Replication Agent for Oracle supports the use of the Oracle Automatic Storage Management (ASM) feature for online and archive redo logs.
ASM provides file system and volume management support for an Oracle database environment. You can use ASM in both Real Application Cluster (RAC) and non-RAC environments. ASM provides similar benefits as a redundant array of independent disks (RAID) or a logical volume manager (LVM).
Similar to those technologies, ASM allows you to define a single disk group from a collection of individual disks. ASM attempts to balance loads across all of the devices defined in the disk group. ASM also provides striping and mirroring capabilities. Unlike RAID or LVMs, ASM only supports files created and read by the Oracle database. You cannot use ASM for a general-purpose file system and cannot store binaries or flat files. The operating system cannot access ASM files.
For more information about Replication Agent support for Oracle ASM, see the Replication Agent Primary Database Guide.