Oracle Enterprise Manager 13c: New and Exciting Features

Oracle Enterprise Manager 13c: New and Exciting Features

By Dankoloski-Oracle on Dec 18, 2015

Oracle Enterprise Manager 13c: What’s New

We just announced the release of Oracle Enterprise Manager 13c. Well, if the number 13 makes you jittery, rest assured that this new release is an improvement on Oracle Enterprise Manager 12c which has witnessed unprecedented adoption among customers worldwide. Oracle Enterprise Manager 12c rests on the key themes of enterprise grade management, stack management and cloud lifecycle management. The 13c version simply bolsters those pillars.

Our first goal in this release has been to make monitoring cloud scale and resilient. Oracle Enterprise Manager today is the nerve center of IT operations among thousands of enterprises, our very own public cloud operations being one among them. Millions of assets in Oracle’s SaaS and PaaS public cloud operations are managed by Enterprise Manager round the clock, which requires that Oracle Cloud’s own Oracle Enterprise Manager instance stays up and running during unplanned and planned downtime windows. Oracle Enterprise Manager 13c therefore introduces “always on” monitoring, where a small companion monitoring application continues to receive critical alerts from the agents out-of-band while the management server is down. One can start the application, take Oracle Enterprise Manager down for patching and continue to be alerted on critical events. Speaking of planned downtime windows, another exciting feature being introduced is “notification blackouts”, which lets administrators monitor their targets during their maintenance windows, while notifications from critical alerts are still turned off.

When it comes to stack management, the BIG news for our customers is the unification of hardware and software management. Ever since Oracle acquired Sun, we have promised a converged systems management, but current customers have been managing hardware through a separate tool called Ops Center. In Oracle Enterprise Manager 13c, some of the important hardware management features have been assimilated into the Cloud Control product. This not only benefits platform administrators in that they can now drill down into the infrastructure problems easily, this also benefits system and storage administrators because they can enjoy the scalability, availability and security framework features of Cloud Control. As an example, critical incidents in the hardware layer can now be published to a 3^rd party ticketing system using the connector framework, something that Oracle hardware customers have asked for a long time. As part of developing the hardware aka the infrastructure management features, we have modeled the infrastructure target types: servers, storage, network, VMs in Enterprise Manager. This also enables us to have a more sophisticated management of Engineered Systems, including the ability to patch a complete Exadata and Exalytics stack. The patching application offers the facility to run the pre-flight checks and monitor the logs from a single place (imagine having to manually monitor the patch execution logs for grid infrastructure, operating system, storage for all the compute and storage cells in a rack). Another enhancement that should thrill Engineered Systems customers is the integration of Exacheck into the Compliance framework of Enterprise Manager; this would let them generate automated notifications and reports for any violation in their Exadata configurations.

One request we always received from our database customers was to enable fine grain access control. Most organizations have multiple personas (Central DBAs, application DBAs, Developers, etc) and would like segregation of duties among these personas. For example, a Developer may be allowed to tune the application but not patch the underlying database. Oracle Enterprise Manager 13c enables fine grained privileges for controlling access to specific features.

In terms of cloud management, the release focuses on three key aspects: the ability to perform database consolidation planning for various scenarios, the ability to manage configuration drifts at scale and improved data lifecycle management across production and test instances.

The new Consolidation Workbench provides an end-to-end workflow that provides three distinct steps:

· What-if analysis on various consolidation scenarios: commodity to engineered systems, non-multitenant to multitenant databases and on-prem to Oracle Cloud.

· The actual enactment of the consolidation by integrating with the provisioning features

· Post-consolidation testing using the SQL Performance Analyzer

The new configuration drift management feature enables administrators to proactively spot the “needle in the haystack” among the hundreds and thousands of members that can constitute a cloud or even across multiple clouds. And last but not the least, Snap Clone customers would be benefited by the ability to keep the test databases in sync with their production.

It would be an incomplete disclosure to limit Oracle Enterprise Manager 13c’s capabilities to the above features. There are many more new features (see the full list) as well as hundreds of enhancements introduced into the existing features. I am certain that IT administrators and consultants would be looking for a top-12 feature list. For them, here’s the summary:

1. Gold image based agent lifecycle management (view screenwatch)

2. “Always on” monitoring (view screenwatch)

3. Notification blackouts for managing target downtime windows (view screenwatch)

4. Cloud-scale configuration drift management

5. Hardware and infrastructure management  (view screenwatch)

6. Engineered Systems patching

7. Exadata and Exalogic-Nimbula VM provisioning

8. Exacheck integration into the compliance framework

9. Flexible access control for database management (view screenwatch)

10. Database Consolidation workbench (view screenwatch)

11. Continuous data refresh between production and test databases

12. Unification of Middleware Consoles into Enterprise Manager 13c (view screenwatch)

To summarize, Enterprise Manager 13c reinforces its ability to manage along two dimensions: vertically across the stack, and horizontally, within and across clouds. So, number 13 indeed sounds lucky for Enterprise Manager customers, right?

By Dankoloski-Oracle on Dec 18, 2015

How to check for Database Option and Management Pack usage

How do you check for Database Option and Management Pack usage? There are two scripts available from Oracle for this purpose. They are :

1. option_usage.sql

This script outputs database option usage and management pack usage by a database target

2.  used_options_details.sql

This script will output the features used by each database option and management pack.

You can get these two scripts from Document ID 1317265.1 in My Oracle Support. The direct link for the document is here.

These scripts can be executed manually on database targets, or optionally they can be run on all targets via Enterprise Manager – which will be more convenient.

Note that the output of these scripts is for information purposes only. You need to talk to the Oracle Sales representative in your location to find out which options and packs your company is licensed for.

This is an example of running the script in Oracle SQL Developer on a particular database. In this database, only the Tuning pack is in use. Although this may be technically valid (the Diagnostics pack may never have been used), you still require the pre-requisite license of the Diagnostics pack to use the Tuning pack.

In the above case, running the second script tells you that the feature being used as part of the Tuning Pack is the “Automatic SQL Tuning Advisor”, and tells you the number of detected uses and the last usage date.     

This blog post was originally published at this link.

Managing Oracle Database 12c with Enterprise Manager – Part XXI

We are discussing the management of Oracle Database 12c in Oracle Enterprise Manager 12c. In our previous blog post on this topic, we looked at the tablespace level Heat Map in Database 12c, showing which objects were accessed with a full table scan. We now move to the Policy tab.

Information about the Compression and Storage policies is displayed. There are 2 storage policies present. Only one object has a policy enabled.  Drill down to the enabled policy.

The object displayed is the table HR.EMPLOYEES. This object has the policy enabled. Click ok to go back to the policy tab. On the policy tab, select the policy and click on “Execute Policy”.

In the window that appears, confirm by clicking on Execute. The policy will be executed. You can also see the PL/SQL that you would have to write to perform this simple action, if it were not for Enterprise Manager.

The evaluation job is submitted. You can go back to the evaluations tab, select the policy, and click on execution history.

This history shows that the job has been created.

On the main Policy tab, there is another button called “Policy Details”. This shows further details of the policy.

Finally, there is the button “Default Execution Settings” on the main Policy tab. This displays information about when and how the policy will be executed.

This has been a quick introduction to what is available in Enterprise Manager 12c for Information Lifecycle Management (ILM) in Database 12c. For more information on Managing the ILM Heat Map and ADO with Enterprise Manager, please see the documentation here.

This blog post was originally published at this link.

Managing Oracle Database 12c with Enterprise Manager – Part XX

We are discussing the management of Oracle Database 12c in Oracle Enterprise Manager 12c. In our previous blog post on this topic, we used Enterprise Manager and added Automatic Data Optimization (ADO) policies that enforceInformation Lifecycle Management (ILM) in Database 12c.

To view all the ADO policies and the Heat Map, select Administration.. Storage.. Information Lifecycle Managementfrom the 12c Database (non-CDB) Home Page in Enterprise Manager:

This displays the Information Lifecycle Management page.  The information you want is in two tabs, the Heat Map tab and the Policy tab. The Heat Map is seen below.

On this page, you can see the Database level heat map or go down to the Tablespace level, and then to the Object level.  Here we have displayed the heat map for the EXAMPLE tablespace by clicking on the "Show Additional" button and selecting this tablespace.

We have then selected a date range, and view by “Last Full Table Scan Date”. This displays the tables that have experienced a full table scan in the date range we have selected. The green color specifies that the date range did not see a very heavy access of these tables; otherwise a different color would have been used for the object that was more heavily accessed.

In the table in the bottom half of the screen, we have searched for the HR schema. A list of objects belonging to the schema is displayed, along with the associated IML policies if any, and other information about the objects.

Let us move to the Policy tab.

This blog post was originally published at this link.

Managing Oracle Database 12c with Enterprise Manager – Part XIX

We are discussing the management of Oracle Database 12c in Oracle Enterprise Manager 12c. In our previous blog post on this topic, we started to look at how Enterprise Manager helps with Information Lifecycle Management (ILM)in Database 12c. We changed the database initialization parameter heat_map to ON.

As the next step, we can add an Automatic Data Optimization (ADO) Policy by editing an Existing Tablespace as shown in the following screenshot.

In this case, we have selected the USERS tablespace, and are specifying a segment level Storage Tiering policywhereby we move newly created (from here on) objects in the tablespace  to a second tier storage tablespace, if the object has not been modified upto a period of 3 months.

The second tier is built on a more economical storage system, as opposed to the first tier high performance storage system. After creating the ADO policy in this manner, if we create a new table in the same tablespace, it will inherit the tablespace ADO policy .

Or, we can add an ADO Policy by editing an Existing Database Object:

This allows you to add a new ADO Policy to an existing database object.

This blog post was originally published at this link.

Managing Oracle Database 12c with Enterprise Manager – Part XVIII

We are discussing the management of Oracle Database 12c in Oracle Enterprise Manager 12c. In our previous blog post on this topic, we looked at Information Lifecycle Management (ILM) in Database 12c, and we will now see how Enterprise Manager helps with that.

Enterprise Manager Cloud Control 12c allows the management of ILM in Database 12c. This was enabled via the DB Plug-in release 12.1.0.5 released 4 months after Enterprise Manager PS2  i.e. Release 3 (released in July 2013).  The DB plug-in release 12.1.0.5 was in October 2013.

The following was included in the Oct. 2013 release:

• ILM Heat Map for DB & Tablespace
• ILM Administration feature to setup ILM policy on Tablespace & Objects

Note that Automatic Data Optimization (ADO) is not supported currently on CDBs and PDBs. It only works on a non-CDB 12c database.

The first step is to change the database initialization parameter heat_map to ON as seen in the following screenshot:

This blog post was originally published at this link.

Managing Oracle Database 12c with Enterprise Manager – Part XVII - Information Lifecycle Management (ILM)

We are discussing the management of Oracle Database 12c in Oracle Enterprise Manager 12c. In our previous blog post on this topic, we were exploring the different tabs in the Performance Hub of Enterprise Manager Database Express 12c. Let us now look at Information Lifecycle Management (ILM) in Database 12c, and how Enterprise Manager helps with that.

Oracle Database 12c has an excellent feature known as Information Lifecycle Management (ILM) which is now fully automated in moving data between different storage, depending on data age and access. The Heat Map and Automatic Data Optimization (ADO) features of Database 12c can be used to implement your ILM strategy, along with the Partitioning, Advanced Compression, and Hybrid Columnar Compression (HCC) options/features of the Oracle Database.

The "Heat Map" feature automatically tracks access to segments (tables and partitions) and rows and blocks.  The ADO feature allows you to define policies at the tablespace, table, partition, or row level. The policies contain conditions and associated actions.

The conditions are based on the data collected by Heat Map, and the actions can either be storage tiering (move the segment to another tablespace) or compression tiering (move the segment or block to a different level of compression).

The actual syntax of setting these ADO policies is not complex, but in totality, setting up many different ADO policies for storage tiering or compression tiering manually at the command line, and keeping track of those policies manually by a DBA, would work out as a complex task.

To alleviate that kind of task, Enterprise Manager would be very useful. Database 12c DBAS would want to use Enterprise Manager for this purpose.

More on the use of Enterprise Manager for ILM in the next blog post.

This blog post was originally published at this link.

Separate or one Enterprise Manager environment for managing prod and non-prod targets

A friend wrote:

I know we can manage all targets using one single Enterprise Manager 12c environment but I know there are advantages of having two separate environments, one for Prod targets and the other for non-Prod targets.  Please explain pros and cons of both architectures, so that we can decide one over the other.

My answer:

Mate, the benefits of a single Enterprise Manager install for Prod and non-prod are manifold:

1. Single pane of glass to see and manage and monitor all software and hardware, whether prod or non-prod
2. Ability to control access between DBA teams. A dev DBA will not be able to even see a prod target if the access is properly set up.
3. Several EM packs work more effectively if targets are in 1 EM system. For example, comparing configurations between dev, test and production is only possible if all targets are together. Change management – copying schema changes from development  to test to production – works seamlessly if all the targets are together. And so on.
4. A separate EM for separate targets will increase EM management overhead. You will need to patch the OMS as well, so now you are patching two instead of one, and so on.
5. Everything in EM, including things like monitoring templates, will need to be duplicated.
6. Defeats the idea of Database as a Service, if the company wants to move to that in the future. If targets are in different EM systems, you cannot use them in database pools for the same self-service user defined in an EM system. The self-service user now will have two self service screens, one for production, one for test. This may work however with a separate orchestration engine, like Oracle BPM.

Regarding the advantages of separate systems, do tell me. Security? Less load on the OMS from non-prod targets? Most of these points and objections ultimately turn out to be non-valid. Nothing beats a centralized EM installation managing and monitoring your entire enterprise.

This blog post was originally published at this link.

Snap Cloning Databases on Exadata using Enterprise Manager

By Subhadeep Sengupta (Oracle)

Historically, Exadata has mostly been deployed for heavy, production workloads, leaving cheap commodity hardware and third-party storage to perform as infrastructure for Development and Testing. From the viewpoint of Enterprise Manager, we have seen customers clone production databases running on Exadata to secondary storage such as ZFS Storage Appliance or even third-party NAS or SAN for the purpose of testing. Customers mainly used RMAN (with or without Enterprise Manager) to clone the databases. While the master clones (often referred to as Test Master) could be further cloned via storage efficient snapshots, there were significant limitations to the approach.

• First of all, the testing on non-like systems from Exadata (both compute and storage) often yielded erroneous inferences. 
• Second, both the compute and storage on existing Exadata racks often remained underutilized.

Most surveys establish that there are several Dev/Test copies for every Production database, and leaving Dev/Test outside the realm of Exadata can only yield partial usage of engineered systems. 

Two recent advancements in Exadata break this existing barrier. First of all, the compute nodes on Exadata can now be virtualized. Consolidated environments can now use Oracle Virtual Machine (OVM) on X5-2, X4-2, X3-2, and X2-2 database servers to deliver higher levels of consolidation and isolation between workloads. The Virtual machines can be configured on demand with the appropriate number of Virtual CPUs (vCPUs) for iterative testing. Second, with Oracle Database 12c Release 1 (12.1) release 12.1.0.2 BP5 or later, space-efficient database snapshots can now be quickly created for test and development purposes on Exadata.

Snapshots start with a shared read-only copy of the production database (referred to as the Test Master in Enterprise Manager Parlance) that has been masked and/or cleansed of any sensitive information. Snapshot technology as deployed on Exadata is "allocate on first write", not copy on write. As changes are made, each snapshot writes the changed blocks to a sparse disk group. Multiple users can create independent snapshots from the same base database, therefore multiple test and development environments can share space while maintaining independent databases for each task. The base database must remain read-only during the usable lifespan of snapshots that are created from that base database. If there is a need to create another set of snapshots from a more recent copy of production data, a new read-only base from a production database needs to be created.

Enterprise Manager 12cR5 leverages the capabilities of Exadata to extend the Snap Clone capabilities for Exadata Sparse clones. As shown in this tutorial, with Snap Clone, Enterprise Manager can create a Test Master using either Dataguard technology or RMAN preceded by data masking. The Test Master can be created either on the same Exadata rack or on a different one. Once the Test Master has been created, snapshots can then be created on the sparse disk groups using the Deployment Procedures. The Deployment Procedures also automate the post-cloning discovery and promotion of the cloned targets, making them fully managed right from inception. Internal testing confirms that for cloning a Terabyte of database with a complete discovery of all its components takes less than a minute.

Enterprise Manager also helps DBAs track the lineage of the clones by providing a report on the production database, the Test Master and its clones. Enterprise Manager Snap Clone on Exadata supports both regular as well as pluggable databases with optional ACFS configuration. In addition to support for Exadata sparse clones, Snap Clone continues to support NAS (ZFS Storage Appliance and NetApp) and SAN (certain EMC storage arrays), in case users want to deploy these for their Dev-Test environments. 

Further Reading Resources

• To learn more about Database as a Service visit the otn page.
• Prerequisites for setting up Exadata Snapshots are documented here.
• Watch the video, Snap Clone Multitenant (Pluggable Database) on Exadata here.

--Subhadeep Sengupta (@Subh_here) 

Managing Oracle Database 12c with Enterprise Manager – Part XVI

We are discussing the management of Oracle Database 12c in Oracle Enterprise Manager 12c. In our previous blog post on this topic, we were exploring the Activity tab in the Performance Hub of Enterprise Manager Database Express 12c. Let us move to the Monitored SQL Tab.

This is the Real-time SQL Monitoring feature of the Diagnostics pack. This screen shows all the long running SQL statements (that have consumed 5 seconds or more of combined CPU and I/O time in a single execution, or are using parallel query).

Ever wondered why that report was taking so long? It is possible to drill down and see the plan steps executing for the SQL statement, as can be seen in the following screenshot. This helps considerably in analyzing long-running SQL statements.

The next two tabs of the Performance Hub show ADDM (Automatic Database Diagnostics Monitor) and its results, including Real-time ADDM which was previously used for emergency database issues, but now runs proactively to catch database issues before they cause a real problem.

For example, the following real-time ADDM report shows library cache contention, and the “Show Reasons” button suggests that the system is CPU bound.

Real-time ADDM runs in the database automatically every 3 seconds, and in this way is able to detect transient performance issues. The performance data in memory is examined, and any performance spikes are detected. The administrator is then informed of the spike and its root cause.

This blog post was originally published at this link.

Managing Oracle Database 12c with Enterprise Manager – Part XV

We are discussing the management of Oracle Database 12c in Oracle Enterprise Manager 12c. In our previous blog post on this topic, we started to look into the Performance Hub of Enterprise Manager Database Express 12c. Let us move to the Activity tab.

The red line shows the CPU cores used by this VBOX image, and obviously at a point of time this line has been exceeded. The total CPU wait class can be seen in green, the red part shows the concurrency wait class and so on.

We can drill down to the actual SQL Id and user session at this point of time. However, we can also change the top dimensions of this graph to the actual wait event, as seen below.

Notice that the graph has now changed to display the individual wait events such as db file sequential read, log file parallel write, row cache lock and so on. You can drill down further on any of these wait events and find the actual SQL and session causing the events. 

You can also change the lower dimension, here we have drilled down on the wait event: db file sequential read, and changed the lower dimension to “object” – this displays the objects causing this wait event, and also the SQL below. Pretty powerful.

You can select a number of other dimensions such as SQL ID, object, Instance, PDB, Service, User ID, and so on in this graph.

This blog post was originally published at this link.

Managing Oracle Database 12c with Enterprise Manager – Part XIV

We are discussing the management of Oracle Database 12c in Oracle Enterprise Manager 12c. In our previous blog post on this topic, we discussed the new Enterprise Manager Database Express 12c, which is the replacement for the earlier Database Control (used in previous versions of the Oracle database such as 11g and 10g, to manage a single database).

One of the menu options in Database Express 12c is the Database Performance Hub. This gives a single view of DB performance - including ADDM, SQL Tuning, Real-Time SQL Monitoring, and ASH Analytics. It supports both a real-time & historical mode. There is a dedicated tab for RAC, if a RAC database is being used. It also has a historical view of SQL Monitoring reports.

Select Performance.. Performance Hub from the Database Express menu, the following page appears:

At the top, you can slide and select the time of interest. The information in the graphs below the slider changes accordingly. You can see the CPU load at the Host level, the total memory used by the database and its breakdown, the IO requests, and the Active sessions, foreground and background.

Before moving to the other tabs, click on the top PerfHub Report. This shows:

This is an Active Report that you are generating to hand over to your developers, so select the third option – All, which will save all the details including SQL statements.

The data is retrieved for the Active report, this takes a minute or so, and then the collection is completed.

Save the Active report as a file “perfhub_rt_10190900.html”. When you open up this file, the performance hub is seen as saved as a whole, including the various tabs.

Here we have moved to the Activity tab, which we will discuss in the next blog post.

This blog spot was originally published at this link.

Managing Oracle Database 12c with Enterprise Manager – Part XIII - Database Express 12c

We are discussing the management of Oracle Database 12c in Oracle Enterprise Manager 12c. In our previous blog post on this topic, we briefly looked at the changes for Metering and Chargeback. We will now look at the new Database Express 12c.

Oracle Database 12c introduces “Enterprise Manager Database Express 12c” instead of Enterprise Manager Database Control that was available with previous versions of the database, such as 11g and 10g. The important thing to remember is that both Database control, and Database Express, can only be used to manage a single database as opposed to Enterprise Manager 12c Cloud Control.

As we can see, Enterprise Manager Database Express 12c provides basic administrator support for storage management(tablespaces, archive logs, control files, redo logs, undo tablespaces), security management (users, roles profiles),configuration management (initialization parameters, memory, database properties, feature usage), and performance diagnostics and tuning (Performance Hub and SQL Tuning Advisor).

For licensing purposes, the performance components require the Diagnostics and Tuning pack for Database 12c Enterprise Edition (EE). However the basic administration pieces can be used for free and also are accessible in Database 12c Standard Edition (SE).

Database Express 12c supports single instance or RAC databases, and Standard Edition (SE) or Enterprise Edition (EE). Since the administration activities supported are basic, the DBA will need to use a centralized Enterprise Manager Cloud Control installation for more advanced DBA activities on the database – such as setting up RMAN backups, Data Guard standbys, Database Resource Manager, Data Redaction and so on. These tasks obviously cannot be performed in Database Express 12c.

Database Express 12c can be installed along with the database (such as when the database is created using the Database Configuration Assistant (dbca)), in the same manner as Database Control 11g/10g. However, the difference between Database Control and Database Express, is that the latter runs inside the database and there are no extra Middleware components installed on the database server. The XDB server inside the database is used for web services. This itself is a welcome change.

Due to the improved and streamlined architecture, the disk space used is approximately only 20MB or so, and the CPU and memory overhead is also greatly reduced. 100% of the UI rendering for the screens is performed in the browser, and the database server only runs SQL - in contrast to the previous version of Database Control.

In the next blog post, we will take a closer look at the Database Performance Hub component of Database Express 12c.

This blog spot was originally published at this link.

Managing Oracle Database 12c with Enterprise Manager – Part XII

We are discussing the management of Oracle Database 12c in Oracle Enterprise Manager 12c. In our previous blog post on this topic, we looked at how the Self-Service console would appear to the Self-Service Application (SSA) user, with the ability to provision databases, schemas or PDBs on the fly.

Metering and Chargeback is an important feature of the cloud. Due to the agile self-service nature of the cloud, it is important to set up quotas for the consumers, as well as meter the usage of the cloud, and use calculated dollar costs for showback or chargeback, so that the cloud is not exploited by over-usage by the consumers. This would also serve as a way for an internal IT department to show its value to the other business units, by putting an internal cost to its services – at least for showback purposes.

The “Chargeback and Capacity Planning Plug-in 12.1.0.4” (from EM12c Release 3) started to provide support for Oracle Pluggable Databases (12c PDBs). This enabled the Chargeback administrator to add a Container Database (CDB) to Chargeback, and assign each Pluggable Database (PDB) individually to a cost center.

This plug-in is now renamed to the latest available “Oracle Consolidation Planning and Chargeback 12.1.0.6” as can be seen via Setup.. Extensibility.. Plug-ins from the Enterprise Manager console.

A friend recently asked me: “Can I use showback / chargeback for an already existent database, that is, without the need to create a database as a service?”

My answer was that you cannot use chargeback unless you fully license the DBLM pack and Cloud Management pack and add the database as a resource to a zone with a charge plan. You don’t need to set up the full Database-as-a-service and enable self-service, it will just calculate the usage for an existing database if it is added in this way.

For more information on setting up chargeback, refer to the documentation here.

This blog post was originally published at this link.

Managing Oracle Database 12c with Enterprise Manager – Part XI

We are discussing the management of Oracle Database 12c in Oracle Enterprise Manager 12c. In our previous blog post on this topic, we looked at “Database as a Service” and “Schema-as-a-Service”, and also talked about “Pluggable database (PDB) as a Service (PDBaaS)”.

The “Schema as a Service” capability was introduced since the Cloud plug-in “Enterprise Manager for Oracle Cloud (SSA) 12.1.0.5”. The renamed plug-in “Oracle Cloud Application 12.1.0.7” was later released in October 2013. This added the capability of the Pluggable Database as a Service, i.e. PDBaaS.

Note that the current plug-in version available is Oracle Cloud Application 12.1.0.8. To check your version, go to Setup.. Extensibility.. Plug-ins from the Enterprise Manager console.  

If your plug-in version is not equivalent to the above, you may need to update your plug-in using Setup.. Extensibility.. Self Update. For more information on the self update process, please see the documentation here. You will need to be on Enteprrise Manager 12c Release 4 (12.1.0.4) in order to use the latest plug-in. If you are on an earlier release of Enterprise Manager, you will not be able to update the plug-in to the latest version.

The final aim of the Cloud Administrator, on setting up the database pools, service catalog, quotas and chargeback plans, is to provide the self-service capability to the SSA (Self-Service Application) user as can be seen below – the ability to ask for and get databases, schemas and PDBs via self-service.

More in the next blog post. 

This blog post was originally published at this link.

Managing Oracle Database 12c with Enterprise Manager – Part X - Database as a Service

We are discussing the management of Oracle Database 12c in Oracle Enterprise Manager 12c. In our previous blog post on this topic, we looked at the Database Resource Manager and how it can be used to control resources at the PDB level in Database 12c.

Let us now look at how Enterprise Manager’s “Database as a Service (DBaaS)” capability works with Database 12c and its container and pluggable databases.

With Oracle Enterprise Manager 12c, the Cloud Administrator is able to set up and offer the self-service of virtual machines (Oracle VM) with databases – this being more of an infrastructure cloud or Infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS), since virtual machines are being provisioned on the fly.

The Cloud Administrator is also able to set up and offer the self-service creation of single-instance or RAC databases on existing Oracle Homes in what is known as a database pool for databases, or alternatively the self-service creation of schemas in an existing single-instance or RAC database in what is known as a database pool for schemas.

This self-service capability can also be called “Database as a Service” and “Schema-as-a-Service” respectively.

With the addition of Database 12c, the additional capability shown in the illustration above is the self-service creation of PDBs, in an existing single instance or RAC Container database (CDB). This is what we now call a database pool for PDBs. This self-service capability can be called as “Pluggable database (PDB) as a Service (PDBaaS)”.

Using this capability, the Cloud Self-Service Access (SSA) users are now able to self-service the provisioning of Pluggable databases inside a Container database very easily. This is the next stage of the Private Database Cloud.

For licensing aspects, as far as DBaaS is concerned, the Cloud Management Pack for Oracle database is required, with the pre-requisite of the Database Lifecycle Management (DBLM) pack – this is the pack that does all of the provisioning under the hood, whereas the Cloud Management pack adds the capabilities of self-service, quotas, chargeback/showback and so on.

This blog post was originally published at this link.

Managing Oracle Database 12c with Enterprise Manager – Part IX

We are discussing the management of Oracle Database 12c via Oracle Enterprise Manager 12c. In our previous blog post on this topic, we looked at how easy it was to set up Oracle Data Redaction for a 12c database using Enterprise Manager - this capability being used to hide confidential data on the fly as it is being displayed.

We will now look at the Database Resource Manager and its new capabilities to handle PDBs in Database 12c, and how it can be set up via Enterprise Manager.

Drill down to the 12c Database target in Enterprise Manager. From the home page of the database, open the Administration menu and choose Resource Manager. The Resource Manager Home page is displayed.

As can be seen, the Database Resource Manager is now CDB aware and allows you to create CDB Resource plans. This will control resources to Pluggable databases inside the CDB. Drill down to the CDB resource plans, this displays the following screen.

Click on “Edit” to define the CDB Resource Plan.

In the Resource Plan, by default, all the PDBs have a “share” of one (1) . There are three PDBs in this container database, as displayed on this page - “PDB(3)”. Therefore, each PDB has a share of 33%. 

You can add a separate Resource Allocation by clicking on the “Add/Remove” button.

Here we have added PDB3 as a separate entry with 2 shares to the Resource Allocation. The remaining PDBs have 1 share each.  This means 50% is the Resource Allocation of PDB3, and the other two PDBs have 25% each. This can be used to cover a scenario where PDB3 is an important application’s pluggable database, and more resources are required to be allocated to this pluggable database.

We are also activating this plan with a simple tick mark on this page. Click on Apply. And we haven’t written a single line of PL/SQL code (which is normally required to define a resource plan if not using Enterprise Manager).

For more detailed information on the powerful capabilities of the Oracle Database Resource Manager, please refer to the chapter “Managing Resources with Oracle Database Resource Manager” in the 12c Database Admin guide.

In the next blog post, we will look at more management aspects of Oracle database 12c using Enterprise Manager, in particular the ability to self-service the creation of PDBs using “Pluggable database (PDB) as a Service (PDBaaS)” – a form of Database as a Service.

This blog post was originally posted at this link.