Oracle Database Discussions

Hi All,

I am setting up a small 11gR2 RAC environment, which will likely grow as usage and budget grow. I have 8 disks on a SAN to use. Should I:

1. Partition each disk into 3 partitions (DATA, FRA, and CRS) and present 24 "disks" to Oracle ASM and use normal redundancy;
2. Configure 2x RAID-0 in the SAN and partition that and present 6 "disks" to ASM and use normal redundancy;
3. Some other combo (e.g., 4x RAID-0 in the SAN).

I don't want to use external redundancy in ASM and a single RAID-10 in the SAN, since I will ultimately want to add a second SAN device in a second failure group. It seems to be unpleasant to migrate between redundancy levels...

I'm leaning toward #1. In that case, should I let ASM create the default of 8 failure groups, or create two failure groups of 4 disks each? If 8, am I able to remove failure groups and reshuffle disks when/if I do the two SAN device layout?

Thanks,
Zack