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.