products—particularly its own brands of database management systems. In 2018, Oracle was the third-largest software company by revenue.

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Features

ACFS [2] is a standard-based POSIX (Linux, UNIX) and Windows cluster file system with full cluster-wide file and memory mapped I/O cache coherency and file locking. ACFS provides direct I/O for Oracle database I/O workloads. ACFS implements indirect I/O however for general purpose files that typically perform small I/O for better response time. CloudFS [3] is designed to scale to billions of files and supports very large file and file systems sizes (up to exabytes of storage).

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CloudFS [4] is built on top of Oracle Automatic Storage Management (ASM) and Oracle clustering technologies to provide cluster volume and file services to clients. ADVM and ACFS leverage ASM striping, mirroring and automatic I/O rebalancing features to manage volumes that are dynamically resizable.

Automatic Storage Management (ASM) is a feature provided by Oracle Corporation within the Oracle Database from release Oracle 10g onwards. ASM aims to simplify the management of database datafiles, control files and log files. To do so, it provides tools to manage file systems and volumes directly inside the database, allowing database administrators (DBAs) to control volumes and disks with familiar SQL statements in standard Oracle environments. Thus DBAs do not need extra skills in specific file systems or volume managers.

Starting with the latest release in Oracle Database 12c, ACFS supports Oracle database files as well as general purpose files.

ACFS supports space efficient read-write snapshots, asynchronous file system replication, tagging for aggregate operations, fine grain security and encryption for higher security.

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References

  1. "Oracle Introduces Oracle® Cloud File System to Enable Private Clouds". Oracle Press.
  2. L. Canali, D. Wojcik. "ACFS under scrutiny". UK Oracle User Group (UKOUG) Conference 2010. Retrieved 2017-11-29.
  3. "Oracle Cloud File System Delivers Infrastructure for Private Clouds". Campus Technology. Retrieved 2017-11-29.
  4. Weinberger, Matthew. "Oracle Cloud File System Enables Private Clouds". Talkin' Cloud.