The Hunger Site

Monday, August 25, 2008

Question on Sybase plugin for Grid Control

Rajesh asked this question:

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Hi, I'm trying to configure Sybase ASE plug-in for OEM Grid control. Have downloaded the plug-in and imported into OEM Grid (in setup ---> Management Plug-in's section). The question is about the below section of the pre-requisites which says the apart from OEM Grid Control, we also need to have the agent for windows.
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-Oracle Management agent for Windows 10.2.0.1 or higherYou can install the agent on the same computer as Sybase Adaptive Server (referred to as local agent monitoring), or you can install the agent on a different computer from Sybase Adaptive Server (referred to as remote agent monitoring).
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Does it mean do we need to install the agent software on the Sybase host (our Sybase ASE runs on Linux) and if so, do we need to install Agent software for Linux? Do we need to install that as Sybase user or do we need to create the Oracle account on the server? Documentation is not clear on this area. Can someone who installed and configured the plug-in for ASE explain this? Thanks, Rajesh

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Rajesh, you need to install the Oracle EM10g Agent software on your target Sybase linux server. Install it as the oracle user in its own home. The agent is required for all targets, treat that as a general rule. All the Best.

Thursday, August 21, 2008

Patch Deployment via Grid Control

A large DBA team of a big corporate, used to doing everything manually for 100s of databases, were very impressed this week when I showed them how EM10g Grid Control can assist them in patch deployment.

This requires the Provisioning Pack, which is a licensable pack for Grid Control.

The patch deployment procedure in Grid Control is quite mature - it allows the DBA to search for patches for any version of any Oracle software from Metalink, download the patch to a staging area on the Grid Control management server, and then apply the patch using a supplied deployment procedure.

The patch can be scheduled to be applied at any time using the Grid Control scheduler, it automatically starts a blackout for the database (so no alerts are generated), shuts it down, applies the patch, and then starts the database again.

The DBAs felt this would save them a lot of manual steps for patches that have to be applied to 100s of databases. For starters, think how much time it would take to ftp / scp the patch to 100s of servers. In the case of Grid Control, the patch is downloaded once and stored once, on the central EM Management server in the patch staging area.

Thursday, August 14, 2008

8i Databases managed with EM10g Grid Control

With respect to the question a friend using 8i on VMS asked me:

“Can 8i Databases be managed with EM10g Grid Control?”

The answer is definitely yes. Oracle have published a white paper to that respect.
http://www.oracle.com/technology/products/oem/pdf/em_gc_8i-9i_4.pdf
Managing Oracle 8i and Oracle 9i databases with Oracle Enterprise Manaqer
10g Grid Control


The only caveat is that the OS must be certified for the 10g Grid Control agent.

As per Metalink Note: 412431.1 Oracle Enterprise Manager 10g Grid Control Certification Checker, Open-VMS or VMS is NOT supported. Therefore the main issue is not the 8i version but the OS. Only the following are supported:

Linux x86
Linux x64 (AMD64/EM64T)
Windows x86
Solaris SPARC (64-BIT)
HP-UX Itanium
HP-UX PA-RISC (64-BIT)
AIX 5L (64-BIT)

In any case, Oracle does not support the 8i database anymore except if you have an extended support licence. It may be time for you to move from OpenVMS to Oracle Enterprise Linux (free distribution, lower support cost) from Oracle and have one point of support for both the Oracle OS and the Oracle database. Also upgrade the database at the same time to 11g.

Sunday, August 3, 2008

Grid Control or 3rd Party products

To a friend, I had this to say:

I would prefer Oracle products like Grid Control dealing with the Oracle
database rather than 3rd party products, especially when tweaking is involved.
No one would know Oracle better than Oracle.

In fact, even reading by 3rd party products may be unsupported. As an
example, take the case of 3rd party products that read Oracle redo logs to
replicate data and dont go through the Logminer interface. Have a loook at
Oracle Metalink Note:97080.1 which says that this is not a supported interface
and the data in the destination database cannot be assured in the case of
unsupported proprietarty interfaces to the log files since Oracle can and does
change the data in the log files when fixing bugs. In such a case, 3rd party
products are not aware of such internal changes in their proprietary interfaces.

Likewise, even if a performance Guru were to write a tool to interact with the
Oracle database, I would still prefer Oracle Grid Control. Why?

Because Oracle know what they are doing. Because they are the ones who have created the database and all the tuning features in 9i, 10g and 11g. Because of the world-class Enterprise level support for the tool, available around the world and around the clock (how many companies can equal Oracle Worldwide support's strengths?). Because of the knowledge that Grid Control is already better (SLAs, Dashboards, Quality Control. etc) than previous releases and will be enhanced more and more by Oracle in future releases.

And because of the knowledge that Oracle will be there for us much more than any other 3rd party company or perfornance gurus.

Just my view, but it is echoed by a lot of other DBAs.

Saturday, August 2, 2008

Why Sysadmins are happy with Grid Control

A friend said Sysadmins are happy with Grid Control when they see that Grid Control can capture and store a history of CPU and Memory utilization for each host server. I replied:

Thats a good one mate. The sysadmins would definitely be happy with that
history. Also all that is stored in the Central Oracle EM Repository instead of
files all over the place on different host servers.

Its just a matter of knowing what is possible. I have shown a lot of managers/techos what can be done with Grid Control with their Oracle databases, and all of them have been pleasantly surprised if not outright amazed. 99% expressed an interest to use Grid Control to simply make their lives easier.

Jaguars and Grid Control

A friend was talking about licences of Grid Control packs. I told him:

Mate, prices are always negotiable with Oracle. And besides Oracle openly
publishes its list prices. The packs are only a fraction of the cost of the
Enterprise Edition software in any case, Besides, you pay for what you get. You
have the Oracle database, and you need the best management tool in the world to
handle your database.

Oracle know best about their database themselves, why would you buy a tool from some other company to manage it? Get the management tool from Oracle. If you have a Jaguar (owned by Tata), and all cars have electronics and computers nowadays, would you get the management software to run the car from a totally different car manufacturer, or from Jaguar itself?

Good Discussion

There is a good discussion about Grid Control going on in the Oracle Wiki at
http://wiki.oracle.com/thread/1000866/Why+companies+are+not+using+EM+Grid+Control ,
Please have a look.

Disclaimer

Opinions expressed in this blog are entirely the opinions of the writers of this blog, and do not reflect the position of Oracle corporation. No responsiblity will be taken for any resulting effects if any of the instructions or notes in the blog are followed. It is at the reader's own risk and liability.

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