Unique characteristics of Oracle ASM instance

1. do not have controlfile and datafiles, do not have online redo logs
2. do have init.ora and a passwordfile
3. on the ASM instance node, connect to asm instance using connect “/ as sysdba” at SQL> or sqlplus “/ as sysdba” on OS command line. Username and password in front of / and after / are ignored.
SQL> connect anyusername/anypassword as sysdba ##you can login
4. for connecting remotely, create passwordfile and set following in init.ora

remote_login_passwordfile=exclusive

5. create a password file

$ORACLE_HOME/bin/orapwd file=orapw+ASM1 password=yourpw entries=10

6. ASM instance can not be in open status as there are not datafiles. Can be in mount (although there is no controlfile) and nomount status. When in mount status, database can use the diskgroup. The mount status actually means mount disk groups.