Manila, July 25: Oracle Enterprise Manager Cloud Control 12c Overview and New Features Workshop

If you are in Makati City, Manila, Philipines on July 25th, this is my upcoming seminar. Please register if you would like to attend.

http://www.oracle.com/webapps/events/ns/EventsDetail.jsp?p_eventId=155824&src=7599523&src=7599523&Act=20 

Oracle Enterprise Manager Cloud Control 12c Overview and New Features Workshop 
Wednesday, July 25, 2012
09:30 a.m. – 01:00 p.m. 

Oracle Philippines
Conference Room 1 & 2
19th Floor, Pacific Star Building,
Senator Gil J. Puyat corner Makati Avenues,
Makati City, Metro Manila 1200 

Overview
Join us for a very interesting Overview of the latest Enterprise Manager Cloud Control 12c, including the recommended architecture for using Enterprise Manager, an explanation of the most popular EM capabilities, and a walkthrough of the Database Lifecycle Management pack which provides capabilities for database/ server/ OS configuration management, database provisioning and patch automation, and database change management (schema level changes and comparisons). 

Attend this seminar to get an idea of Enterprise Manager Cloud Control 12c, including the new Test Data Management Pack (used for data subsetting). We will also touch on Oracle and the Cloud. We will go through, in detail, the New Features in the Cloud Control 12c version.

In all, this is a very well-rounded presentation on Enterprise Manager to give a solid idea of what this product is about. A Live Demo of the main features is included using Oracle’s Demonstration systems in the USA.

The seminar is conducted by Porus Homi Havewala, who is a Double Oracle Certified Master (OCM 10g &11g), Oracle ACE, and author of several popular OTN Articles and White papers, and also two popular books on Oracle Enterprise Manager. He has 18+ years of experience with Oracle technology and 26+ years in the IT industry. 

Please see the link for further details.

Regards,

Porus.

New EM 12c plug-ins

Announcing the release of following EM 12c plug-ins: ·      Enterprise Manager for Microsoft Active Directory ·      Enterprise Manager for Microsoft Biz Talk Server ·      Enterprise Manager for Microsoft .Net Framework ·      Enterprise Manager for Microsoft IIS
12.1.0.1.0 version of these plug-ins are being released for the first time, on top of 12c Framework. These are certified to work with 12101/12101BP1 Platform and require Windows Agent. The new plug-ins are now available from self-update.

Database-as-a-Service on Exadata Cloud

Database-as-a-Service on Exadata Cloud

By Gagan Chawla on Jul 04, 2012

Note – Oracle Enterprise Manager 12c DBaaS is platform agnostic and is designed to work on Exadata/non-Exadata, physical/virtual, Oracle/non Oracle platforms and it’s not a mandatory requirement to use Exadata as the base platform.

Database-as-a-Service (DBaaS) is an important trend these days and the top business drivers motivating customers towards private database cloud model include constant pressure to reduce IT Costs and Complexity, and also to be able to improve Agility and Quality of Service. The first step many enterprises take in their journey towards cloud computing is to move to a consolidated and standardized environment and Exadata being already a proven best-in-class popular consolidation platform, we are seeing now more and more customers starting to evolve from Exadata based platform into an agile self service driven private database cloud using Oracle Enterprise Manager 12c.

Together Exadata Database Machine and Enterprise Manager 12c provides industry’s most comprehensive and integrated solution to transform from a typical silo’ed environment into enterprise class database cloud with self service, rapid elasticity and pay-per-use capabilities.

In today’s post, I’ll list down the important steps to enable DBaaS on Exadata using Enterprise Manager 12c. These steps are chalked down based on a recent DBaaS implementation from a real customer engagement -

• Project Planning - First step involves defining the scope of implementation, mapping functional requirements and objectives to use cases, defining high availability, network, security requirements, and delivering the project plan. In a Cloud project you plan around technology, business and processes all together so ensure you engage your actual end users and stakeholders early on in the project right from the scoping and planning stage.
• Setup your EM 12c Cloud Control Site – Once the project plan approval and sign off from stakeholders is achieved, refer to EM 12c Install guide and these are some important tips to follow during the site setup phase -
  • Review the new EM 12c Sizing paper before you get started with install
  • Cloud, Chargeback and Trending, Exadata plug ins should be selected to deploy during install
  • Refer to EM 12c Administrator’s guide for High Availability, Security, Network/Firewall best practices and options
  • Your management and managed infrastructure should not be combined i.e. EM 12c repository should not be hosted on same Exadata where target Database Cloud is to be setup
• Setup Roles and Users – Cloud Administrator (EM_CLOUD_ADMINISTRATOR), Self Service Administrator (EM_SSA_ADMINISTRATOR), Self Service User (EM_SSA_USER) are the important roles required for cloud lifecycle management. Roles and users are managed by Super Administrator via Setup menu –> Security option. For Self Service/SSA users custom role(s) based on EM_SSA_USER should be created and EM_USER, PUBLIC roles should be revoked during SSA user account creation.
• Configure Software Library – Cloud Administrator logs in and in this step configures software library via Enterprise menu –> provisioning and patching option and the storage location is OMS shared filesystem. Software Library is the centralized repository that stores all software entities and is often termed as ‘local store’.
• Setup Self Update – Self Update is one of the most innovative and cool new features in EM 12c framework. Self update can be accessed via Setup -> Extensibility option by Super Administrator and is the unified delivery mechanism to get all new and updated entities (Agent software, plug ins, connectors, gold images, provisioning bundles etc) in EM 12c.
• Deploy Agents on all Compute nodes, and discover Exadata targets – Refer to Exadata discovery cookbook for detailed walkthrough to ensure successful discovery of Exadata targets.
• Configure Privilege Delegation Settings – This step involves deployment of privilege setting template on all the nodes by Super Administrator via Setup menu -> Security option with the option to define whether to use sudo or powerbroker for all provisioning and patching operations.
• Provision Grid Infrastructure with RAC Database on Compute Nodes – Software is provisioned in this step via a provisioning profile using EM 12c database provisioning. In case of Exadata, Grid Infrastructure and RAC Database software is already deployed on compute nodes via OneCommand from Oracle, so SSA Administrator just needs to discover Oracle Homes and Listener as EM targets. Databases will be created as and when users request for databases from cloud.
• Customize Create Database Deployment Procedure – the actual database creation steps are "templatized" in this step by Self Service Administrator and the newly saved deployment procedure will be used during service template creation in next step. This is an important step and make sure you have locked all the required variables marked as locked as ‘Y’ in this table.
• Setup Self Service Portal – This step involves setting up of zones, user quotas, service templates, chargeback plan. The SSA portal is setup by Self Service Administrator via Setup menu -> Cloud -> Database option and following guided workflow. Refer to DBaaS cookbook for details. You also have an option to customize SSA login page via steps documented in EM 12c Cloud Administrator’s guide
• Final Checks – Define and document process guidelines for SSA users and administrators. Get your SSA users trained on Self Service Portal features and overall DBaaS model and SSA administrators should be familiar with Self Service Portal setup pieces, EM 12c database lifecycle management capabilities and overall EM 12c monitoring framework.
• GO LIVE – Announce rollout of Database-as-a-Service to your SSA users. Users can login to the Self Service Portal and request/monitor/view their databases in Exadata based database cloud.

Congratulations! You just delivered a successful database cloud implementation project!

In future posts, we will cover these additional useful topics around database cloud –

• DBaaS Implementation tips and tricks – right from setup to self service to managing the cloud lifecycle
• ‘How to’ enable real production databases copies in DBaaS with rapid provisioning in database cloud
• Case study of a customer who recently achieved success with their transformational journey from traditional silo’ed environment on to Exadata based database cloud using Enterprise Manager 12c.

More Information –

• Podcast on Database as a Service using Oracle Enterprise Manager 12c
• Oracle Enterprise Manager 12c Installation and Administration guide, Cloud Administration guide
• DBaaS Cookbook
• Exadata Discovery Cookbook
• Screenwatch: Private Database Cloud: Set Up the Cloud Self-Service Portal
• Screenwatch: Private Database Cloud: Use the Cloud Self-Service Portal

The Enterprise Manager Video series

Have a look at the The Enterprise Manager Video series on You Tube. Interesting.

http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL172B9B9DF2DC0D08&feature=plpp

Regards,

Porus.

Expanding the Partner Ecosystem with Third-Party Plug-ins

By Joe Diemer

Oracle Enterprise Manager’s extensibility capabilities are designed to allow customers and partners to adapt Enterprise Manager for management of heterogeneous environments with Plug-ins and Connectors.  Third-party developers continue to take advantage of Oracle Enterprise Manager’s Extensibility Development Kit (EDK) to build plug-ins to Enterprise Manager 12c, such as F5’s BIG IP Plug-in and Entuity’s Eye of the Storm Network Management Plug-In.  Partners can also validate their plug-ins through the Oracle Validated Integration (OVI) program, which assures customers that the plug-in has been tested and is functionally and technically sound, is designed in a reliable and standardized manner, and operates and performs as documented.

Two very recent examples of partners which have beta versions of their plug-ins are Blue Medora's VMware vSphere plug-in and the NetApp Storage plug-in. 


VMware vSphere Plug-in by Blue Medora
Blue Medora, an Oracle Partner Network (OPN) “Gold” member, just announced that it is now signing up customers to try a beta version of their new VMware vSphere plug-in for Enterprise Manager 12c.  According to Blue Medora, the vSphere plug-in monitors critical VMware metrics (CPU, Memory, Disk, Network, etc) at the Host, VM, Cluster and Resource Pool levels.  It has minimal performance impact via an “agentless” approach that requires no installation directly on VMware servers.  It has discovery capabilities for VMware Datacenters, ESX Hosts, Clusters, Virtual Machines, and Datastores.  It offers integration of native VMware Events into Enterprise Manager, and it provides over 300 VMware-related health, availability, performance, and configuration metrics.  It comes with more than 30 out-of-the-box pre-defined thresholds and can manage VMware via a series of jobs split between cluster, host and VM target types.

The company reports that the Enterprise Manager 12c plug-in supports vSphere versions 4.0, 4.5 and 5.0.  Platforms supported include Linux 64-bit, Windows, AIX and Solaris SPARC and x86.  Information about the plug-in, including how to sign up for the beta, is available at their web site at http://bluemedora.com after selecting the "Products" tab.


NetApp Storage Plug-in
NetApp, also an OPN member, believes the combination of storage system monitoring with comprehensive management of Oracle systems with Enterprise Manager will help customers reduce the cost and complexity of managing applications that rely on NetApp storage and Oracle technologies.  So, NetApp built a plug-in and reports that it has comprehensive availability and performance information for NetApp storage systems.  Using the plug-in, Oracle Enterprise Manager customers with NetApp storage solutions can track the association between databases and storage components and thereby respond to faults and IO performance bottlenecks quickly. With the latest configuration management capabilities, one can also perform drift analysis to make sure all storage systems are configured as per established gold standards.
The company is also now signing up beta customers, which can be done at the NetApp Communities site by clicking HERE.


Learn More about Enterprise Manager Extensibility
More plug-ins from other partners are soon to come, which I'll be reporting on them here.  To learn more about Enterprise Manager and how customers and partners can build plug-ins using the EDK to manage a multi-vendor data center, go to http://oracle.com/enterprisemanager in the Heterogeneous Management solution area.  The site also lists the plug-ins available with information on how to obtain them.  More info about the Oracle Validated Integration program can be found at the OPN Enterprise Manager Knowledge Zone in the "Develop" tab.

Photos and Download PDF for Jakarta seminars on EM Cloud Control 12c

Friends,

Here are some photos on the EM Cloud Control 12c Overview/New Features seminar that I recently conducted in Jakarta, Indonesia. The first day was for Oracle Partners, the second for Oracle Customers.

We covered the EM 12c Overview, Architecture, Database Lifecycle Management pack, Test Data Management pack, Oracle Cloud Overview, and New features of 12c in all of these. The updated PDF can be downloaded from this Mediafire link:

http://www.mediafire.com/?l25h2chvyv3ocvc

Oracle Partner Seminar Photo:

Oracle Customer Seminar Photo:

Regards,

Porus.

Jakarta June 20th: Oracle Enterprise Manager Cloud Control 12c Overview and New Features Workshop

If you are in Jakarta on June 20th, this is my upcoming seminar. Please register if you can attend.

http://www.oracle.com/webapps/events/ns/EventsDetail.jsp?p_eventId=155814&src=7599523&src=7599523&Act=16

Oracle Enterprise Manager Cloud Control 12c Overview and New Features Workshop
Wednesday, June 20, 2012

10:00 a.m. – 1:00 p.m. Oracle Indonesia
Rinjani Room
Sentral Senayan 1, Office Tower,
9/F, Jl. Asia Afrika, No. 8
Jakarta 10270, Indonesia

Overview
Join us for a very interesting Overview of the latest Enterprise Manager Cloud Control 12c, including the recommended architecture for using Enterprise Manager, an explanation of the most popular EM capabilities, and a walkthrough of the Database Lifecycle Management pack which provides capabilities for database/ server/ OS configuration management, database provisioning and patch automation, and database change management (schema level changes and comparisons).

Attend this seminar to get an idea of Enterprise Manager Cloud Control 12c, including the new Test Data Management Pack (used for data subsetting). We will also touch on Oracle and the Cloud. We will go through, in detail, the New Features in the Cloud Control 12c version.

In all, this is a very well-rounded presentation on Enterprise Manager to give a solid idea of what this product is about. A Live Demo of the main features is included using Oracle’s Demonstration systems in the USA.

The seminar is conducted by Porus Homi Havewala, who is a Double Oracle Certified Master (OCM 10g &11g), Oracle ACE, and author of several popular OTN Articles and White papers, and also two popular books on Oracle Enterprise Manager. He has 18+ years of experience with Oracle technology and 26+ years in the IT industry.

Please see the link for further details.

Regards,

Porus.