Veritas Extension for Oracle Disk Manager is specifically designed for Oracle9i or later to enhance file management and disk I/O throughput. The features of Oracle Disk Manager are best suited for databases that reside in a file system contained in Veritas File System. Oracle Disk Manager allows Oracle9i or later users to improve database throughput for I/O intensive workloads with special I/O optimization.

Veritas Extension for Oracle Disk Manager supports Oracle Resilvering. With Oracle Resilvering, the storage layer receives information from the Oracle database as to which regions or blocks of a mirrored datafile to resync after a system crash. When using Oracle Resilvering, you can turn off VxVM Dirty Region Logging (DRL), which increases performance.

Oracle Disk Manager reduces administrative overhead by providing enhanced support for Oracle Managed Files. Veritas Extension for Oracle Disk Manager has Quick I/O-like capabilities, but is transparent to the user. Unlike Veritas Quick I/O, files managed using Veritas Extension for Oracle Disk Manager do not require special file naming conventions. The Oracle Disk Manager interface uses regular database files. With Oracle9i or later, you can access both Oracle Disk Manager and Quick I/O files so you have the option to convert or not to convert your old Quick I/O files.

Database administrators can choose the datafile type used with the Oracle product. Historically, choosing between file system files and raw devices was based on manageability and performance. The exception to this is a database intended for use with Oracle Parallel Server, which requires raw devices on most platforms. If performance is not as important as administrative ease, file system files are typically the preferred file type. However, while an application may not have substantial I/O requirements when it is first implemented, I/O requirements may change. If an application becomes dependent upon I/O throughput, converting datafiles from file system to raw devices is often necessary.

Oracle Disk Manager was designed to work with Oracle9i or later to provide both performance and manageability. Oracle Disk Manager provides support for Oracle's file management and I/O calls for database storage on VxFS file systems and on raw volumes or partitions. This feature is provided as a dynamically-loaded shared library with which Oracle binds when it is loaded. The Oracle Disk Manager library works with an Oracle Disk Manager driver that is loaded in the kernel to perform its functions.

If you are upgrading to Oracle9i or later, you should convert from Quick I/O to Oracle Disk Manager.