Shutting Down an Oracle ASM Instance

Shutting Down an Oracle ASM Instance

The Oracle ASM shutdown process is initiated when you run the SHUTDOWN command in SQL*Plus. Before you run this command, ensure that the ORACLE_SID environment variable is set to the Oracle ASM SID so that you can connect to the local Oracle ASM instance. The default Oracle ASM SID for a single-instance database is +ASM, and the default SID for Oracle ASM for an Oracle RAC node is +ASMnode_number where node_number is the number of the node. The ORACLE_HOME environment variable must be set to the Grid Infrastructure home where Oracle ASM was installed.

Oracle strongly recommends that you shut down all database instances that use the Oracle ASM instance and dismount all file systems mounted on Oracle ASM Dynamic Volume Manager (Oracle ADVM) volumes before attempting to shut down the Oracle ASM instance.

If Oracle Cluster Registry (OCR) or voting files are stored in a disk group, the disk group can only be dismounted by shutting down the Oracle ASM instance as part of shutting down the clusterware on a node. To shut down the clusterware, run crsctl stop crs.

To shut down an Oracle ASM instance, perform the following steps:

SQLPLUS /NOLOG
SQL> CONNECT SYS AS SYSASM
Enter password: sys_password
Connected.
SQL> SHUTDOWN NORMAL

The following list describes the SHUTDOWN modes and the behavior of the Oracle ASM instance in each mode.

• NORMAL Clause

Oracle ASM waits for any in-progress SQL to complete before performing an orderly dismount of all of the disk groups and shutting down the Oracle ASM instance. Before the instance is shut down, Oracle ASM waits for all of the currently connected users to disconnect from the instance. If any database instances are connected to the Oracle ASM instance, then the SHUTDOWN command returns an error and leaves the Oracle ASM instance running. NORMAL is the default shutdown mode.

• IMMEDIATE or TRANSACTIONAL Clause

Oracle ASM waits for any in-progress SQL to complete before performing an orderly dismount of all of the disk groups and shutting down the Oracle ASM instance. Oracle ASM does not wait for users currently connected to the instance to disconnect. If any database instances are connected to the Oracle ASM instance, then the SHUTDOWN command returns an error and leaves the Oracle ASM instance running. Because the Oracle ASM instance does not contain any transactions, the TRANSACTIONAL mode behaves the same as IMMEDIATE mode.

• ABORT Clause

The Oracle ASM instance immediately shuts down without the orderly dismount of disk groups. This causes recovery to occur upon the next Oracle ASM startup.

If any database instance is connected to the Oracle ASM instance, then the database instance aborts.

If any Oracle Automatic Storage Management Cluster File System (Oracle ACFS) file systems are currently mounted on Oracle ADVM volumes, those file systems should first be dismounted. Otherwise, applications encounter I/O errors and Oracle ACFS user data and metadata may not be written to storage before the Oracle ASM storage is fenced. For information about dismounting an Oracle ACFS file system