Customer Reviews

Oracle Automatic Storage Management: Under-the-Hood & Practical Deployment Guide (Oracle Press)

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

One of the authors of this book is the director of development for ASM. Who would know more about it than the developers? The other 2 implement it in many different environments. Lastly, the technical reviewer Charles Kim wrote the 11g new features book for Apress. There could not be a better group of people to write a book about ASM and review it than these individuals.

I would highly recommend this book for any DBA that will be working with ASM and / or RAC. The high performance, ease of use, and low cost make it a very attractive solution. This book will teach you everything you need to know about ASM (that's why it's called an "Under-the-Hood" guide). It also makes an excellent reference.

Someone recenlty mentioned that Oracle Automatic Storage Management (ASM) is probably the best thing ever happened to Oracle next to SQL*Plus. I would second that. However there was no definitive text available in the market and Nitin & co perfectly filled the gap with this classic one.

This book starts with the basics of the storage technology and moves towards the center of the ASM with deep discussions on ASM data structures, ASM in operation and ASM troubleshooting. Nitin probably probably knows more about ASM than anyone I know and excels in explaining the complex technologies in easy to understand manner. You will immensely benefit from his wisdom and real life experience.

A must read for Oracle Storage Administrators and DBAs working with RAC/ASM.

This is a definitely a good book. Contains plenty of useful info. However don't be misguided by "covers oracle 10g and 11g". As of 11.2 a lot of things have changed like introduction of Grid Infrastructure, etc that makes installation and management a bit different, but I believe the concepts will stay the same. An updated online chapter on new 11.2 features would be nice, but for lack of anything else I would give my both thumbs up for this book, especially if you deal with 10.2-11.1 versions.

Other than Oracle documentation, this is the only ASM source of information that I know of. This book is a relatively fast read and comes in at under 300 pages.

The first chapter is very helpful and I learned some information about disk storage that I did not know. I am more comfortable talking with SAN and system administrators now. They also get the feel that I know what I am talking about. After the first chapter, the book dives right into ASM architecture and management. Each chapter is well written and easy to understand. This book also covers the new features in Oracle 11 and you can see that Oracle is dedicated to maturing ASM. ASM is here to stay and it will gain in popularity.

One of the areas that I thought could have been better is the discussion and explanation of RAC, ASM and how the cluster registry is affected. It would have been nice to have a chapter on OCFS just as a supplement. Some shops will utilize both OCFS and ASM. OCFS will host the OCR and voting file as ASM can not be used.

If you are new to ASM or you are an expert, this book is a good read. If you are new to ASM will get more out of it (obviously) since it covers everything you need to know to install and maintain ASM. Fortunately since this is the only ASM book (as of today) and it is great source of information you will not be wasting your time. This book comes highly recommended.

George Loewenthal
Denver, Colorado

I bought this book hoping to get details which I couldn't find in Oracle manuals and the Metalink Notes. I was attracted by the subtitle: "Under-the-Hood...". I'm through the most part of this book and I'm disappointed. The authors definitely know what they are talking about. However, some parts of this book seem like they have been written for the authors themselves or people who already know this material well beyond the manuals. In some cases the description of the operations inside ASM is unclear and not well illustrated by a drawing or an example, which leads me to believe the authors gave very little thought about their target audience, and I don't mean novice DBAs.
With all that said, currently, this is the only book on ASM, it is quite useful, but could have been much better.

Oracle Automatic Storage Management Under-the-Hood & Practical Deployment Guide.This is a must have book for those who are working on ASM or who are planning to implement ASM.Chapters like "ASM Space Allocation and Rebalance","ASMLIB Concepts and Overview","Managing Database in ASM" and "ASM and Storage Array Configuration" gives you in detail information.

After reading the book I can say that now I know what actually is ASM/How it works/How to Implement ASM and I don't need any more training on ASM.

-MOHAMMED MOINUDDIN UMAIR
Senior Tuning Consultant,LEHMAN BROTHERS,NEW JERSEY

I continue to be underwhelmed with the quality control of these texts by Oracle. Just spending a little time checking syntax would make a world of difference. Like most of these books, syntax errors in SQL commands are everywhere. Also, important subjects should have more examples with commands actually run (so the syntax errors would get caught and corrected). Overall, a good reference and still the only game in town, but needs work.

In my opinion this is the best book available in market for ASM. It covers basic of ASM as well as deep troubleshooting. No one can beat Nitin's knowledge, he is an expert when it comes to storage and ASM. You would not be disappointed to have this book.

This is a essential book for beginners and advanced users. DBAs can have good references to implement ASM without problems. There are many information not found in conventional forums.

Lots of filler in this book. For example, chapters showing how hard drives work, complete with half-page illustrations! You could compress this book down to a third of its size. Meanwhile, the harder technical issues, such as sharing ASM diskgroups over multiple servers, are given a single sentence. There is precious little here that isn't available in the (free) manuals on Oracle's web site. Save your money.