By Michael Messina | Edited by Ray Smith

The role and tasks performed by Oracle Enterprise Manager (OEM) evolved with the expansion of Enterprise Manager capabilities, while leveraging OEM for Oracle’s growing application portfolio. Shortly after Oracle purchased BEA Systems Inc., a team was assembled to reinvent OEM — from its architecture to its interface. These changes were significant, and it is important to recognize the pivotal role in which OEM capabilities play in Oracle’s overall product strategy.

The OEM product began as tool for DBAs and developers. It was a simple console for managing a single database. With each new product release, the administrators’ toolkit had to grow into an increasingly scalable and stable product. By the time Oracle Database 10g was released, it was an all-encompassing tool for the IT staff.

Product placement moved OEM from the database DBA’s tool into a central management console where businesses can monitor and analyze the total user experience from beginning to end.

This article will detail the shifts of OEM architecture and product placement and how we administer and use Oracle Enterprise Manager 12c Cloud Control.

What’s Changed?

The change in architecture has changed the look and process flows of OEM as illustrated below.

Logging In

When connecting to OEM 12c, the screen has a new look, resembling the Oracle WebLogic Server console and Fusion Server login screens. The initial login includes the usual license and management pack authorization page. Read the license information carefully and select “Accept” to continue.

Interface Changes

There are several interface changes inside the OEM 12c console that affect navigation, location of target screens, preferences and the ability to customize screen looks and information. This section will highlight the more noticeable changes and the ones most likely to affect your OEM 12c console experience as an end user.

As you explore the home screens, it’s important to note that the selection of a home screen has no effect on the user’s ability to access or use other functionalities within OEM; the home page is merely a starting point.

Home Screen Selection

Each OEM user may configure and reconfigure their own home screen based on personal preferences, current activities and job role. During the initial login for each account, the user is prompted to select a default view from six basic designs, which can be changed at any time. (See Appendix A, Changing Home View). The most commonly utilized views for the DBA or developer are described below.

Summary View

The summary view looks the most like the home screen of Oracle Enterprise Manager Grid Control. This view is ideal for enterprise manager level administrators, allowing the administrator visibility of many target types. This is the best view to give the super administrator SYSMAN account, as SYSMAN would be considered an enterprise manager administrator.

Databases View

As the name suggests, the databases view would be most appealing to administrators whose primary responsibilities are centered around databases with little interaction with other target types. There are two layouts available for the databases view: Oracle Load Map and Search List. Users can switch between the views with a single button click.

Incidents View

The incidents view allows quick, easy display of the open incidents in the monitored environment that includes all target types. This view is beneficial for operations, call center operators and console monitors. The improved incident management features of OEM 12c will be further detailed.

Middleware View

The middleware view would be most appealing to administrators whose primary responsibility is application servers/middleware. The view focuses on middleware targets such as WebLogic.

Service Request View

The service request view provides a quick, simple means of managing My Oracle Support service requests and serves as access to the Oracle
customer support portal. OEM 12c integrates closely with MOS, as detailed later.

Services View

The services view focuses on enterprisewide services that are subject to our internal service level agreements. The view shows all configured
services and service health. This provides managers and executives with insight into system performance at varying service levels and monitors adherence to selected performance based on service-level agreements.

Global Search Improvements

The presentation, search and filtering functionalities have all been significantly improved in OEM 12c. The search dropdown menu gives several search options including Target Name, Knowledge Base, Knowledge Base Archives, Bug Database, Communities, Documentation, Sun System Handbook, and All Knowledge.

Menu Options

Enterprise Menu

The enterprise menu is a new addition to Oracle Enterprise Manager. This menu option includes navigation to the Summary page, Monitoring, Job, Reports, Configuration Compliance, Provisioning and Patching, Quality Management and My Oracle Support.

Summary

The summary option will take you directly to the target summary screen.

Monitoring

The monitoring menu item within the enterprise menu will allow fast navigation to the Incident Manager, Logs, Blackouts, Corrective Actions, Metric Extensions, Monitoring Templates, Support Workbench and Template Collections.

Job

The job menu item within the enterprise menu allows navigation to the Oracle Enterprise Manager Jobs Activity and Jobs Library.

Reports

The reports menu item within the enterprise menu will navigate to the Information Publisher Reports or the BI Publisher Enterprise Reports. The Information Publisher Reports are much like OEM Grid Control Reports, while the BI Publisher Reports are new for Oracle Enterprise Manager 12c.

*See Reporting Enhancements

Configuration

The configuration menu item within the enterprise menu gives quick navigation to the configuration management capabilities of OEM 12c such as
Comparison of Configurations, Configuration Inventory and Configuration History.

Compliance

The compliance menu item within the enterprise menu provides quick navigation to the new compliance management capabilities of Oracle
Enterprise Manager 12c.

*See Compliance Management and Reporting

Provisioning and Patching

The provisioning and patching menu item on the enterprise menu provides fast access to the provisioning capabilities of Oracle Enterprise Manager 12c Cloud Control. Provisioning capabilities include Bare Metal, Database, Middleware and Patches and Updates.

Quality Management

The quality management menu item in the enterprise menu is for the components of Oracle Enterprise Manager 12c to improve the management
of your environment. This includes quality of the deployed components through interaction with Oracle Database Real Application Testing, which includes SQL Performance Analyzer and Database Replay. It also includes the ability to mask data in your development and test environments to protect identifiable data through the Data Masking Pack.

*See Data Masking

My Oracle Support

The My Oracle Support menu item will navigate Service Requests, My Oracle Support Knowledge Base, My Oracle Support Certification and My Oracle Support Community via My Oracle Support Integration provided in OEM 12c.

*See My Oracle Support Integration

Targets Menu

Similar to OEM Grid Control, the targets menu in OEM 12c is focused on the monitored targets and offers user-friendly, direct access. In OEM Grid Control, the Targets tab, by default, puts the user in the hosts target list, while in OEM 12c, selecting from the Targets menu allowing direct access to the target list. Selections are similar the OEM Grid Tabs available once navigated to the Target tab.

Favorites Menu

The favorites menu allows each user to designate screens and pages that are used the most or connect the administrator with problem systems for monitoring. The functionality is similar to the Bookmarks/Favorites feature of any web browser. Favorites contain links providing direct navigation without the need to navigate through the application. OEM Favorites can be updated or removed like browser bookmarks.

Management via Plug-ins

Prior versions of Oracle Enterprise Manager Grid Control had target management capabilities built in; however, the concept of management
plug-ins allowed OEM to extend its capability to manage targets that weren’t originally managed by OEM Grid Control. With Oracle Enterprise Manager 12c, all target monitoring and management capability are provided via a plug-in. This underlying framework change improves OEM 12c as it allows a plug-in (target management capability) to be installed or upgraded without having to patch or upgrade Oracle Enterprise Manager.

Data Masking

Reversible Data Masking

The data masking capability in Oracle Enterprise Manager Grid Control has been improved. Data masking allows organizations with sensitive data to utilize the production data in their development and test environments. In OEM Grid Control, the user could use data masking to create test environments using production data and hide data to keep the sensitive information from being read or understood, therefore protecting it. Oracle Enterprise Manager 12c has improved this capability by allowing the data masking process to be reversed. OEM 12c masks the data using a format provided by the use in the form of a regular expression. This allows the unmasking, or reversal, of the database so the data can be reverted back to the original.

Data Masking Integration with Real Application Testing

Real Application Testing is a feature that can capture a real production database workload and replay it in another environment. This permits a full database load and all database transaction activity to be tested with a true database load prior to being implemented. OEM 12c integrates Data Masking with Real Application Testing.

Application Data Model Support for Data Masking

An Application Data Model (ADM) is now available for certain packaged applications. The ADM can serve as a knowledge base containing sensitive column and data relationships for data masking. For applications with ADM availability, the user can use the ADM to identify which columns contain sensitive information and need to be masked.

Data Masking Format Library

Data Masking Format Library provides formats for different data elements that need to be masked.

My Oracle Support Integration

Oracle Enterprise Manager 12c Cloud Control provides integration with My Oracle Support to create, monitor and update support service requests and relate them to the configurations within OEM 12c. This greatly simplifies the management of service requests, as it allows the monitoring and management activities within the same console.

Reporting Enhancements

Oracle Enterprise Manager Reporting Enhancements are through the integration with Oracle Business Intelligence (BI) Publisher, which allows for the creation of highly formatted documents and the ability to develop/design reports using known desktop products.

Information Publisher Reports

The familiar OEM Grid Control Reports are still in Oracle Enterprise Manager 12c under the Information Publisher Reports.

BI Publisher Reports

This is a feature that must be configured with Oracle Enterprise Manager 12c Cloud Control, as it is not configured by default. The Business Intelligence Publisher is an Oracle product that provides a powerful reporting tool for business intelligence environments. With Oracle Enterprise Manager 12c, the ability to integrate and utilize BI Publisher with OEM for reporting has been added. The only limitation at this time is that BI Publisher 11.1.1.5.0 is the only one that can be utilized. The BI Publisher 11.1.1.5.0 can be downloaded from the Oracle Technology Network at http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/oem/grid-control/downloads/index.html.

Database

Auto Discovery

One of the advantages of the new Oracle Enterprise Manager 12c is target discovery, where targets can be discovered automatically. OEM 12c Exadata server management has been improved through auto-discovery of Exadata targets and simplified performance diagnostics more specific to Exadata.

Backup and Recovery

OEM 12c has also provided improvements in backup and recovery operations by allowing the central management of database and file system backups as well as uniform settings for both database and file system backups.

Emergency Performance

Oracle Enterprise Manager 12c introduces the use of the memory access mode to connect to a slow database. This allows the database administrator to troubleshoot the root cause of the problem. The memory access mode bypasses the SQL information retrieval layer and allows the reading of performance statistics directly from the SGA of the database.

Compare Period Advisor

Oracle Enterprise Manager can now compare the performance of a database over two different time ranges. OEM 12c analyzes changes in performance, workload, configuration and hardware and will highlight any changes found between the two provided time periods.

Template Integration

Monitoring templates and compliance standard settings and applying to targets and target groups has been streamlined.

Blackout Enhancements

Oracle Enterprise Manager 12c offers a consolidated blackout information summary within the general region of a target’s home page.

ASM Clusters as a Target

An ASM Cluster in OEM 12c allows the management of an ASM cluster as a single target.

What’s New?

This section is all about what is new in Oracle Enterprise Manager 12c, detailing improvements and functionality repackaged and improved in such a way that it appears anew.

Metric Extensions

Metric extensions allow full-fledged metrics to be created on targets. These are created and managed from the metrics extensions page as well as able to be export and imported between environments.

How do metric extensions really differ from user-defined metrics used in Grid Control?

User-defined metrics (UDM) collect values through executing OS scripts or SQL statements. This imposes several limitations:

• UDM custom scripts/other files require file(s) to be manually placed on each target’s file system.
• User-defined metrics collect multiple data pieces using multiple userdefined metrics and cannot refer to two data points from two metrics for alert generation, as data is collected separately.
• User-defined metrics only use the OS script and SQL execution, while metric extensions can use protocols such as SNMP and JMX.
• Only user-defined metrics are allowed for host targets and SQL for database targets. No other target types are allowed, such as WebLogic.

Access

Oracle Enterprise Manager 12c greatly improves overall security and access control. It incorporates fine-grained privileges through the introduction of 200 privileges from targets, objects and resources as well as new roles. It also brings in administration groups, allowing many targets to be managed as if it they were a single object. This allows a single setting change to the administration group to apply to all targets within that group. This simplifies the ability to manage numerous targets by standardizing, managing and monitoring settings for targets.

Database

Database Creation

The new OEM wizard for database creates from within a central location using a GUI-like tool without having to log in directly to the server. This function will streamline the creation of new databases and help improve security on database servers by eliminating the need to log onto the servers to create a new database. This new database creation wizard, much like the database creation assistant, has the ability to create new single instance as well as Real Application Cluster databases.

Database Upgrade

Oracle Enterprise Manager 12c gives the ability to upgrade databases from a single console for single instance as well as RAC databases. This can help simplify the database upgrade process as well as make the management easier and lessen the time required to perform database upgrades.

Cloud Policies

What are policies? Policies are the rules in which actions are taken to correct things under defined situations. In OEM 12c, a user can define policies or use predefined policies already created. Predefined policies cannot be updated; however, a new policy can be created using the predefined policy as a starting point, which can then be modified. Policies can be created in a hierarchy where a policy at a higher level inherits the properties of the policy at the lower level. In addition to the policy levels, there are two types of policies: performance policies and schedule-based policies. Performance policies are based on the performance metrics of a target, while schedule policies are based on a defined schedule.

For more information and the view the cloud policies, follow these steps:

1. Log in to Enterprise Manager 12c Cloud Control.
2. Select the “Cloud” option from the grid menu and then “Select Policies.”
3. The policy home page will appear with a list of policies and administration privileges.

Compliance Management and Reporting

Compliance management was introduced with Oracle Enterprise Manager Grid Control, where standard best practices were measured for targets. The best practices cover vulnerability and configuration where there were critical, warning and informational levels.

Oracle Enterprise Manager 12c improved upon this with a framework that allows the best practices to be based on business best practices for security, configuration and storage. This framework will also make recommendations for bringing the targets into compliance. OEM 12c also now has database configuration data to be managed within the framework. The framework allows for industry standard compliance such as PCI, PCI Requirement 10, PCI 10.5, etc. The standards are evaluated against the compliance standard for the target in OEM and will assign a compliance standard report a score.

Consolidation Planner

In order to stay competitive, businesses must have the ability to grow and adapt to the increasing amounts of data. Consolidations include: floor space, power, cooling and management. Management needs to include security patching, upgrades, operating system and other software patches. Organizations have come to realize that, in many cases, servers are utilized only partially and, therefore, valuable resources are wasted. Consolidation can help an organization utilize its resources more efficiently, eliminate excess resources in the data center and expand capacity.

This Oracle Enterprise Manager 12c permits the consolidation of servers, such as Exadata. The consolidation planner leverages data collected from server targets managed in OEM Cloud Control and factors in business and technical requirements to help you determine the consolidation options.

Incident Manager

Incident manager is a new function offered in OEM 12c. Incident manager provides a view and interface to work with incidents in the environment. When an issue is identified by Oracle software, they become incidents recorded in the Automatic Diagnostic Repository. The OEM 12c interface manages incidents including the current status, comments, etc.

Incidents

In an open incident that is not assigned, the user can select the incident to view its details in the lower portion of the screen. This area will permit the user to acknowledge the incident, add comments and manage the incident, which includes assigning the incident, prioritizing it and updating the status.

There are several alternate incident views available, such as unassigned incidents, unacknowledged incidents and escalated incidents.

Incidents vs. Problems

In addition to incidents, OEM 12c also recognizes problems, which, in an ITIL framework, are recurring incidents that become a problem, or known issues. Select the “All Open Problems” to display a list of open problems, and then select a problem in order to view the details in the lower pane of the screen.

In this lower pane, like with incidents, we can manage the problem, but we can also see the related incidents. This area will allow you to acknowledge the problem, add comments and manage the problem, which includes assigning the problem, giving it a priority and updating the status.

Chargeback Administration

When businesses create shared resources, the challenge becomes how to allocate costs to the users for those resources, especially when shared resources scale up and down according to workload needs over time. The challenge is greater when shared resources scale up and down according to workload needs and shift often and vary greatly over time. Thus, the ability to quantify the resource usage and the ability to charge for consumed resources becomes a challenge. Chargeback administration focuses on a utility-based charging model by measuring the consumption of resources so that consumption can be charged based on usage. This model benefits resource consumers by placing them in charge of their resource costs and giving them control over resources they utilize.

OEM collects the metrics (metering, if you will) of resource consumption based on configuration or usage basis. This is done via the targets that OEM sees and measures that target’s resource utilization either though the configuration of that resource or the resource usage that target consumes. OEM now gives us the ability to put our own metrics in place to measure resource usage. The metric information allows the measurements of resource usage that can help control resource usage and resource costs. This information is helpful in resource planning.

There are three universal metrics of consumption: CPU, memory and storage. These key resources can have a cost tied to them, for example $1 per GB utilized, $1 per day of CPU utilization and $2 per day of memory utilization per GB. With this, a charge plan can be established, and, with the measurements, a bill can be generated. These universal metrics can be applied to all types of targets, such as a database, a WebLogic Server, etc.

Some Standard Operating Procedures

Add Database Target

• Navigate in the OEM Cloud Control to the Database Targets view.
• Select “Add” to add a database target.
• Enter the host name of the database target and select “Continue.” OEM will execute a target discovery process for the host entered.
• Once complete, a list of targets will be displayed. A database and an Automatic Storage Management Instance were found. To add the database, select Configure.
• Enter the password for the OEM monitor account dbsnmp along with any other connectivity changes (although the proper connection details are
  usually provided.)
• Enter the password and select Test to ensure the password is correct. Once the password test is completed successfully, select Next to continue with the monitoring configuration setup.
• Review all the properties and select OK to complete the database target monitoring configuration.
• Repeat the Configure step for any other database or ASM target being added.
• Select Finish when the target configurations are complete.
• A summary of the targets to be added will appear. Select Save to add the targets.
• OEM will perform the target configuration to add the targets. Once configuration of the targets is complete, OEM will show the configuration results. Select OK to complete the process.

Changing Home View

• Go to Setup -> My Preferences -> Set Current Page as My Home
• *To make the current page a home page, select Set Current Page as My Home, otherwise select Select My Home.
• Select a home page.
• Once selected, the new home page will appear as the new home page.

Setup My Oracle Support

• Go to Setup -> My Oracle Support -> Settings
• Enter My Oracle Support credentials then select Go.
• Personalize, manage users, etc., using My Oracle Support.

About the Author

Michael Messina is an Oracle ACE, Oracle certified professional, Oracle RAC administrator certified expert and Exadata implementation specialist with nearly 20 years of experience with Oracle Database. He also authored several chapters in the newest “Oracle Database 11g Release 2 Performance and Tuning Tips & Techniques” from Rich Niemiec. A past presenter at Oracle OpenWorld, RMOUG Training Days, IOUG COLLABORATE and many local and regional users groups throughout the United States, Messina’s experience includes Oracle and MySQL database administration and implementation, system and infrastructure implementation, systems design and development. He has led to several performance improvements, maintenance, and implementation projects on large, highly available systems.