I agree. What many people don't realize is that ASM was meant by Oracle to allow small- and medium-size shops, who didn't want to shell out the bucks for a storage system like Symmetrix, to realize the benefits of striping and mirroring. Running ASM on top of RAID gives you stripes on stripes (or what some people call "plaiding"-ugh). Having said all that, we run ASM on top of Symmetrix, as it's the standard tier one storage. There are *some* benefits, such as automatic rebalancing, but to my mind it's gilding the lily. Paul Baumgartel CREDIT SUISSE Information Technology Securities Processing Databases Americas One Madison Avenue New York, NY 10010 USA Phone 212.538.1143 paul.baumgartel@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx www.credit-suisse.com ________________________________ From: oracle-l-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:oracle-l-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Michael McMullen Sent: Thursday, September 13, 2007 10:45 AM To: ryan_gaffuri@xxxxxxxxxxx; oracle-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxx Subject: Re: ASM IO distribution on a SAN Doesn't this all seem like overkill? It doesn't sound like you are getting RAW disks. The san guys would be using some form of raid already wouldn't they? They've packaged up the disks, made luns for you, do you really want another layer on top to troubleshoot? I don't think ASM will increase your performance beyond was a good SAN admin could do for you. Mike ============================================================================== Please access the attached hyperlink for an important electronic communications disclaimer: http://www.credit-suisse.com/legal/en/disclaimer_email_ib.html ==============================================================================