Advanced Cluster File System

Oracle Advanced Cluster File System (ACFS) is a scalable, high-performance cluster file system that extends Oracle Automatic Storage Management (ASM) to support database, application, and general-purpose files.

ACFS enables multiple servers in a cluster to concurrently access shared files and provides direct access to ASM disk group storage for optimal I/O performance.

ACFS is POSIX- and X/Open-compliant and supports multiple operating systems and server platforms, including Oracle Engineered Systems such as Oracle Exadata Database Machine and Oracle Database Appliance.

• Simplify File System Management – Integrate file system and storage management with Oracle Grid Infrastructure and Oracle ASM.
  
• Increase Availability – Provide clusterwide access to shared file systems for applications running across multiple servers.
  
• Support Diverse Workloads – Store database, application, Oracle software, and general-purpose files on a common file system.
  
• Scale Storage Online – Dynamically resize file systems as storage requirements change without disrupting file system access.
  
• Reduce Administrative Overhead – Use integrated Oracle ASM storage and Oracle Grid Infrastructure management instead of deploying separate third-party cluster file system software.

• Clusterwide File System Access – Provides concurrent access to shared file systems across servers in an Oracle Clusterware environment.
  
• Oracle ASM Integration – Extends Oracle ASM-managed storage with general-purpose file system capabilities while inheriting ASM storage management features such as striping, mirroring, and dynamic resizing.
  
• Dynamic Online Resizing – Enables file systems to be expanded or reduced online as storage requirements change.
  
• Space-Efficient Snapshots – Creates read-only or read-write point-in-time copies of file systems for uses such as file recovery, testing, and backup.
  
• Data Protection and Security – Provides capabilities including file system snapshots, replication, security, and encryption to help protect and manage file system data.