This New Year 2011, Help Akshaya Patra feed schoolchildren in India

Happy New Year 2011 to all my readers and their families!

All the Best for the New Year.

This New Year 2011, Help Akshaya Patra feed schoolchildren and increase education in India. Your one-off donation (not a big amount) actually feeds a midday meal to 1 or more children for a full year. This is the best value we have seen, thanks to help from the government of India.

http://www.foodforeducation.org/index.php?content=31

It only takes $11.50 to feed a child in India for an ENTIRE school year, to ensure that she stays in school and continues her education. If you have an Indian bank account, you can pay in Indian Rupees from your bank.

World Currency or Paypal

http://www.foodforeducation.org/index.php?content=9

Indian Rupees

http://www.akshayapatra.org/individual-donors

Their website mentions: "Realizing that a nutritious school meal is an effective means of getting underprivileged children come to school and complete their education, we formed a not-for-profit organization in June 2000 to take up this cause. Our purpose - to provide "unlimited food for education", thus freeing children from the vicious cycle of poverty and ensuring them an education.

It was only right that we named our organization Akshaya Patra – a vessel from which unlimited amounts of food may be drawn.

We started as a pilot project in five schools in Bangalore, feeding 1,500 children and have now grown into a mammoth endeavor reaching out to over a million children in 17 locations across seven states in India.

Today, we firmly believe that feeding and educating an underprivileged child is not charity; it’s our social responsibility."

Cristobal's blog entry on my new Oracle EM Book

Cristobal Soto of Oracle has blogged about my new EM book on his Oracle Technologies blog.

Thanks Cristobal for your kind words.

http://blogs.oracle.com/csoto/2010/12/new_oracle_em_book_oracle_enterprise_manager_grid_control_advanced_oem_techniques_for_the_real_world.html

Leave a comment with Shroff Publishers in India for India Edition

A Friend from India said:

After going through table of contents , I feel like buying your EM book. I
will definitely buy if it's available in India. I also recommend to my
colleagues. Keep up the good work and good luck.

My reply:

Thanks a lot for your appreciation. The book will be republished by Shroff Publishers in India. This normally takes 1 or 2 months after the USA edition but you can put a comment on their side to request the book, that will make them do it faster. You can put the comment on:
http://www.shroffpublishers.com/contact.aspx

There, just ask them to republish the Ramapant book soon, give them the link:
http://www.rampant-books.com/book_1001_advanced_techniques_oem_grid_control.htm

Have a Great New Year 2011. All the Best.

Blog Post on New book

Thanks to Aman Sharma for his blog post on my new book:

http://blog.aristadba.com/?p=167

A Very Merry Christmas and Happy New Year: Feed small schoolchildren in India

A Very Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to all our readers all over the world. All the Best to you in your personal and professional lives.

As part of our social responsibilities:

Please help to feed small schoolchildren in India and support education of the masses. Akshaya Patra is doing a marvellous job in India, please help.

http://www.akshayapatra.org/weshallovercome/

1 meal per day is all it takes to increase education and uplift India, please join hands with Akshay Patra to support children’s development in India.

Shared loader directory, RAC and WebLogic Clustering

A friend wrote:

I was reading your paper on OTN http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/articles/havewala-gridcontrol-088685.html Its a very interesting paper and well written. I am doing a similar implemention using OEM 11g on a RAC environment and had a few questions..

1. In the paper you reference about using an IP configuration to load balance between a RAC environment. In this option, uses will round robin between the two management servers running on the two instances. In this case, what happens to the feeds that come from the managed agents to the EM cluster. the feed from the agent is only received by one instance and the certain data such as the log details are available only on one instance.. how does the data get over to the other instances. Can i use ACFS to locate these files so that they are visible to both servers.

2. Have you tried to cluster the weblogic servers so that they make the OMS highly available? the Weblogic server that comes with the GC download is not complete and many of the features are not available. however if the organization has weblogic can this be used, what are the implications with use this option, specifically with respect to future OEM upgrades etc.Is weblogic clustering supported for OEM implementation?

My reply:

Thanks for your kind words. RAC is optional. Even the load balancer is optional. The feed from the agents also goes to the load balancer on a different port and it is routed to the available management server. In normal case, this is ok. If there is a failure, that is where the concept of the shared loader directory is used - so other management servers can be used to pick up the load. This concept is explained in the advanced EM manual. You should be able to use ACFS for the shared loader directory, however it is not certified or supported for use for this purpose. See the manual for the additional steps to set up the shared loader directory.

WebLogic Clustering will not be used by EM GC 11g Release 1.

Good Luck for the implementation. My tip is, keep it as simple as possible. My idea would be to first put this on a single database with Data Guard, and then upgrade to RAC after EM GC has settled down.

Regards,

Porus.

Oracle Database 11g Interactive Quick Reference

Oracle has just released the Oracle Database 11g Interactive Quick Reference, which is sure to be a big hit among DBAs. You can download it from this link:

http://www.mediafire.com/file/sbpozvrb7yn9wf8/db11g-interactivequickref-187977.zip

This is an interactive quick reference for the many DBA views, architecture and Background Processes in 11g.

OTN Bulletin "popular author"

Just noticed this OTN Bulletin in which Justin Kestelyn (OTN Editor in Chief) mentions:

"Although he’s relatively new to the OTN editorial scene, Oracle ACE Director Porus Homi Havewala became a popular author in 2009. His articles about the optimal use of Oracle Enterprise Manager for enterprise management have proven to be crowd-pleasers."

Thanks Justin for calling me a popular author, and thank you my readers for making me one!

http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/issue-archive/2010/10-mar/o20bulletin-088115.html

Now an Oracle Certified Master

Friends,

I am pleased to announce I have passed the practical 2 day OCM exam and am now an Oracle Certified Master. I received my certificate today.

My OCM details are here. This link was updated later on.

This is from the Oracle University website:

The Oracle Database 10g Administrator Certified Master Exam (OCM) is the industry's most advanced Database Administrator certification. The OCM is a two-day performance test that requires participants to complete a series of scenarios and resolve technical and failure problems within a live Oracle 10g database environment. An Oracle Certified Master is a top-level Oracle expert who has in depth technical knowledge of the Oracle data server and industry experience managing mission critical Oracle database systems and applications. An OCM is looked upon as an expert within their organization, amongst their peers and across the industry.

Regards,

Porus.

Another News Article on my new book

Another News Article on my new book. Thanks to Fahd Mirza for this story.

http://itnewscast.com/database/oracle-grid-control-book-porus-homi-havewala-maestro-work

Kamran's blog

Thanks to Kamran for his great post as well:

http://kamranagayev.wordpress.com/2010/12/20/my-friend-porus-havewalas-first-em-book-can-be-ordered-now/

A top expert's blog

Thanks a lot Vivek (my Oracle Colleague and a top performance expert)

http://viveklsharma.wordpress.com/2010/12/20/oracle-enterprise-manager-grid-control-a-must-read-book/

New article on OTN: Overview of EM Packs

A new article of mine has been published on the OTN in December 2010:

http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/articles/oem-packs-overview-195704.html

Overview of Oracle Enterprise Manager Management Packs

Regards,

Porus.

My EM Book can be pre-ordered

I am pleased to say my first EM book is in the printing run and you can pre-order now. Thanks to all my readers for their patience. The book is not very expensive, only $19.95 USD (30% off if ordered now).

http://www.rampant-books.com/book_1001_advanced_techniques_oem_grid_control.htm

Oracle Enterprise Manager Grid Control
Advanced OEM Techniques for the Real World

Oracle’s Enterprise Manager Grid Control is recognized as the IT Industry’s leading Oracle database administration and management tool. It is unrivalled in its ability to monitor, manage, maintain and report on entire enterprise grids that comprise hundreds (if not thousands) of Oracle databases and servers following an approach that is consistent and repeatable.

However, Enterprise Manager Grid Control may seem daunting even to the most advanced Oracle Administrator. The problem is you know about the power of Enterprise Manager but how do you unleash that power amongst what initially appears to be a maze of GUI-based screens that feature a myriad of links to reports and management tasks that in turn lead you to even more reports and management tasks?

This book shows you how to unleash that power.

Based on the Author’s considerable and practical Oracle database and Enterprise Manager Grid Control experience you will learn through illustrated examples how to create and schedule RMAN backups, generate Data Guard Standbys, clone databases and Oracle Homes and patch databases across hundreds and thousands of databases. You will learn how you can unlock the power of the Enterprise Manager Grid Control Packs, PlugIns and Connectors to simplify your database administration across your company’s database network, as also the management and monitoring of important Service Level Agreements (SLAs), and the nuances of all important real-time change control using Enterprise Manager.

There are other books on the market that describe how to install and configure Enterprise Manager but until now they haven’t explained using a simple and illustrated approach how to get the most out of your Enterprise Manager. This book does just that.

Covers the NEW Enterprise Manager Grid Control 11g.

Thanks to Fahd Mirza for the nice review on his blog:
http://fahdmirza.blogspot.com/2010/12/oracle-grid-control-book-by-porus-homi.html

Regards,

Porus.

EM Blog sponsors well in India

The Enterprise Manager Blog, as a part of its social responsibilities, decided to sponsor the construction of a well in India to quench the thirst of village people. A photo has been received. This was through Chaitanya (an excellent educational trust) and the link: http://www.cerds-india.org/index.html/


It took only 5000 Indian Rs. Hope you can also do the same. Do send this to your friends as well.

For foreign currency donations using a credit card, please use this website:
http://www.giveindia.org/p-3255-install-a-bore-well-with-platform-for-30-disadvantaged-rural-families.aspx

We are sharing this in the hope it will inspire readers of the blog to help their brethen in India.

Regards,

Porus.

New EM Provisioning Article published on Oracle Technical Network

Dear Friends,

Happy Deepavali (Indian Festival of Lights).

I am pleased to announce that a new article of mine has been published on the Oracle Technical Network in November 2010:

Manage Mass Provisioning Using Oracle Enterprise Manager Grid Control

http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/articles/mass-provisioning-177500.html

Learn how to provision literally hundreds or even thousands of systems using the mass provisioning techniques described here. The Deployment Procedures supplied by Oracle for provisioning, really make it a simple process.

Regards,

Porus.

Announcement: New Recommended Bundle Patch (OCT 2010) for Patch Automation- 10192980(EM 11.1.0.1) & 10193144 (EM 10.2.0.5)

From: Hari Prasanna Srinivasan
Sent: Monday, October 25, 2010 5:47 PM
Subject: Announcement: New Recommended Bundle Patch (OCT 2010) for Patch Automation- 10192980(EM 11.1.0.1) & 10193144 (EM 10.2.0.5)

 

Hello All,

New Recommended Bundle Patches 10192980(EM 11.1.0.1) and 10193144(EM 10.2.0.5) are available for download from My Oracle Support now.
This patch primarily enhances the Patching functionality offered by Oracle Enterprise Manager Grid Control.
Pre-requisite Patch: Make sure you apply the pre-requisite patch 9705138 before applying the new patch (applicable to both 10.2.0.5 and 11.1.0.1 series).

For more information, refer to:
Comprehensive Overview of Recommended Bundle Patch 10192980
Comprehensive Overview of Recommended Bundle Patch 10193144
Under  support note - OMS and Agent Patches required for setting up Provisioning, Patching and Cloning in 10.2 to 11.1 GC [ID 427577.1]

This patch is a cumulative and superset of the July 2010 patch (9822322 (EM 11.1.0.1) and 9843796(EM 10.2.0.5)) and of the previous releases, and therefore, includes all the features that were introduced as part of those Recommended Bundle Patches.

Key Fixes:

• Supports patching of the updated Oracle Database Patch Set Updates (PSU) (starting from July2010)
• Supports patching of Oracle Restart (Grid Infrastructure for Single Instance Databases)
• Enhanced support for patching Standby and Primary of different data guard configurations present in the same Oracle Home.
• Fixes around Oracle Exadata Database Machine patching through Grid Control:
• Exadata: Clusterware patching fails in run crspostroot sript step for the DB machine bundle patch
• Exadata: Update ignorable SQLs errors for the catexa.sql

FAQs:
#1 If I had applied the previous recommended patches, do I need to rollback before applying this?
Yes, if you had applied any of the patches (9822322(EM 11.1.0.1) and 9405592 (EM 10.2.0.5) resp.) you would need to rollback the patch and apply this.
For rollback instructions, refer to the patch README from the support note 427577.1

#2 I recently applied the JULY cumulative patch , do I still need the new patch?
The new patch contains additional bug fixes.  (For more info see,10192980 or 10193144 )
Oracle strongly recommends you to apply the latest patch to make sure your do not encounter these issues and you are at the current patch levels for faster issue resolution through support

#3 Are there any special instructions to apply these patches?
Yes, you need to apply the pre-requisite patch -9705138 before applying the new patches, if not already present.
Note the pre-req. patch was available for July itself, so if you had already installed its should be fine to just go with the OCT patches.

#4 Any more issues seen at customers or learning's ?
a)  "I applied the patches but the version of the deployment procedure remain the same"?
     The patch instructions are not followed up completely. Make sure you run post apply steps - PAR Deploy and SQL apply as per the readme.

b) Are Oracle Database PSUs released in October 2010 an overlay or cumulative patches ?
    Oracle DB PSU for OCT2010 for 10.2.0.4 DB (10.2.0.4.6) is an overlay patch and it requires the base patch 10.2.0.4.4 either pre-installed or to be co-applied.
    Oracle DB PSUs for OCT2010 for 11.1 and 11.2 DBs are non-overlay (cumulative) patches. For more info refer to,1159443.1 -Patch Set Update and Critical Patch Update October 2010 Availability Document.
    Note: Oracle Grid Control supports application of PSUs on Databases. Apply the recommended bundle patch on EM OMS to support it.

c)  "Is patching 11.2 DBs supported in EM 10.2.0.5 GC"?
     Patching 11.2 DB support is available starting EM 11.1.0.1 only.

Thanks and Regards,
Hari

Hari Prasanna Srinivasan | Principal Product Manager
Oracle System Management Products
ORACLE

New Links to my OTN articles on EM

The Oracle Technical Network (OTN) recently upgraded its site and in the process there are new links to my articles that have been published on the OTN site in the past few years. Here are the new links, please use these from now on:

My Published Oracle White Paper
Advanced Uses of Oracle Enterprise Manager 11g

My Published Articles on The Oracle Technology Network (OTN):

Using Grid Control with Filer Snapshotting

Oracle Enterprise Manager Grid Control Architecture for Very Large Sites

Oracle RMAN Backups: Pushing the "Easy" Button

Patch a Thousand Databases, Using Oracle Enterprise Manager Grid Control

Easy Disaster Proof Production with Grid Control

Using Oracle GoldenGate for Real-Time Data Integration

Mask Your Secrets Using Oracle Enterprise Manager

New Application Management Suites

Blog Entry by Chung Wu

Introducing Oracle Application Management Suites, the most complete and integrated solutions designed specifically for managing Oracle E-Business Suite, Siebel, PeopleSoft and JD Edwards EnterpriseOne applications.

Four management suites are now available. They include:

- Application Management Suite for Oracle E-Business Suite
- Application Management Suite for Siebel
- Application Management Suite for PeopleSoft
- Application Management Suite for JD Edwards EnterpriseOne

Built on Oracle Enterprise Manager, these management suites enable you to manage your mission critical Oracle Applications more effectively so that you can achieve better application performance and availability, improve agility while maintaining control, and lowering the costs and risks that are associated with operating these software systems.


The management suites provides you with a different and better approach of managing your applications. Applications are different from other information technologies such as database, servers, and storage arrays in that applications are used directly by end users. Consequently, proper management of applications need to begin with a clear understanding on end user experience of the applications. Traditional component centric approach of managing application does not provide this kind of insight. A key new addition to each of the four application management suites is user experience management. Using the suites, one could gain insights on the identity of the users, when they use the apps, where they log in from, and click-by-click information on what they did and the application experience that they received, including response time measurement and records of errors and warnings. These information help you focus your resource on making improvements to the parts of the application and the underlying IT infrastructure that matter most to the users.

The management suites also provides full visibility into the internal workings of application specific artifacts beyond what typical management tools provide. Typical generic management tools monitor applications from the operating system level. However, each of this packaged Oracle applications include "containers" that are execution engines of various services. Application Management Suite's system monitoring and diagnostic capabilities enable you to look inside these containers, exposing a full set of metrics that you can set alerts on and visualize trends vs dashboards and reports. In additional, specialize tools for troubleshooting transactions, analyzing log files and diagnosing JVM problems are also built into the suites to provide you with a full range of options to address the toughest production problems. These tools help you proactively manage your application infrastructure in order to prevent problems from occurring, and when things do go wrong, troubleshoot problems quickly in order to minimize impacts to business operations.

In addition to user experience management and system monitoring and diagnostics, the suites also support configuration management. When something goes wrong with an application system, the natural thing to ask is what changed, as the changes are often the root causes of problems. Application Management Suites include configuration analysis tools that enable you to track changes to system configuration settings of the applications, compare settings across environments and create snapshot of good configurations so that they can be referenced later on. The new management suites added specific support to automate IT compliance management tasks as well, providing real time change detection and reconcilation of changes against change management authorizations so that unauthorized changes can be detected, and presenting compliance status on a set of compliance dashboards and reports, making it much easier to manage configuration related IT compliance tasks.

The fourth set of capabilities that the management suites provide is lifecycle automation. Using the suites, administrators can automate manual and error prone procedures by defining multi-step batch jobs and schedule them to run unattended, leaving the tasks of monitoring to be handled by the management suites automatically. For Oracle E-Business Suite, additional support for patching, cloning, customization deployment and functional setup migration are also included in the Application Management Suite for Oracle E-Business Suite product.

Additional information about these products is available on Oracle Technology Network. Click here for more information.

- Chung Wu.

Comments on the White paper

Friends, thanks very much for all your comments on the Oracle white paper that I wrote and was published by Oracle in September 2010. I have collated your comments here.

--------------------------------
I read your document and i found it is very good. It lists lots of things using OEM which i was not aware. Thanks for the information.
--------------------------------
i have just read ur following such article.http://www.oracle.com/us/products/enterprise-manager/advanced-uses-em11g-wp-170683.pdf
very informative, gr8 job....
---------------------------------
Congrats Porus, Useful whitepaper will pass it on to my colleagues.
--------------------------------
Many congratulations Porus !!!
---------------------------------
Your latest white paper on 11gR1 was pretty good. We have currently implemented and testing 11gR1 EM features and potentially may be upgrading the prod from 10gR5 soon.
---------------------------------
Porus, Thanks very much for this document. I haven't read it in detail yet, but just from an initial scan it appears to contain very useful information - very much appreciated
-------------------------------
Excellent white paper. Thanks Porus for sharing it.
--------------------------------
very nice and Excellent sir.
--------------------------------
Great effort!! Very informative Whitepaper
--------------------------------
Nice article..You have covered all the new features of Oracle 11gEM very nicely.. Even in our organization, we use full capabilities of EM for Provisioning(RAC and SAP databases), DB/Agent Patching and for backups
--------------------------------
Amazing stuff Porus! i have just installed Oracle 11g EM and currently pushing agents on target RAC databases. This white paper would cerntainly benifit me in completely understand capabilities of OEM. Thanks Again.
--------------------------------
Congratulations. I will read it.
--------------------------------
Congrats ... Lots of information everyone should know :)
--------------------------------
I will also read the article
--------------------------------
Thanks sharing Porus, will pass on to collegues.....
--------------------------------
Will read it. Thanks for shairing.
--------------------------------
Good one Porus. Hope to see many more from you.
--------------------------------
Congratulations, Porus ! Quite an informative article. Thank you.
--------------------------------
Informative and Detailed. Congrats Porus.
--------------------------------

My Oracle White Paper published

Friends,

The good news is that I have recently written an Oracle White paper that has been published. This is my first white paper in addition to my articles already published on the Oracle Technical Network.

The white paper is on Advanced Uses of Oracle Enterprise Manager 11g. The paper has been announced in the Enterprise Manager Newsletter of September 2010.

Please read and recommend to your friends! Thanks very much.

Regards,

Porus.

Oracle Live Webcasts on "Improving Business Performance with Oracle Core Technology"

Friends, If you and your colleagues are interested, you can attend Oracle Live Webcasts on "Improving Business Performance with Oracle Core Technology". This is to show you how to improve business performance with small changes to your database. The results are rapid and can make a real difference to the performance of all your applications.

Check out the EMEA live Webcast in English, French, German, Italian and Spanish here. You learn about how to transform your database with a big impact on the business. The contents of the Webcasts also cover topics relevant for Oracle Enterprise Manager (business-driven Application management, integrated application-to-disk management, performance, analytics, availability etc.).

Good Post by Werner De Gruyter on Differences

Good post by Werner De Gruyter on differences between Enterprise Manager 10g Grid Control and 11g Grid Control:

http://blogs.oracle.com/oem/2010/09/differences_between_em10g_and.html

Oracle Enterprise Manager 11g Forum

On 24th August, I spoke as one of the two Oracle speakers in the Oracle Enterprise Manager 11g Forum, a large event held at St. Regis hotel, Singapore. My co-speaker was Peter Yu. We introduced a lot of people to the new capabilities of Enterprise Manager 11g, such as the Sun Ops Center, Business Transaction management, and Real User Experience Insight (RUEI). The attendees were astonished as to what is possible in Enterprise Manager today. Here are a few photos of the event.

New Article on Data Masking published on OTN

Friends, a new article I wrote on the Data Masking Pack of Enterprise Manager Grid Control has been published on August 2010 on the Oracle Technology Network. This is the article:

Mask Your Secrets Using Oracle Enterprise Manager

Please read and recommend to your friends. Thanks a lot.

PowerDay WebCast on EM Configuration and Provisioning

Friends,

I recently held a popular PowerDay WebCast on EM Configuration and Provisioning, attended by over 140 people. The webcast has been recorded and is now available. Here’s the link:

http://www.forestserver.net/iSeminar/tbpwebcast_viewvideo.php?lang=ENG&wc=EMenterprise

If you are not registered on the site before, just do the simple registration and you should be able to get in. When the list of topics appears, select the topic "Managing Configuration Drift, Compliance and Change across your Datacenter".

Announcement: New Recommended Bundle Patch (JUL 2010) for Patch Automation- 9405592 (EM 10.2.0.5) & 9822322(EM 11.1.0.1)

From One of the Top Oracle Product Managers responsible for EM:

Hello All,

New Recommended Bundle Patches 9822322(EM 11.1.0.1) and 9843796(EM 10.2.0.5) are available for download from My Oracle Support now. This patch primarily enhances the Patching functionality offered by Oracle Enterprise Manager Grid Control.

The  9843796(EM 10.2.0.5) patch is  cumulative and is a superset of the previously released bundles #9405592, #9132461, #8992470, and #8653501 , and therefore, includes all the features that were introduced as part of those Recommended Bundle Patches.
Make sure you apply the pre-requisite patch 9705138 before applying the new patch.
For more information, refer to:
Comprehensive Overview of Recommended Bundle Patch 9843796
Comprehensive Overview of Recommended Bundle Patch 9822322
under  support note - OMS and Agent Patches required for setting up Provisioning, Patching and Cloning in 10.2.0.3 to 10.2.0.5 GC [ID 427577.1]


FAQs:
#1 If I had applied the previous recommended patches, do I need to rollback before applying this?
Yes, if you had applied any of the patches (#9405592, #9132461, #8992470 and #8653501) you would need to rollback the patch and apply this.
For rollback instructions, refer to the patch README from the support note 427577.1

#2 I recently applied the patch 9132461, do I still need the new patch?
The new patch contains additional bug fixes.  (For more info see,9843796 or 9822322)  -- Required for applying latest DB PSU.
The 11.1 patch provides the additional fixes from the 10.2.0.5 line that were not part of the base EM 11.1 release.
Oracle strongly recommends you to apply the latest patch to make sure your do not encounter these issues and you are at the current patch levels for faster issue resolution through support

#3 Are there any special instructions to apply these patches?
Yes, you need to apply the pre-requisite patch -9705138 before applying the new patch.

#4 Any more issues seen at customers or learnings ?
a)  "I applied the patches but the version of the deployment procedure remain the same"?
     The patch instructions are not followed up completely. Make sure you run post apply steps - PAR Deploy and SQL apply as per the readme.

b)  Oracle DB JULY PSU is an Overlay patch on top of April PSU, can I apply using these deployment procedures?
    You need these recommended bundles on the OMS as a pre-requisite. You can apply both PSUs (APR and JULY) together through Deployment procedures. It would take care of the orchestration of applying the April followed by the Overlay July PSU.

Thanks and Regards,

EM Product Manager.

 

Seminar on Consolidation on Grid Computing

Friends,

I am conducting this seminar on behalf of Oracle Platinum Partner S&I Systems on 13th August in Singapore. The topic is "Consolidation on Grid Computing". Please register if you like to attend by clicking on the link below:

http://www.si-asia.com/marketing/OracleSeriesII_SeminarTwo_2010/

We are covering interesting topics. Overview:

• Traditional Computing Infrastructure VS Grid Computing Infrastructure
  
• Consolidation on Oracle Database Grid
  
• How Oracle Grid and RAC help to reduce costs
  
• Oracle 11g Release 2 features for Grid
  
• Consolidation with Instance Caging and Server Pools
  
• Server hardware consolidation
  
• RAC One Node the business-friendly feature new in 11g Release 2
  
• Omotion Live Migration

Regards,

Porus.

Another comment on the new book

Comments from Sandesh Rao, Director, RAC Assurance team, Oracle on my new book on Grid Control:

Sandesh Rao said: "looking forward to it , would be interesting if you cover cases for upgrades for different versions of EM and would you be covering the recent 11.1 which was released as it changes with the installation procedure and having the Weblogic tier and db pre-ready before the install and other experiences of people with 10's of thousands of targets and what their upgrade experiences have been."

I replied:

"Sandesh, thanks for your kind words. Yes, I believe it wil be the very first book on Oracle Enterprise Manager that covers version 11.1 and also includes the Sun Ops center. Do recommend it to clients - it is a fantastic look at what Grid Control is capable of today, and would be of interest to a lot of IT people - DBAs, Sys Admins, IT Managers, Application Admins, and so on. Grid Control is the present and the future of Oracle management."

Webinar Success

Webinar was a success - about 143 people dialled in. Thanks guys.

Regards,

Porus.

Extreme Contol and Extreme Management using Enterprise Manager

Do register for this webcast for tomorrow - I am speaking in this webcast on Oracle Enterprise Manager's Extreme Contol and Extreme Management, namely the Configuration Managment Pack and the Provisioning and Patch Automation pack with all the new 11g features.

http://www.oracle.com/dm/11h1apac/52625_live_webcast_managing_configuration_drift.html
You stand a chance to win an iPod Touch (32GB) when you attend the webcast!*
*Terms and Conditions Apply

Regards,

Porus.

Integration with My Oracle Support

Just noticed this article by Rob Zoeteweij written this month (July 2010) which gives a good idea of the Intergration of Grid Control 11g with My Oracle Support:

http://oemgc.files.wordpress.com/2010/07/integration-of-enterprise-manager-grid-control-and-my-oracle-support.pdf

Please have a read.

New Seminar

Friends,

I am conducting this seminar in Singapore for S&I Systems, the Oracle platinum partner I was working for.

If in Singapore, please attend.

Regards,

Porus.

Baffled by these Database Security Issues? Are you overspending to protect your data while trying to minimize operational/ performance impact? How do you produce a real time view of insider and external threats for your data? Do you need to simplify compliance reporting to meet compliance requirements? We have the solutions for you. Join us for this session and learn how you can: Get notified fast and react promptly to suspicious activity across the enterprise – and reduce cost Boost your security and have immediate visibility to all kinds of threats Reduce manual work for compliance reporting by automating the consolidation process Don’t take the chance – Get your enterprise database protected at all levels, including stored data encryption, backed up data, network traffic… to confidential data protection from even the Dba. Also discover how your organization can increase security during the auditing of all activities from multiple Oracle and non-Oracle databases, masking data when copying databases to test or develop, and controlling all configuration changes. Be convinced by how Oracle Security Options and Products along with Oracle Enterprise Manager can be your most trusted partner in security and will help your company in complying with regulatory controls. Who should attend? C-level - all CxOs Directors, LOB Heads - Sales, Marketing, Customer Service, IT Managers and those who seek to increase their sales, marketing and the effectiveness of service operations. DBAs and SysAdmins can also attend to understand what Oracle security products are available to protect their environments. to be won during Lucky Draw! Event details Date 09 July 2010 Time 2.00pm - 5.00pm Venue Oracle Singapore 6 Temasek Boulevard #18-01 Suntec Tower 4 Singapore 038986 View map For enquiries, please contact Wenshi at +65 6319 4823 / 4888 or email: marketing@si-asia.com About the Presenter Porus Homi Havewala is the Senior Manager (ASEAN) in the Enterprise Technology Program Office of Oracle Corporation Singapore. He was the first in Singapore to be awarded the prestigious “Oracle ACE Director” title by Oracle USA, and is currently the only Oracle Employee ACE in Singapore. Prior to Oracle, he was employed at our company S&I Systems. Porus has extensive experience in Oracle technology since 1994, including as a Senior Production DBA, Senior Database Consultant, Database Architect, E-Business Technical DBA, Development DBA, and Database Designer Modeller. He has also worked in Oracle India in the ACS (Advanced Customer Services) department and is an enthusiast for Oracle technology, especially Oracle Enterprise Manager Grid Control, on which he has conducted seminars for large MNCs and implemented this powerful enterprise tool. Mr. Havewala has worked with the first production Grid Control site in the world, Telstra which is the largest telecommunications company in Australia. He has published numerous articles on Grid Control and RMAN on OTN, and created the world's first blog dedicated to Grid Control. Currently he is waiting for his first book on Oracle Enterprise Manager Grid Control to be published. About S & I Systems S & I Systems (S & I) is an integrated IT solutions provider of enterprise infrastructure systems and business application solutions that delivers the best value IT solutions that help customers achieve better business performance. For more information, visit www.si-asia.com. Established in 1998, S & I has over 120 employees, with offices in Singapore, Malaysia and Thailand. Working together with leading technology vendors and solutions partners, S & I Systems provides infrastructure and business solutions to over 500 customers spanning a broad spectrum of industries.

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Good EM11g Install steps

Mark Ramsay, Database Administrator at Sainsburys has posted
EM11g install steps at the following address:

http://oracle-wiki.net/startdocshowtobuildgridcontrol11101

Good work by Mark. Please have a look.

Rejoined Oracle

I am happy to announce that I have rejoined Oracle, in the Enterprise Technology team, focussing on Oracle Enterprise Manager.

My ACE status has also changed from an Oracle ACE Director, to an Oracle Employee ACE.

I look forward to working more closely on Oracle Enterprise Manager from now on.

Oracle Enterprise Manager 11g Grid Control simplifies RAC management in Oracle Exadata V2

In Oracle Database 11g Release 2, which is the latest version of the database used in Oracle Exadata Version 2, RAC install and management is vastly simplified especially if you are using Oracle Enterprise Manager 11g Grid Control.

As an example of the installation ease, 11gR2 RAC features the new ASM Cluster File System (ACFS) on which the Cluster voting disk and Cluster Registry (OCR) can be stored seamlessly during installation, so much so that new DBAs may not even know about these files (in previous versions, they had to be stored very carefully on raw devices). This means the installation is a lot more streamlined and efficient - the improvement in each version of RAC is obvious.

The actual setup of the RAC database on Oracle Exadata V2 is done by Oracle Advanced Customer Services (ACS) at this point, a cutting-edge support team in Oracle. After the database is setup, data migration can be done using a variety of methods, including the new and powerful Oracle GoldenGate.

So the path to move to Exadata V2 has been greatly steamlined and well thought out by Oracle.

Oracle Enterprise Manager 11g Released

The most comprehensive corporate management and monitoring solution is officially out - Oracle Enterprise Manager 11g. It just gets better and better.

http://www.oracle.com/us/products/enterprise-manager/index.html

http://www.oracle.com/technology/products/oem/index.html

As per the Oracle press release, highlights include:

Comprehensive Middleware Management: This release delivers enhanced support for managing Oracle Fusion Middleware 11g, including full configuration management and provisioning for large-scale Oracle SOA Suite and Oracle WebLogic Server environments. Oracle WebLogic Server is often used in an “application grid” environment, or as the foundation for a private cloud. Oracle Enterprise Manager 11g can greatly simplify the management and provisioning of such deployments, including the private cloud.

New Database Management Capabilities: Providing full support for Oracle Database 11g Release 2, including compression, change detection, partitioning, diagnostics, and tuning. Oracle Exadata-aware SQL monitoring and I/O resource management for Oracle Exadata Version 2 is also featured.

Extensive Hardware, Virtualization and Operating System Management: Oracle Enterprise Manager Ops Center, for managing Sun hardware and Oracle Solaris, covers the entire lifecycle of physical and virtual Sun environments including Oracle VM for SPARC (formerly known as Logical Domains or LDoms) and Solaris Containers, enabling customers to maximize the utilization of their Sun systems. As per Chung Wu from Oracle "We have delivered the first set of integration between Enterprise Manager Grid Control and Enterprise Manager Ops Center so that hardware level events can be centrally monitored via Grid Control."

Application Quality Management: New Oracle Application Testing Suite Release 9.1, automates test script generation based on real user actions; provides access to middleware diagnostics during load test to help identify performance bottlenecks; provides a new testing accelerator to simplify testing of applications based on Oracle ADF; and offers a new test starter kit for Oracle E-Business Suite R12 applications, to help reduce testing effort.

Oracle Enterprise Manager 11g also includes a new release 6.5 of Oracle Real User Experience for user experience management, Business transaction management with the ability to drill down to and monitor trasactions through IT tiers, and more powerful business service management. The catchword is Business Driven Application Management.

The integration with My Oracle Support is also enhanced. New components include::

Smart Configuration Management: Offers complete configuration lifecycle management and discovery with real-time change detection for compliance. It can simultaneously analyze millions of customer configurations and provide IT professionals with real-time notification of potential problems.

Automated Workflow: Enables the selection, validation and deployment of patches across the entire IT environment, allowing IT to help reduce the risk and effort needed to implement recommendations and fixes.

Community-Based Console: Facilitates best practice sharing and knowledge exchange with other members of the IT community.

One of the catchwords is also Integrated Application-to-Disk Management. This means complete management of the Oracle stack, including tools to manage Oracle Applications, Oracle Fusion Middleware, Oracle Database, Oracle Solaris, Oracle Enterprise Linux, Oracle VM, and Oracle’s Sun Servers. This enables IT to quickly identify root cause and, in many cases, automatically resolve issues.

As per Chung Wu from Oracle "For composite and Java application management, two key pieces of technologies, JVM Diagnostic and Composite Application Monitoring and Modeler, are now fully integrated into Enterprise Manager so there is no need to install and maintain separate tools."

http://www.oracle.com/technology/products/oem/extensions/index.html now has a number of new Plug-Ins developed by partners to monitor third-party storage such as IBM, NEC, HP etc.

A complete list of new features can be seen on the newly released Enterprise Manager 11g documentation at this link:
http://download.oracle.com/docs/cd/E11857_01/em.111/e11982/whats_new.htm#CHDCIDIG

And of course Enterprise Manager 11g now uses Oracle WebLogic Server as its main engine, with all the technical benefits thereof.

This is indeed the new age of Oracle Enterprise Manager 11g.

Interview posted

My friend Kamran Agayev in his series of "Exclusive Interviews with Top Oracle Experts"
just posted an interview with myself. (Of course that doesnt mean I am a top expert).
Please see:

http://kamranagayev.wordpress.com/2010/04/22/exclusive-interview-with-porus-homi-havewala/

New Recommended Bundle Patch (APR 2010) - 9405592 for Patch Automation on EM 10.2.0.5

New Recommended Bundle Patch 9405592 is available for download from My Oracle Support now. This patch primarily enhances the Patching functionality offered by Oracle Enterprise Manager Grid Control.
This patch is  cumulative and is a superset of the previously released bundles # 9132461, #8992470, and #8653501, and therefore, includes all the features that were introduced as part of those Recommended Bundle Patches.

For more information, refer to Comprehensive Overview of Recommended Bundle Patch 9405592 under
support note - OMS and Agent Patches required for setting up Provisioning, Patching and Cloning in 10.2.0.3 to 10.2.0.5 GC [ID 427577.1]

FAQ:
#1 If I had applied the previous recommended patches, do I need to rollback before applying this?
Yes, if you had applied any of the patches (# 9132461, #8992470 and #8653501) you would need to rollback the patch and apply this.  For rollback instructions, refer to the patch README from the support note 427577.1

#2 I recently applied the patch 9132461, do I still need the new patch?
The new patch contains additional bug fixes. (For more info see,Comprehensive Overview of Recommended Bundle Patch 9405592)
- Augmented Verification and Support for Oracle Database 9i Release 2 (9.2.0.8) and Oracle  Databases on Microsoft Windows Platform
- Bug fixes resolving issues with patching CPUs on Databases running on Windows platforms

- Key bug fixes identified at various customers.
Oracle strongly recommends you to apply the latest patch to make sure you do no encounter these issues and you are at the latest patch level for faster issue resolution through support.

#3 Can I apply this patch on top of PSU3 (9282397) for Enterprise Manager ?
Yes, this patch does NOT conflict with PSU3 and can be applied over it.

#4 Is there any known conflicts?
If you had applied the patch 8573971, it would conflict with this patch(9405592). You would need to rollback the patch 8573971 and apply this Bundle. Apply the overlay patch - 9583322  to get the fixes of the rolled back patch 8573971. Note: The overlay patch is currently unavailable, it will be made available in few days.

New Article on Oracle GoldenGate published

Friends,

I am pleased to announce a New article of mine has been published in April 2010
on the Oracle Technology Network (OTN):

Using Oracle GoldenGate for Real-Time Data Integration
http://www.oracle.com/technology/pub/articles/havawala-goldengate.html

This article shows you how to install, set up, and configure Oracle GoldenGate to easily achieve seamless replication of data between Oracle Database 10g and 11g. The Enterprise Manager Management Pack for Oracle GoldenGate is also described (Oracle GoldenGate Director).

Feedback I received recently from a DBA:

I read your article "Using Oracle GoldenGate for Real-Time Data
Integration" in oracle.com technology section.It was very interesting and
nicely documented. Thanks for writing good articles like this.

Regards,

Porus.

Announcing the launch of Oracle Enterprise Manager 11g

Representing years of research, planning, and development, Oracle Enterprise Manager 11g is set to be unveiled on April 22 by Oracle President Charles Phillips.

If you are in the New York area, join Oracle President Charles Phillips and Oracle Senior Vice President Richard Sarwal for the launch of Oracle Enterprise Manager 11g. You can register here: http://bit.ly/bqUskZ

It's also possible to show your interest or even if your attending at this LinkedIn event. http://events.linkedin.com/Oracle-Enterprise-Manager-11g-Launch-New/pub/258070

If you're not able to attende the Live event, don't worry about that, we will be live broadcasting it. You can register for that live webcast from this page: http://bit.ly/9Qnh5f

- The Oracle Enterprise Manager team

EM Jobs and Daylight Saving Time

A user reported that:

"The North American Daylight Saving Time (DST) switch happened on the 14th of March. Since then our Enterprise Manager scheduled RMAN backups are running 1 hour later than ususal - essentially they haven't taken notice of the DST switch. We have Oracle 10.2.0.4 on Solaris 10. We use individual Enterprise Manager dbconsoles for each database. My timezone version is 4. Newfoundland Canada, standard GMT offset of -03:30, DST offset of -02:30. Dbtimezone from dual is -02:30 (this is correct). The agentTZRegion from the emd.properties file (for the specific instance of dbconsole, not the global emd.properties file) is Canada/Newfoundland which is correct. But the RMAN jobs in OEM are still showing a GMT offset of -03:30 hours (explaining the 1 hour offset when they run). These are my two questions/issues:
1. Shouldn't that offset have auto-corrected to -02:30 when DST occurred?
2. I can't change the jobs to have an -02:30 GMT offset because that option doesn't exist in my Time Zone drop down list when trying to schedule an RMAN backup via OEM. Is there an additional patch I need to apply?"

My answer:

Mate, did you search in Metalink for this issue? I found a note that explains your particular case perfectly:

Jobs In Dbconsole Shows One Hour Difference After Dst Patch Is Applied [ID 749147.1]

The reason is simple - your JDK and JRE was not made DST compliant. Simply follow the
instructions in Note:553534.1 after stopping the DBCONSOLE on each node, then restarting it again.

The issue has nothing to do with Enterprise Manager 10g or its jobs system which is quite good, and better in Enterprise Manager 11g. Certainly better than crontab jobs that we DBAs have been doing for years. And who wants to use a crontab when we have a central Grid Control job system controlling multiple unix servers?

Oracle really wants to hear from you! - Patching Survey

Welcome, Oracle really wants to hear from you!

If you are involved with the patching process (evaluating, approving, testing, or deploying), Oracle wants to hear from you. Our primary focus is on how to improve this process for Oracle customers.

We sent this to you because you either; responded to a previous survey or forum post where we asked if you would participate in future studies, or are currently involved with downloading patches from My Oracle Support.

This survey IS NOT for providing general feedback about Oracle products or My Oracle Support. Please use your support process for that type of feedback.

This survey will take about 10 to 15 minutes.

You will be prompted concerning Oracle Database/Middleware, E-Business Suite (Oracle Applications) and Enterprise Manager.

The survey will automatically skip the areas which you respond as not applicable.

Concerns? Want to verify this is from Oracle? Email us directly.
My Oracle Support and Enterprise Manager Patching Team
ajay.prasad@oracle.com

Take the Survey

More comments on Grid Control Book

Friends, here are a few more comments that I received on my upcoming book on Grid Control:

I read the briefing on OTN hope I buy the book and will see how it can help.
Between Grid, cloud and RAC the concept is still a bit cloudy.

Congratulation for this achievement & Thanks for telling. I will wait for
this to be available in market.

Porus, Its great to know that finally some one wrote a very valuable book
for all of us. But I would strongly recommend if you could add additionally
topics related to setting Events, alerts, strategies used in practical
production environments and also customizing the reports, Dashboards and adding
additional few steps to add layer of analytical queries (using the Metadata) to
create ITIL based reporting using various Mgmt repository tables. That way not
only DBA's can use GRID but it can help the Upper Management as well.

My reply:

Thanks guys. Great to know that you appreciate the book. Yes, definitely I have some ITIL content with customization of a few reports. I am not concentrating on events and alerts, I think every other book does that - they look at the "monitoring" aspects of Grid Control and seem to forget the "management" aspects. For eg. Service level management.

Lots of interest in new book

Friends, I have received lots of interest in my new upcoming book (http://www.rampant-books.com/book_1001_advanced_techniques_oem_grid_control.htm), thanks for that.
Here are some of your comments, thanks a lot guys. The book is to be published this Fall 2010.

That is a fantastic news Porus. I will definitely read this book. Do let me
know once it is out in the market. All the very best to your book.

Congrats Sir, will spread the mail around to all my tech staffs.

Congradulations!!! I will look for it.

Congratz on publishing the new book Porus.

Congratulations on the new book. I am wondering if there is a way to get an advance copy of this book either in electronic format or in physical format? I am very interested in this subject.

Porus - Congratulations on completing the book. I will like to get a copy for myself once available in the market.

Well done on putting the book together.I will keep an eye out for it downunder in Australia.

Congratulations on the publication of your New Book!

Eager enough to buy your book on Grid Control as we have installed 10g Grid Control in our environment and I'm sure it'll be boon to us.

Congratulations Porus. Will definetly by it! I with you to finish this book with success.

Congrats !!! Looking a lot more like this....

Congratulations !I am sure that will help lots of DBAs to upgrade from DBA v1.0 to DBA v2.0 in Oracle's terminology.

Good Luck with this.

Congratulations big achievement

Went through the details of your book, it's really a comprehensive guide for the GC guys. Best of luck for your efforts & continue with you endeavour.

Good Luck Porus, would be an interesting read.

My New Grid Control book

Friends,

I am pleased to announce that my new book "Oracle Enterprise Manager Grid Control: Advanced OEM Techniques for the Real World" is getting ready to be published soon (Fall 2010) by Rampant Techpress:

http://www.rampant-books.com/book_1001_advanced_techniques_oem_grid_control.htm

Please do recommend to all your friends and colleagues, it is a great handy book if you really want to make best use of Oracle Enterprise Manager Grid Control.

I have based it on a lot of practical experience and I am sure it will be useful to a lot of you.

Regards,

Porus Homi Havewala
(Oracle ACE Director).