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Enterprise Manager Friday Tip- Management Packs and Annotations

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Licensing can be a confusing topic for many, but additional stress can be felt for those that use tools that cover multiple products and features that can span more than one management pack.

lucy

I’ve demonstrated how you can see what management packs are used and how to control this via EM13c, (also available in EM12c) but that can take you away from the task at hand.  That’s where turning on Annotations for Management Packs may be beneficial.

Annotations

What are annotations and why use them?

annot2

For Enterprise Manager 13c, this results in initials for management packs placed after feature drop down menus throughout the interface.

Enabling Annotations

Turning this feature on is very easy.  Click on Settings, Management Pack and then Annotations.

annot1

Once this is enabled, your drop down menus will look a little different than they did previously, as the annotations will be added for the management pack(s) used by the feature.  This is for both the upper right hand drop down from Enterprise to Settings and then the lower left menu, from the main Target Type and across.

To give an example, lets say we’ve logged into a database target and clicked on Performance.  We’d now see the annotations for the management packs used for first section of options:

annot3

We quickly recognize the Database Diagnostics, (DD) and Database Tuning, (DT) Pack annotations next to each of the features.

Mission Impossible Quiz

Let’s take one of the drop downs from the Enterprise Menu with the annotations turned on.  From Enterprise, Configuration, can you tell what management packs are being used outside of DBLM, (Database Lifecycle Management) in the list below?

annot4

There’s a lot of acronyms and initials there and hint, hint… I already showed you how to find out this information earlier, so take your time, I’ll wait right here…. 🙂

Have a great weekend!

 



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Blue Medora’s Brian Williams Blogs About Custom Monitoring Templates

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Monitoring templates are an essential feature to a basic Enterprise Manager environment, ensuring consistent monitoring across groups and target types.  There’s an incredibly vast group of experts in the EM community and to demonstrate this, Brian Williams from Blue Medora, a valuable partner of Oracle’s in the Enterprise Manager space, is going to provide a guest blog post on how simple and efficiently you can monitor even PostgreSQL databases with EM13c using custom monitoring templates!

Jon

Creating and Applying Custom Monitoring Templates in Oracle Enterprise Manager 13c

Guest Blogger:  Brian Williams

Oracle Enterprise Manager 13c is a premier database monitoring platform for your enterprise.  With Enterprise Manager 13c, users have access to many database-level metric alerting capabilities, but how do we standardize these threshold values across your database environment? The answer is simple: by creating and deploying Oracle Enterprise Manager’s monitoring templates.

Monitoring templates allow you to standardize monitoring settings across your enterprise by specifying the monitoring settings and metric thresholds once you apply them to your monitored targets. You can save, edit, and apply these templates across multiple targets or groups. A monitoring template is specified for a particular target type and can only be applied to targets of the same type. A monitoring template will have configurable values for metrics, thresholds, metric collection schedules, and corrective actions.

Today we are going to walk through the basic steps of creating a custom monitoring template and apply that template to select database targets. In this example, I will be creating templates for my newly added PostgreSQL database targets monitored with the Oracle Enterprise Manager Plugin for PostgreSQL from Blue Medora.

To get started, login to your Oracle Enterprise Manager 13c Cloud Control Console. Navigate to the Enterprise menu, select Monitoring and then Monitoring Templates. From this view, we can see a list of all monitoring templates on the system. To begin creating a new monitoring template, select Create from this view.  If you are not logged in as a super admin account, you may need to grant the resource privilege Create Monitoring Template.

bw_im1

Figure 1 – Monitoring Templates Management Page

From the Create Monitoring Template page, select the Target Type radial button. In the Target Type Category drop down, select Databases. In the Target Type drop down, select PostgreSQL Database, or the target type of your choice. Click Continue.

The next screen presented will be the Create Monitoring Template page. Name your new template, give a description, and then click the Metric Thresholds tab. From the Metric Thresholds tab, we can begin defining our metric thresholds for our template.

You will be presented with many configurable metric thresholds. Find your desired metrics and from the far right column named Edit, click the Pencil Icon to edit the collection details and set threshold values. After setting the threshold values, click Continue to return to the Metric Thresholds view and continue to configure additional metric thresholds as needed. After all metrics have been configured, click OK to finish the creation of the monitoring template.

The final step to make full use of your newly created template is to apply the template to your selected target databases. From the Monitoring Templates screen, highlight your template, select Actions, and then Apply. Select the apply option to completely replace all metric settings in the target to use only metrics configured in your template. Click the Add button and select all database targets desired for the application. After the targets are added to the list, click Select All to mark targets for final application. Click OK to process the application. The deployment can be tracked by watching the Pending, Passed, or Failed number for the Apply Status box on the Monitoring Templates page.

bw_im2

Figure 2 – Apply Monitoring Template to Destination Targets

Now that I have the newly created template applied, I can navigate back to my database target home page and view top-level critical alerts based on my configurations.

bw_im3

Figure 3 – Target Home Page and PostgreSQL Overview

Although your database targets will eventually alert with issues, there is a solution available to give you at-a-glance visibility into PostgreSQL high availability via replication monitoring; check out the Oracle Enterprise Manager Plug-in for PostgreSQL by visiting Blue Medora’s website for product and risk-free trial information. For more walkthroughs on creating and applying monitoring templates, refer to the Enterprise Manager Cloud Control Administrator’s Guide, Chapter 7 Using Monitoring Templates.

 

Brian Williams is a Solutions Architect at Blue Medora specializing in Oracle Enterprise Manager and VMware vRealize Operations Manager. He has been with Blue Medora for over three years, also holding positions in software QA and IT support. Blue Medora creates platform extensions designed to provide further visibility into cloud system management and application performance management solutions.

 

 

 



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EM13c- Applying System Patches with the OMS Patcher

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The OMS Patcher is a newer patching mechanism for the OMS specifically, (I know, the name kind of gave it away…)  Although there are a number of similarities to Oracle’s infamous OPatch, I’ve been spending a lot of time on OTN’s support forums and via email, assisting folks as they apply the first system patch to 13.1.0.0.0.  Admit it, we know how much you like patching…

nooo

The patch we’ll be working with is the following:

Before undertaking this patch, you’ll need to log into your weblogic console as the weblogic admin, (you do still remember the URL and the login/password, right? :))  as this will be required as part of the patching process.
Once you’ve verified this information, you’ll just need to download the patch, unzip it and read the README.txt to get an understanding of what you’re patching.
Per the instructions, you’ll need to shut down the OMS (only).
./emctl stop oms
Take the time to ensure your environment is set up properly.  The ORACLE_HOME will need to be switched over from the database installation home, (if the OMS and OMR are sharing the same host, the ORACLE_HOME is most likely set incorrectly for the patch requirements.)
As an example, this is my path environment on my test server:
/u01/app/oracle/13c/bin <–Location of my bin directory for my OMS executables.
/u01/app/oracle/13c/OMSPatcher/omspatcher <– location of the OMSPatcher executable.

$ORACLE_HOME should be set to OMS_HOME and set omspatcher to the OMSPATCHER :

export omspatcher=$OMS_HOME/OMSPATCHER/omspatcher
export ORACLE_HOME=/u01/app/oracle/13c
If you return to the README.txt, you’ll be there awhile, as the instructions start to offer you poor advice once you get to the following:
$ omspatcher apply -analyze  -property_file <location of property file>
This command will result in a failure on the patch annoy those attempting to apply it.

I’d recommend running the following instead, which is a simplified command and will result in success if you’re set up your environment:

omspatcher apply <path to your patch location>/22920724 -analyze

If this returns with a successful test of your patch, then simply remove the “-analyze” from the command and it will then apply the patch:

omspatcher apply <path to your patch location>/22920724

You’ll be asked a couple of questions, so be ready with the information, including verifying that you can log into your Weblogic console.

Verify that the Weblogic domain URL and username is correct or type in the correct one, enter the weblogic password
Choose to apply the patch by clicking “Y”
Patch should proceed.
The output of the patch will look like the following:

OMSPatcher log file: /u01/app/oracle/13c/cfgtoollogs/omspatcher/22920724/omspatcher_2016-04-29_15-42-56PM_deploy.log

Please enter OMS weblogic admin server URL(t3s://adc00osp.us.oracle.com:7102):>
Please enter OMS weblogic admin server username(weblogic):>
Please enter OMS weblogic admin server password:>

Do you want to proceed? [y|n]
y
User Responded with: Y

Applying sub-patch "22589347 " to component "oracle.sysman.si.oms.plugin" and version "13.1.1.0.0"...

Applying sub-patch "22823175 " to component "oracle.sysman.emas.oms.plugin" and version "13.1.1.0.0"...

Applying sub-patch "22823156 " to component "oracle.sysman.db.oms.plugin" and version "13.1.1.0.0"...

Log file location: /u01/app/oracle/13c/cfgtoollogs/omspatcher/22920724/omspatcher_2016-04-29_15-42-56PM_deploy.log

OMSPatcher succeeded.

 

Note the sub-patch information.  It’s important to know that this is contained in the log, for it you needed to rollback a system patch, it must be done via each sub-patch using the Identifier listed here.

If you attempted to rollback the system patch, using the system patch identifier, you’d receive an error:

$ 01/app/oracle/13c/OMSPatcher/omspatcher rollback -id 22920724 -analyze <
OMSPatcher Automation Tool
Copyright (c) 2015, Oracle Corporation. All rights reserved.

......
"22920724" is a system patch ID. OMSPatcher does not support roll back with system patch ID.

OMSRollbackSession failed: "22920724" is a system patch ID. OMSPatcher does not support roll back with system patch ID.

 
Once the system patch has completed successfully, you’ll need to add the agent patch and best practice is to use a patch plan and apply it to one agent, make it the gold agent current image and then apply that to all your agents that are subscribed to it.  If you need more information on how to use Gold Agent Images, just read up on it in this post.

 



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Database Comparisons Using AWR Warehouse Part 1- ADDM Comparison

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A lot of my ideas for blog posts come from questions emailed to me or asked via Twitter.  Today’s blog is no different, as I was asked by someone in the community what the best method of comparing databases using features within AWR when migrating from one host and OS to another.

Don't_know_wat

There is a  lot of planning that must go into a project to migrate a database to another host or consolidate to another server, but when we introduce added changes, such as a different OS, new applications, workload or other demands, these need to be taken into consideration.  How do you plan for this and what kind of testing can you perform to eliminate risk to performance and the user experience once you migrate over?

AWR Warehouse

I won’t lie to any of you, this is where the AWR Warehouse just puts it all to shame.  The ability to compare AWR data is the cornerstone of this product and it’s about to shine here again.  For a project of this type, it may very well be a consideration to deploy one and load the AWR data into the warehouse, especially if you’re taking on a consolidation.

There are two main comparison reports, one focused on AWR, (Automatic Workload Repository) data and the other on ADDM, (Automatic Database Diagnostic Monitor).

addm_compare1

From the AWR Warehouse, once you highlight a database from the main dashboard, you’ll have the option to run either report and the coolest part of these reports is that you don’t just get to compare time snapshots from the same database, but you can compare one snapshot from a database source in the AWR Warehouse to ANOTHER database source that resides in the warehouse!

ADDM Comparison Period

This report is incredibly valuable and offers the comparisons to pinpoint many of the issues that are going to create the pain-points of a migration.  The “just the facts” and crucial information about what is different, what has changed and what doesn’t match the “base” for the comparison will be displayed very effectively.

When you choose this report, the option to compare from any snapshot interval for the current database is offered, but you can then click on the magnifying glass icon for the Database to compare to and change to compare to any database that is loaded into the AWR Warehouse-

 

compare2

For our example, we’re going to use a day difference, same timeline to use as our Base Period.  Once we fill in these options, we can click Run to request the report.

The report is broken  down into three sections-

  • A side by side comparison of activity by wait event.
  • Details of differences via tabs and tables
  • Resource usage graphs, separated by tabs.

compare3

We can clearly compare between the two comparisons of activity that there was more commit waits during the base period, along with user I/O in the comparison period.  During a crisis situation, these graphs can be very beneficial when needed to show waits to less technical team members.

compare4

The Configuration tab below the activity graphs will display quickly what differences in OS, initialization parameters, host and other external influences to the database.  The Findings tab will then go into the performance comparisons differences.  Did the SQL perform better or degrade?  In the below table, the SQL ID, along with detailed information about the performance change is displayed.

Resources are the last tab to display graphs about the important area of resource usage.  Was there an impact difference to CPU usage between one host and the other?

compare6

Was there swapping or other memory issues?

compare7

In our example, we can clearly see the extended data reads and for Exadata consolidations, the ever valuable single block read latency is shown-

compare8

Now for those in engineered systems and RAC environments, you’re going to want to know waits for interconnect.  Again, these are simply and clearly compared, then displayed in graph form.

compare9

This report will offer very quick answers to

“What Changed?”

“What’s different?”

“What Happened at XXpm?”

The value this report provides is easy to see, but when offered to compare one database to another, even when on different hosts, you can see how valuable the AWR Warehouse becomes that even the consolidation planner can’t offer.

Next post, I’ll go over the AWR Warehouse AWR Comparision Period Report.

 

 

 

 

 

 



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Database Comparisons with AWR Warehouse- Part II, Comparison Period Report

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There are two ways to compare one database to another in the AWR Warehouse.  I covered the ADDM Comparison Report here and now we’ll go through the second one, which is much more involved and has us empowering the AWR Warehouse taking two AWR Warehouse reports and comparing two databases to each other.

possible

The AWR Warehouse, once setup and databases that are targets already monitored by your EM12c or EM13c environment, can then be added and upload all AWR snapshots to this central repository.

Comparison Period Report

The AWR Warehouse second comparison reporting option is accessible from the drop down menu in the AWR Warehouse dashboard:

addm_compare1

Once you click on Compare Period Report, you’re offered to choose a baseline or snapshots from the list for the databases you wish to compare:

compare1

In my example, I simply chose the DNT database, with a one hour snapshot window to compare to an OMR, (Oracle Management Repository) database for another one hour snapshot interval.  Clicking on Generate Report will then create an HTML formatted report.

The Actual Report

awrc1

In the report summary, not only does the report show that I’m comparing two different databases from two different hosts, but any differences about the main configuration will be displayed.  We can see that although I’m comparing the same amount of time, the average number of users is twice and the DB Time is extensively different for the two databases.

The report will then start comparing the high level information, including the host, the memory and I/O configuration-

awrc2

The Top Ten Foreground events are displayed for each environment, ensuring there isn’t anything missed that could be confusing if a comparison was performed.  In a more similar database, (let’s say test against production or old production vs. a newly consolidated environment)  there’s going to be more similarities and you’d be able to see how the workload had changed between systems.

awrc3

Each section contains values for the specific database and then the differences, saving the DBA considerable time manually calculating what has changed.  Once you get to the Top SQL, the report updates it’s format again to display the SQL in order, over all, for time elapsed, CPU, etc. and then bread down between the times for each environment run or not and the difference.

awrc4

After breaking down the SQL in every way possible, as commonly seen in an AWR report, but with the added benefit of comparisons between two different AWR reports and databases, the report digs into each of the Activity Stats and compares all of those:

awrc5

The report then does comparisons for SGA, PGA, interconnects and even IO:

awrc6

Once completed with these, it then digs into the objects and tablespaces to see if there are any outliers or odd differences in what objects are being called by both or either database.

awrc7

As with all AWR reports, it also pulls up all Initialization Parameters and performs a clear comparison of what is set for each database so you can view if there is anything amiss that would cause performance impacts.

awrc8

This is an incredibly valuable report for those that want to perform a deep analysis comparison between two databases for time periods around performance, workload, migration or consolidation.  The comparison reports are one of the top features of the AWR Warehouse and is so infrequently considered a selling point of the product, (and if you already have the diagnostic and tuning pack, heck, it comes with it’s own limited EE license like the RMAN catalog and Enterprise Manager repository database) so what are you waiting for??

 



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Configuration Management Searches in EM13c

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With the addition of the Configuration Management from OpsCenter to Enterprise Manager 13c, there are some additional features to ease the management of changes and drift in Enterprise Manager, but I’m going to take these posts in baby steps, as the feature can be a little daunting.  We want to make sure that you understand this well, so we’ll start with the configuration searches and search history first.

babysteps

To access the Configuration Management feature, click on Enterprise and Configuration.

Click on Search to being your journey into Configuration Management.

confs2

From the Search Dashboard, click on Actions, Create and History.  You’ll be taken to the History wizard and you’ll need to fill in the following information:

config_hist2

And then click on Schedule and Notify to build out a schedule to check the database for configuration changes.

config_hist1

For our example, we’ve chosen to run our job once every 10 minutes, set up a grace period and once satisfied, click on Schedule and Notify.  Once you’ve returned to the main screen, click on Save.

Now when we click on Enterprise, Configuration, Search, we see our Search we created in the list of Searches.  The one we’ve created is both runnable AND MODIFIABLE.  The ones that come with the EM13c are locked down and should be considered templates to be used in Create Like options.

The job runs every 10 minutes, so if we wait long enough after a change, we can then click on the search from the list and click on Run from the menu above the list:

confs4

As I’ve made a change to the database, it shows immediately in the job and if I set this up to notify, it would email me via the settings for the user who owns the configuration:

confs5

If you highlight a row and click on See Real-Time Observations.  This will take you to the reports that show you that each of the pluggable databases weren’t brought back up to an open mode post maintenance and that they need to be returned to an open status before they will match the original historical configuration.

We can quickly verify that the databases aren’t open.  In fact, one is read only and the other is only mounted:

SQL> select name, open_mode from v$database;

NAME OPEN_MODE
--------- --------------------
CDBKELLY READ WRITE

SQL> select name, open_mode from v$pdbs;

NAME OPEN_MODE
------------------------------ ----------
PDB$SEED READ ONLY
PDBKELLYN MOUNTED
PDBK_CL1 READ ONLY

So let’s open our PDBs and then we’ll be ready to go :‏

ALTER PLUGGABLE DATABASE PDBKELLYN OPEN;
ALTER PLUGGABLE DATABASE PDBK_CL1 CLOSE;
ALTER PLUGGABLE DATABASE PDBK_CL1 OPEN;

Ahhhh, much better.



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Changes to Configuration Management in EM13c

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Change is difficult for technical folks.  Our world is always moving at blinding speed, so if you start changing things that we don’t think need to be changed, even if you improve upon them, we’re not always appreciative.

change

Configuration Management, EM12c to EM13c

As requests came in for me to write on the topic of Configuration Management, I found the EM13c documentation very lacking, having to push back to EM 12.1.0.5 to fill in a lot of missing areas.  There were changes to the main interface that you use to work with the product.

When comparing the drop down, you can see the changes.config_chng1

Now I’m going to explain to you why this change is good.  In Enterprise Manager 12.1.0.5, (on the left)  you can see that the Comparison feature of the Configuration Management has a different drop down option than in Enterprise Manager 13.1.0.0.

EM12c Configuration Management

You might think it is better to have a direct access to the Compare, Templates and Job Activity directly via the drop downs, but it really is *still directly* accessible, but the interface has changed.

When you accessed Configuration Management in EM12c, you would click on Comparison Templates and reach the following window:

config_c5

You can see all the templates, access them quickly, but what if you want to then perform a comparison?  Intuition would tell you to click on Actions and then Create.  This unfortunately, only allows you to create a Comparison Template, not a One-Time Comparison.

To create a one-time comparison in EM12c, you would have to start over, click on the Enterprise menu, Configuration and then Comparison.  This isn’t very user friendly and can be frustrating for the user, even if they’ve become accustomed to the user interface.

EM13c Configuration Management Overview

EM13c has introduced a new interface for Configuration Management.  The initial interface dashboard is the Overview:

config_c4

You can easily create a One-time Comparison, a Drift Management definition or Consistency Management right from the main Overview screen.  All interfaces for the Configuration Manager now includes tab icons on the left so that you can easily navigate from one feature of the Configuration Management utility to another.

In EM13c, if you are in the Configuration Templates, you can easily see the tabs to take you to the Definitions, the Overview or even the One-Time Comparison.

config_c6

No more returning to the Enterprise drop down and starting from the beginning to simply access another aspect of Configuration Management.

See?  Not all change is bad… 🙂  If you’d like to learn more about this cool feature, (before I start to dig into it fully with future blog posts) start with the EM12c documentation.  There’s a lot more to understanding the basics in this documentation.



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EM13c Monitoring Non-Oracle Databases

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This last week I presented at Great Lakes Oracle Conference, (GLOC16) and the discussion on monitoring of non-Oracle databases came up while we were on the topic of management packs, how to monitor usage and what ones were required to monitor non-Oracle databases.  I didn’t realize how confusing the topic could be until I received an email while in on layover in Chicago and relaying what the attendee had taken away from it.  I was even more alarmed when I read the email again, planning to blog about it today after a full nights sleep!

raw

You’ll often hear me refer to EM13c as the single-pane of glass when discussing hybrid cloud management, performance management when concerning AWR Warehouse and such, but it also can make a multi-platform environments easier to manage, too.

The difference between managing many Oracle features with EM13c and non-Oracle database platforms is that we need to shift the discussion from Management Packs to Plug-ins.  I hadn’t really thought too much of it when I’d been asked what management packs were needed to manage Microsoft SQL Server, Sybase or DB2.  My brain was solely focused on the topic of management packs and I told the audience how they could verify management packs on any page in EM, (while on the page, click on Settings, Management Packs, Packs Used for This Page) for any database they were monitoring:

em13c_mssql

As easily demonstrated in the image above, there aren’t any management packs utilized to access information about the MSSQL_2014 Microsoft SQL Server and you can quickly see each of the User databases status, CPU usage, IO for read and writes, along with errors and even control the agent from this useful EM dashboard.

I can do the same for a DB2_unit6024 database environment:

em13c_sybase

You’ll note that the DB2 database dashboard is different from the SQL Server one, displaying the pertinent data for that database platform.

Now, you may be saying, Kellyn’s right, I don’t need to have any management packs, (which is true) but then you click on Settings, Extensibility, Plug-ins and you’ll then locate the Database Plug-ins used to add each one of these databases to the Enterprise Manager.

em13c_dbplugins

These plug-ins are offered often by third parties and must be licensed through them.  There may be and are often charges from these providers and I should have been more in-tune to the true discussion and not stuck on the topic of management packs.

Luckily for me, there is a small amount of explanation on the very bottom of the management pack documentation that should clear up any questions. Hope this offers some insight and thank you to everyone who came to my sessions at GLOC!



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Short-term Answers Vs. The Correct Answer

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Enterprise Manager does a LOT.  Sometimes it may do too much.  Customers on forums, on support or via email and social media may come to us asking how to address something they view as not working right and the truth is, we could simply answer their question, but they aren’t using the right tool to accomplish what they’re attempting.

wrongtool

The Export Feature in Enterprise Manager

A customer was frustrated as he was performing scheduled exports using the export utility that can be found under the Database, Schema drop down.  He wanted to perform these exports more than once per hour and was running into issues due to limitations in the functionality for how often and naming convention.  The scheduling mechanism quite as robust as he needed, so I understood his frustration, but I also realized that he was using the wrong tool for the job.  It seemed so natural to me that he should be using the EM Job System, but he really didn’t understand why he should use that when exports was right in the drop down.

Even though he can do the following:

  1.  Export a schema or database
  2. Schedule it to happen immediately or later and set it to repeat.
  3. Allows for variable calls in the file naming
  4. Simple GUI interface

Limitations Include:

  • Was never meant to replace the job system, it just was enhanced and offered the ability to schedule and repeat jobs.
  • Doesn’t offer all the bells and whistles you’d be given if you scripted with shell, perl or another scripting language from the command line.
  • Has no success notification or alerting for failure in the job interface.
  • No template like the Job Library.

It can be very confusing if you don’t know that we commonly have about 10 ways to skin a cat in Enterprise Manager and its important to review your requirements before choosing which one will meet those requirements, even if the naming convention tells you there is a specific feature for it.  An infrastructure feature may be the correct one that is built out to support advanced functionality for all that you have to accomplish vs. one specific requirement.

I’m a command line DBA, so I wasn’t even aware of the Export utility in the drop down menu.  I rarely, if ever, look at the database administration offerings.  I took the time this morning on one of my databases using the export utility in EM13c so that I knew what it offered, (along with what it didn’t…)

Please, don’t ask me if EM Express offers this.  I really couldn’t tell you, (inside joke… :))

 



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Options For Pre-EM13c Target Software and Non-Supported OS in EM13c

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Per Oracle documentation, you’re able to upgrade from EM12c to EM13c, including the OMR, (Oracle Management Repository) to DB12c and the OMS, (Oracle Management Service) to EM13c, but leave the agent software at a version of 12.1.0.3 or higher, leaving upgrades of the agents to be performed later on using the Gold Agent Image, removing a lot of work for the administrator.

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This is a great option for many customers, but what if your existing EM environment isn’t healthy and you need to start fresh?  What options are left for you then?

I’ve covered, (and no, it isn’t supported by Oracle) the ability to discover a target, doing a silent deployment push from the target host back to the OMS using a 12.1.0.5 software image by simply adding the -ignoreprereqs argument.  This does work and will deploy at least the last version of EM12c agent to the EM13c environment.  What I don’t know-  If you have an installation of software that was upgraded to a supported version in the past, (i.e. 12.1.0.2 upgraded 12.1.0.5, etc.)  I haven’t tested this and I can’t guarantee it, but it’s worth a try.  Same goes for an unsupported OS version, but I think if you choose to push the deploy from the target and choose to ignore the prerequisite checks, it may successfully add the target.

If you have an earlier version of EM12c agent, 12.1.0.3 to 12.1.0.5 that can’t be updated to EM13c, there is still hope outside of what I’ve proposed.  The word on the streets is that with the release of 13.2, there will be backward support of earlier versions of agent software and that WILL be supported fully by Oracle.

That also offers a silver lining for those that may be considering going to EM13c, won’t be upgrading and want to take advantage of redirecting existing targets with EM12c agent software to the new installation.  I’m assuming they’ll simply run the following command to redirect those targets, (or something close!):

emctl secure agent <new EM_URL and credential information>

I have high hopes for this option being available in 13.2 and will cross my fingers along with you.



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Copyright © DBA Kevlar [Options For Pre-EM13c Target Software and Non-Supported OS in EM13c], All Right Reserved. 2016.

EM13c, Configuration Management and Comparing Targets

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How many times have you had maintenance or a release complete and everyone is sure that everything’s been put back the way it should have been, all t’s crossed, all i’s dotted and then you release it to the customers only to find out that NOPE, something was forgotten in the moving parts of technology?  As the Database Administrator, you can do a bit of CYA and not be the one who has to say-

WhatJustHappened

Having the ability to compare targets is a powerful feature in Enterprise Manager 13c, (and 12c, don’t feel left out there…:))  The comparison feature is the first of three options that encompass Configuration Management-

config2

Building Comparison Baselines

Upon entering Configuration Management in EM13c, you will be offered the option to create a one-time comparison, or use a pre-existing comparison as your base.  You can access the Configuration Management utility via the Enterprise drop down in EM13c Cloud Control:

config1

For our example today and due to the small environment I possess in my test environment, we’re going to compare two database targets.  The Configuration Management utility is fantastic at comparing targets to see if changes have occurred and I recommend collecting “baseline” templates to have available for this purpose, but know that the tool is an option to perform other comparisons, such as:

  • investigating a change in a target.
  • researching drift or consistency

Maintenance Use Case

For our example today, we’re going to be working on a CDB,  then as the “Lead DBA”, we’ll discover that changes that weren’t reverted as part of our maintenance with the Configuration Management Comparison tool.

We first need to set up the comparison “baseline”, so to do this, I’m going to make a copy of the default template, Database Instance Template.  It’s just good practice to make copies and leave the locked templates, in case there are times where we find there are areas we need to watch for changes in any environment that may not have been turned on by default.

Once you enter the main dashboard, click on the bottom icon on the left, which when highlighted, will show you is for Templates.

config11

Scroll down till you see Database Instance Template, highlight it and click on Create Like at the top menu.  You will need to name your new copy of the original template.  For mine, I’ve named it CDB_Compare:

config10

Click OK and you now will be brought to the template with all it’s comparison values displayed.  If there are any areas that you want to compare for immediately, check that area and make sure that there is a check mark in the box for that change.  For our example, let’s say that we have a process in this CDB that when quarterly maintenance is complete, the pluggable database must be brought back up, but sometimes it’s a step that the DBAs forget to complete.  By default, the configuration template is checking for this, but if it didn’t, I would place the check mark in the appropriate box and save the template before proceeding.

config13

Now that I have my template ready, I can use it to do a comparison.  On the far left, click on the top icon, (of a bar graph) that will take you to the Overview page or the One Time Comparison Results, both of which will offer you an opportunity to create the baseline of the CDB  that you want to compare against.

Click on Create Comparison and fill in the following information:

config14

Click on Submit and as expected, no differences are found, (we just compared the environment against itself using the new CDB_Compare template, that checks everything out) but we now have our baseline.

Perform Maintenance and Compare

Our maintenance has been completed, now our database is ready to be released to the users, but we want to verify that the changes performed should have been performed and no steps were missed that would hinder it from being ready for production use.

We perform another comparison, this time against our baseline and choose to only show differences-

 

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Per the report, the databsae is in read only and if we log in via SQLPlus, we can quickly verify that this:

SQL> select name, open_mode from v$database;

NAME OPEN_MODE
--------- --------------------
CDBKELLY READ WRITE

SQL> select name, open_mode from v$pdbs;

NAME OPEN_MODE
------------------------------ ----------
PDB$SEED READ ONLY
PDBKELLYN MOUNTED
PDBK_CL1 READ ONLY

So instead of mistakenly releasing the database back to the users, we can run the following and know we’ve verified that we are safe to:

ALTER PLUGGABLE DATABASE PDBKELLYN OPEN;

Well, that’ll save us from having to explain how that was missed…Whew!

 



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