ASM: Adding disk “_DROPPED%” FORCE

Ok doke,
First let I make it clear: Adding a disk with force should be avoided, mainly by all the rebalance involved. The best choice, if you has “time”, is to just put disks online, like:

1) ALTER DISKGROUP ONLINE DISK ; or
2) ALTER DISKGROUP ONLINE DISKS IN FAILGROUP ; or
3) ALTER DISKGROUP ONLINE ALL;

But, the post is about adding back to DG the dropped disks.
Let’s imagine, to undestand my situation, you lost the contact with one of your two site storage… In this example, represented by failgroup FGAUX. You would see the disks like this:

SQL> select name,failgroup,state from v$asm_disk a where state <> 'NORMAL';

NAME FAILGROUP STATE
------------------------------ ------------------------------ --------
_DROPPED_0000_DGDATA FGAUX FORCING
_DROPPED_0001_DGDATA FGAUX FORCING
_DROPPED_0002_DGDATA FGAUX FORCING

So, you know your disks by the name pattern (0 are FGMAIN and 1 are FGAUX, the problematic). You can do something like:

[root@database-host ~]# /etc/init.d/oracleasm listdisks |grep DGDATA
DGDATA001
DGDATA002
DGDATA003
DGDATA101
DGDATA102
DGDATA103

Now, make the simple… 🙂

SQL> ALTER DISKGROUP DGDATA ADD
FAILGROUP FGAUX
DISK
'ORCL:DGDATA101' name DGDATA101 FORCE,
'ORCL:DGDATA102' name DGDATA102 FORCE,
'ORCL:DGDATA103' name DGDATA103 FORCE;

Diskgroup altered.

SQL> ALTER DISKGROUP DGDATA rebalance power 8;

Diskgroup altered.

While waiting the reball, let’s see the disks in DG:

SQL> select * from v$asm_operation where group_number=(select group_number from v$asm_diskgroup where name='DGDATA');

GROUP_NUMBER OPERA STAT POWER ACTUAL SOFAR EST_WORK EST_RATE EST_MINUTES ERROR_CODE
------------ ----- ---- ---------- ---------- ---------- ---------- ---------- ----------- --------------------------------------------
3 REBAL WAIT 8
SQL> select name,failgroup,state from v$asm_disk a where group_number=(select group_number from v$asm_diskgroup where name='DGDATA');

NAME FAILGROUP STATE
------------------------------ ------------------------------ --------
_DROPPED_0000_DGDATA FGAUX FORCING
_DROPPED_0001_DGDATA FGAUX FORCING
_DROPPED_0002_DGDATA FGAUX FORCING
DGDATA101 FGAUX NORMAL
DGDATA102 FGAUX NORMAL
DGDATA103 FGAUX NORMAL
DGDATA001 FGMAIN NORMAL
DGDATA002 FGMAIN NORMAL
DGDATA003 FGMAIN NORMAL

And, when the rebalance end, the situation will be OK:

SQL> select * from v$asm_operation where group_number=(select group_number from v$asm_diskgroup where name='DGDATA');

GROUP_NUMBER OPERA STAT POWER ACTUAL SOFAR EST_WORK EST_RATE EST_MINUTES ERROR_CODE
------------ ----- ---- ---------- ---------- ---------- ---------- ---------- ----------- --------------------------------------------
3 REBAL RUN 8 8 629 19087 10143 1

SQL> select * from v$asm_operation where group_number=(select group_number from v$asm_diskgroup where name='DGDATA');

no rows selected

SQL> select name,failgroup,state from v$asm_disk a where group_number=(select group_number from v$asm_diskgroup where name='DGDATA');

NAME FAILGROUP STATE
------------------------------ ------------------------------ --------
DGDATA101 FGAUX NORMAL
DGDATA102 FGAUX NORMAL
DGDATA103 FGAUX NORMAL
DGDATA001 FGMAIN NORMAL
DGDATA002 FGMAIN NORMAL
DGDATA003 FGMAIN NORMAL

OK? Easy! 😀

Matheus.