A good friend of mine once approached me asking if I could summarize Oracle OFA (Optimal Flexible Architecture). He said there is a ton of documentation on-line but nothing that he could read in few minutes. Later that night I wrote him an email and now I modified that email to publish here. What you find below is not a complete OFA, it’s just a summary of OFA tidbits in my head. The flow and convention are heavily influenced by a 2 great DBA companion books Expert Oracle Database 10g Administration (Expert’s Voice) and Expert Oracle Database 11g Administration (Expert’s Voice in Oracle)

Mount Points:

Naming Convention                  /pm

Where:  p= string constant

m=two digit number

Examples: /u01, /u02, /u03 etc

Mount point names must be simple and should not include and hardware specific information. This helps with changing disk system when needed.

At least 4 mount points to fully comply with OFA. 1 for oracle binaries and the remaining 3 are for oracle database files.

Directory and File Naming Conventions:

OS User Home directory should be:    /pm/h/u

Where: h=Standard directory name (generally app)

u=directory owner

Example: /u01/app/oracle is the home directory of the oracle user

ORACLE_BASE: Root of the Oracle directory structure, Home of the Oracle installation owner. Generally /u01/app/oracle

Set this as an environment variable for clarity

ORACLE_HOME: All oracle binaries and library files are to be located under this directory.

Examples: $ORACLE_HOME/bin Container for Oracle binaries

$ORACLE_HOME/network Container for Oracle network services files

$ORACE_HOME       =          $ORACLE_BASE/product/v/type_[n]

Where: v= version of the software

type= type of installation db|client|companion

n=counter for multiple installation of  the same product

Oracle Inventory Directory (OraInventory)

Conventional location is $ORACLE_BASE/oraInventory

Stores the inventory list of all oracle products installed on the box. This path is specified only during the installation of the first oracle product. Future installs will/can use this inventory directory.

Administrative Files

Configurations files, core dump files, trace files, export files and other related log files are the administrative files of an Oracle database. Each of the former mentioned group of files need to be stored in a different folder.

OFA recommended location: $ORACLE_BASE/admin/d/a

Where: d=refers to a specific database

a=subdirectory for each specific type of administrative files

Example: For a database orcl

Directory	Contents
$ORACLE_BASE/admin/orcl/adhoc	Contains ad hoc sqlfiles
$ORACLE_BASE/admin/orcl/arch	Contains archived redo logs
$ORACLE_BASE/admin/orcl/adump	Contains any audit files
$ORACLE_BASE/admin/orcl/bdump	Contains background process trace files
$ORACLE_BASE/admin/orcl/cdump	Contains core dump files
$ORACLE_BASE/admin/orcl/udump	Contains SQL trace files for the user processes
$ORACLE_BASE/admin/orcl/dpdump	Cotains Data Pump export files
$ORACLE_BASE/admin/orcl/create	Contains SQL scripts that you can use for creating your databases
$ORACLE_BASE/admin/orcl/pfile	Contains instance parameter files (ex: init.ora)

Database Files:

OFA Recommendation for Control Files :         /pm/q/d/control[n].ctl

Where: q=indicator such as “oradata”, to indicate that the contents are Oracle related data

d=Database=DB_NAME (initialization parameter)

n=two digit number

OFA Recommendation for Redolog Files:         /pm/q/d/redo[n].log

Where: q=indicator such as “oradata”, to indicate that the contents are Oracle related data

d=Database=DB_NAME (initialization parameter)

n=two digit number

OFA Recommendation for Data Files:   /pm/q/d/t[n].dbf

Where: q= indicator such as “oradata”, to indicate that the contents are Oracle related data

d=Database=DB_NAME (initialization parameter)

Tablespace name should be of format t[n] and not more than eight character in length

t= Descriptive name of the tablespace

n=two digit number

Few things to bear in mind

Always place your database files over a logical volume that spreads over several disks or use RAID.

SAME:  Stripe and mirror every thing

For all oracle mount points that you use to store data files, make sure to run:

Chown oracle:oinstall <mount point>

Chmod 755  <mount point>