Oracle, ASM on VMware with TF question

• To use TF, they must use RDMs

Your choices are RDM or VMFS. Both are viable options, but require a different approach. RDM allows you to use physically booted hosts as the source, and then clone / snap the LUNs, and mount them as RDMs and so forth. VMFS is a bit tweaky. You need to set up a VMFS file system for each ASM diskgroup set, and effectively isolate a given ASM instance's / cluster's diskgroups from any others. No sharing VMFS file systems across database servers / clusters in other words. In that case, you can use the VMFS clone / snap functionality (e.g. in AppSync) to copy that VMFS file system, and then mount the resulting .vmdk files onto a VM, and then mount the diskgroups in a brand new ASM instance, and finally do a dirty restart of the normal Oracle database.

-To use TF with ASM, multiple DBs should not share the same ASM disk groups

Yes, this is also correct. In either the RDM or VMFS case, sharing ASM diskgroups across multiple DBs will result in wasted IO.

-If they want to Clone the DB using VMFS datastores, use RMAN Duplicate as a possible solution

Possibly. I have not looked at this option much. However, a normal dirty restart (crash consistent image) should work, assuming write consistency is maintained.

-If Cloning via TF, source & destination must be virtual

Not in the case of RDM, but yes in the case of VMFS. See discussion above.

Matt, some great questions.

Does Sam Lucido's  Oracle Virtualization Best Practices! have those answers.

Does Drew Tonnesen's Techbook help: Updated EMC Symmetrix/VMware TechBook

I agree if you want to use storage replication you will have to be in an RDM deployment.

I would keep the ASM disk groups separated if using TF

Thanks. let me look at Drew’s WP.