How to Enable or Disable Veritas ODM for Oracle database 12.1.0.1

This post describes the procedures for Enable/Disable Oracle Disk Manager driver for Oracle Database 12.1.0.1.

We assume the Veritas ODM driver is already installed, mounted, and available. Follow the steps outlined below to enable/disable ODM for the Oracle database (note that with different versions of the Solaris OS, the path may change to the ODM files).

Example of vendor ODM library on some platforms:

For Linux: /opt/VRTSodm/lib64/libodm.so
For Solaris SPARC: /usr/lib/sparcv9/libodm.so
For Solaris x86: /usr/lib/amd64/libodm.so

The example given here below is for the Linux platform.

Enable ODM

1. Log in as RDBMS Home Owner OS user.

2. Shut down the database.

3. Change directories:

$ cd $ORACLE_HOME/lib

4. Take a backup of existing original ODM library (if this is an old setup).

$ mv $ORACLE_HOME/rdbms/lib/odm/libodm[software_version].so $ORACLE_HOME/rdbms/lib/odm/libodm[software_version].so.org

For example, in 12c [software_version] = 12:

$ mv $ORACLE_HOME/rdbms/lib/odm/libodm12.so $ORACLE_HOME/rdbms/lib/odm/libodm12.so.org

5. create a symbolic link to veritas ODM library:

$ ln -s /opt/VRTSodm/lib64/libodm.so $ORACLE_HOME/lib/libodm[software_version].so

For example, in 12c [software_version] = 12:

$ ln -s /opt/VRTSodm/lib64/libodm.so $ORACLE_HOME/lib/libodm12.so

6. Start the database and check the alert.log for the below message:

Oracle instance running with Veritas 6.0.500.100 ODM Library, Version 2.0

7. Also validate the DBWR is opening /dev/odm/ctl files:

$ ps -aef | grep -i ora_dbw0_t12
oracle 19706 1 0 12:44 ? 00:00:00 ora_dbw0_t12101

$ lsof -p 19706 | grep -i odm
ora_dbw0_ 19706 oracle mem REG 8,3 69205 20259040 /opt/VRTSodm/lib64/libodm.so
ora_dbw0_ 19706 oracle 8r REG 0,19 0 3 /dev/odm/ctl
ora_dbw0_ 19706 oracle 10r REG 0,19 0 3 /dev/odm/ctl
ora_dbw0_ 19706 oracle 25r REG 0,19 0 3 /dev/odm/ctl

Disable ODM

Just remove the symbolic link from the respective directory so that the link to the Veritas ODM library present at the OS directory is broken.

1. Log in as a Home Owner OS user. Shut down the database.

2. Remove the soft link we created.

$ cd $ORACLE_HOME/lib
$ rm libodm12.so

3. Copy the original $ORACLE_HOME/lib/libodm12.so file back to disable the ODM library:

$ cp $ORACLE_HOME/lib/libodm12.so.oracle $ORACLE_HOME/lib/libodm12.so
$ ls -l libodm12.*

4. Start the database and check the alert.log.