Database Lifecycle Management for Cloud Service Providers

By Sudip Datta 

Adopting the Cloud Computing paradigm enables service providers to maximize revenues while driving capital costs down through greater efficiencies of working capital and OPEX changes. In case of enterprise private cloud, corporate IT, which plays the role of the provider, may not be interested in revenues, but still care about providing differentiated service at lower cost. The efficiency and cost eventually makes the service profitable and sustainable. This basic tenet has to be satisfied irrespective of the type of service-infrastructure (IaaS), platform (PaaS) or software application (SaaS). In this blog, we specifically focus on the database layer and how its lifecycle gets managed by the Service Providers. 

Any service provider needs to ensure that:

• Hardware and software population are in control. As new consumers come in and some consumers retire, there is a constant flux of resources in the data center. The flux has to be managed and controlled
• The platform for providing the service is standardized, so that operations can be conducted predictable and at scale across a pool of resources
• Mundane and repeatable tasks like backup, patching, etc are automated

• Customer attrition does not happen owing to heightened compliance risk

While the Database Lifecycle Management features of Enterprise Manager have been widely adopted, I feel that the applicability of the features with respect to service providers is yet well understood and hence appreciated. In this blog, let me try addressing how the lifecycle management features can be effective in addressing each of the above requirements.

1. Controlling hardware and software population:

Enterprise Manager 12c provides a near real-time view of the assets in a data center. It comes with out-of-box inventory reports that show the current population and the growth trend within the data center. The inventory can be further sliced and diced based on cost center, owner, etc. In a cloud, whether private or public, the target properties of each asset can be appropriately populated, so that the provider can easily figure out the distribution of assets. For example, how many databases are owned by Marketing LOB can be easily answered. The flux within the data center is usually higher when virtualization techniques such as server virtualization and Oracle 12c multitenant option are used. These technologies make the provisioning process extremely nimble, potentially leading to a higher number of virtual machines (VMs) or pluggable databases (PDBs) within the data center and hence accentuating the need for such ongoing reporting. The inventory reports can be also created using BI Publisher and delivered to non-EM users, such as a CIO.

Now, not all reports can always be readily available. There can be situations where a data center manager can seek adhoc information, such as, how many databases owned by a particular customer is running on Exadata. This involves an adhoc query based upon an association, viz. database running on Exadata and target properties, viz. owner being the customer. Enterprise Manager 12c provides a sophisticated Configuration Search feature that lets administrators define such adhoc queries and save them for reuse.

2. Standardization of platform:

The massive standardization of platform components is not merely a nice-to-have for a cloud service provider, it is rather a must-have. A provider may choose to offer various levels of services, tagged with levels such as gold, silver and bronze. However, for each such level, the platform components need to be standardized, not only for ease of manageability but also for ensuring consistency of QOS across all the tenants. So how can the platform be standardized? We can highlight two major Enterprise Manager 12c features here:

The ability to rollout gold images that can be version controlled within Enterprise Manager's Software Library. The inputs of the provisioning process can be "locked down" by the designer of the provisioning process, thereby ensuring that each deployment is a replica of the other.

The ability to compare the configuration of deployments (often referred to as the "Points of Delivery" of the services). This is a very powerful feature that supports 1-n comparisons across multiple tiers of the stack. For example, one can compare an entire database machine from storage cells, compute nodes to databases with one or more of those.

3. Automation of repeatable tasks:

A large portion of OPEX for a service provider is expended while executing mundane and repeatable tasks like backup, log file cleanup or patching. Enterprise Manager 12c comes with an automation framework comprising Jobs and Deployment Procedures that lets administrators define these repetitive actions and schedule them as needed. EMCC’s task automation framework is scalable, carries functions such as ability to schedule, resume, retry which are of paramount importance in conducting mass operations in an enterprise scale cloud. The task automation verbs are also exposed through the EMCLI interface. Oracle Cloud administrators make extensive use of EMCLI for large scale operations on thousands of tenant services.

One of the most popular features of Enterprise Manager 12c is the out-of-box procedures for patch automation. The patching procedures can patch the Linux operating system, clusterware and the database. For minimizing the downtime involved in the patching process Enterprise Manager 12c also supports out-of-place patching that can prepare the patched software ahead of time and migrate the instances one by one as needed. This technique is widely adopted by the service providers to make sure the tenants' downtime related SLAs are respected and adhered to. The co-ordination of such downtime can be instrumented by Enterprise Manager 12c's blackout functionality.

4. Managing Compliance risks:

In a service driven model, the provider is liable in case of security breaches. The consumer and in turn, the customer of the consumer's apps need to be assured that their data is not breached into owing to platform level vulnerabilities. The security breaches often happen owing to faulty configuration such as default passwords, relaxed file permissions, or an open network port. The hardening of the platform therefore, has to be done at all levels-OS, network, database, etc. The security breaches often happen owing to faulty configuration such as default passwords, relaxed file permissions, or an open port. . To manage compliance, administrators can create baselines referred to as Compliance Standard. Any deviations from the baselines triggers compliance violation notifications, alerting administrators to resolve the issue before it creates risk in the environment.

We can therefore see how four major asks from a service provider can be satisfied with the Lifecycle Management features of Enterprise Manager 12c. As substantiated through several third party studies and customer testimonials, these result in higher efficiency with lower OPEX.

Using EM CLI for mass update of Lifecycle Status Property Value

By Maureen Byrne 

I co-presented at Oracle Open World in September, Manage Beyond Limits: Enterprise Manager CLI and Other Extensibility Features. I focused on the enhancements to Enterprise Manager Command Line Interface, EM CLI. I enthused about the two new modes, Interactive and Script mode and how they compare to the standard mode of previous releases, from the SQL*Plus like environment of Interactive mode to the scalable, JSON formatted output of script mode. I highlighted the ease of use and the scalable power of EM CLI.

After my session a number of you asked me for a copy of the scripts that I demoed. This is one. 

Why do we take on the extra task involved in learning something new? …because we know it will lead to personal growth, ultimately solve a problem or two, and maybe even look good on our resume. Learning Jython scripting will tick all of those boxes. Plus, it’s fun!

This script tries to solve the problem of mass updates to the Lifecycle Status property value. This is a new property introduced in Oracle Enterprise Manager 12c, and can be used to indicate the importance of a target, e.g. “Mission Critical", or to determine where a target is in its life cycle, e.g. “Stage”, “Test” or “Production”. Consider a new deployment of several hundred Oracle Databases, half of which are Mission Critical and the other half are in “Test”, but are about to go “Production”.

What is the best way to transition from “Test” to “Production”?

EM CLI in script mode!

EM CLI in script mode takes advantage of the Jython scripting language to use Enterprise Manager in a programmatic way, allowing task automation. The EM CLI Jython script below automates the setting of the Lifecycle Status Property Value, and uses standard programming constructs to make itterating through several Targets simpler, more robust and less error prone.

At a high level, every EM CLI Jython script can effectively be broken down into two parts:

Step 1: The setting and defining the necessary variables such as, which OMS URL to connect to, how secure you want your communication channel and which Administrator to log into the OMS.

Step 2: The calling or manipulation of EM CLI 12c procedures. Procedures were called verbs in previous releases, verb options are now procedure arguments in script and interactive mode.You can explore the on-line verb reference for more information.

Let’s break the script down further in to the major functional blocks of code.

Line 19: Sets the variable EMCLI_OMS_URL, which determines which OMS URL we shall connect too.

Line 21: Sets the variable EMCLI_TRUSTALL, which determines the level of security associated with the communication channel between the EM CLI and the OMS. We are choosing the lowest level of security.

Both of these variables could also have been set as environment variables.

Line 26 – 40: Between the if – else loop, we are checking for arguments that are passed to the script. We are passing two arguments into this script. Following, is what it looks like when calling an EM CLI Jython script, with arguments, on the command line:

$>./emcli @oow_demo2.py OWUSER Production

Where:

@oow_demo2.py - is the name of our Jython Script.

OWUSER - is the username used to log into the OMS, the script will prompt for a password, to authenticate this user. The mode of authentication is the same as is configured for the Console. Authentication modes supported are Repository, SSO or LDAP.

Production - is the Lifecycle Status property Value we shall set.

Line 27: We log into the OMS.

Line 29: We search through all targets where the version, “DBVersion” is greater than or equal to 12.1. This is passed to an internal procedure defined in Line 10.

Line 11: We construct the SQL command, based on the arguments passed in, then use the EM CLI list()procedure to convert the returned output to an easily parse-able JSON formatted syntax (line 15) . We then return the Response Object, obj (line 16). The information returned are all the targets of the appropriate version.

Line 37: We then take the information and parse it, filtering further on oracle_database Target types. Finally we parse and print TARGET_NAME, TARGET_TYPE, PROPERTY_NAME and PROPERTY_VALUE for all databases which fit our criteria.

Line 39: We call the set_target_property_value() procedure which accepts a colon separated list of property records, in the form, TARGET_NAME:TARGET_TYPE:PROPERTY_NAME:PROPERTY_VALUE.

Please copy the code, save it with the *.py extension and change the EMCLI_OMS_URL value to the valid OMS URL for your environment.

Play around with it, and take your Jython scripting knowledge from Test to Production.

Implementing Service Level Agreements in Enterprise Manager 12c for Oracle Packaged Applications

Contributed by Eunjoo Lee, Product Manager, Oracle Enterprise Manager.

Service Level Management, or SLM, is a key tool in the proactive management of any Oracle Packaged Application (e.g., E-Business Suite, Siebel, PeopleSoft, JD Edwards E1, Fusion Apps, etc.). The benefits of SLM are that administrators can utilize representative Application transactions, which are constantly and automatically running behind the scenes, to verify that all of the key application and technology components of an Application are available and performing to expectations.

A single transaction can verify the availability and performance of the underlying Application Tech Stack in a much more efficient manner than by monitoring the same underlying targets individually.

In this article, we’ll be demonstrating SLM using Siebel Applications, but the same tools and processes apply to any of the Package Applications mentioned above. In this demonstration, we will log into the Siebel Application, navigate to the Contacts View, update a contact phone record, and then log-out.

This transaction exposes availability and performance metrics of multiple Siebel Servers, multiple Components and Component Groups, and the Siebel Database - in a single unified manner. We can then monitor and manage these transactions like any other target in EM 12c, including placing pro-active alerts on them if the transaction is either unavailable or is not performing to required levels. The first step in the SLM process is recording the Siebel transaction. The following screenwatch demonstrates how to record Siebel transaction using an EM tool called “OpenScript”. A completed recording is called a “Synthetic Transaction”.

The second step in the SLM process is uploading the Synthetic Transaction into EM 12c, and creating Generic Service Tests. We can create a Generic Service Test to execute our synthetic transactions at regular intervals to evaluate the performance of various business flows. As these transactions are running periodically, it is possible to monitor the performance of the Siebel Application by evaluating the performance of the synthetic transactions. The process of creating a Generic Service Test is detailed in the next screenwatch. EM 12c provides a guided workflow for all of the key creation steps, including configuring the Service Test, uploading of the Synthetic Test, determining the frequency of the Service Test, establishing beacons, and selecting performance and usage metrics, just to name a few.

The third and final step in the SLM process is the creation of Service Level Agreements (SLA). Service Level Agreements allow Administrators to utilize the previously created Service Tests to specify expected service levels for Application availability, performance, and usage. SLAs can be created for different time periods and for different Service Tests. This last screenwatch demonstrates the process of creating an SLA, as well as highlights the Dashboards and Reports that Administrators can use to monitor Service Test results.

Hopefully, this article provides you with a good start point for creating Service Level Agreements for your E-Business Suite, Siebel, PeopleSoft, JD Edwards E1, or Fusion Applications. Enterprise Manager Cloud Control 12c, with the Application Management Suites, represents a quick and easy way to implement Service Level Management capabilities at customer sites.

Sending notification after an event has remained open for a specified period

By Loc Nhan 

Enterprise Manager (EM) 12c allows you to create an incident rule to send a notification and/or create an incident after an event has been open for a specified period. Such an incident rule will help prevent premature alerts on issues that may correct themselves within a certain amount of time.

For example, there are some agents in an unstable network area, and often there are communication failures between the agents and the OMS lasting three, four minutes at a time. In this scenario, you may only want to receive alerts after an agent in that area has been in the Agent Unreachable status for at least five minutes.

Note: Many non-target availability metrics allow users to specify the “number of occurrences” or the number of consecutive times metric values reach thresholds before a notification is sent. It is best to use the feature for such metrics.

This article provides a step-by-step guide for creating an incident rule set to cater for the above scenario, that is, to create an incident and send a notification after the Agent Unreachable event has remained open for a five-minute duration.

Steps to create the incident rule

1.     Log on to the console and navigate to Setup -> Incidents -> Incident Rules.

Note: A non-super user requires the Create Enterprise Rule Set privilege, which is a resource privilege, to create an incident rule.

The Incident Rules - All Enterprise Rules page displays.

2.     Click Create Rule Set …

The Create Rule Set page displays.

3.     Enter a name for the rule set (e.g. Rule set for agents in flaky network areas), optionally enter a description, and leave everything else at default values, and click + Add.

The Search and Select: Targets page pops up.

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Note:  While you can create a rule set for individual targets, it is a best practice to use a group for this purpose.

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4.     Select an appropriate group, e.g. the AgentsInFlakyNework group. The Select button becomes enabled, click the button.

The Create Rule Set page displays.

5.     Leave everything at default values, and click the Rules tab.

The Create Rule Set page displays.

6.     Click Create…

The Select Type of Rule to Create page pops up.

7.     Leave the Incoming events and updates to events option selected, and click Continue.

The Create New Rule : Select Events page displays.

8.     Select Target Availability from the Type drop-down list.

The page shows more options for Target Availability.

9.     Select the Specific events of type Target Availability option, and click + Add.

The Select Target Availability events page pops up.

10.   Select Agent from the Target Type dropdown list.

The page expands.

11.   Click the Agent unreachable checkbox, and click OK.

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Note: If you want to also receive a notification when the event is cleared, click the Agent unreachable end checkbox as well before clicking OK.

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The Create New Rule : Select Events page displays.

12.   Click Next.

The Create New Rule : Add Actions page displays.

13.   Click + Add.

The Add Actions page displays.

14.   Do the following:

a.     Select the Only execute the actions if specified conditions match option (You don’t want the action to trigger always).

The following options appear in the Conditions for Actions section.

b.     Select the Event has been open for specified duration option.

The Conditions for actions section expands.

c.     Change the values of Event has been open for to 5 Minutes as shown below.

d.     In the Create Incident or Update Incident section, click the Create Incident checkbox as following:

e.     In the Notifications section, enter an appropriate EM user or email address in the E-mail To field.

f.     Click Continue (in the top right hand corner).

The Create New Rule : Add Actions page displays.

15.   Click Next.

The Create New Rule : Specify name and Description page displays.

16.   Enter a rule name, and click Next.

The Create New Rule : Review page appears.

17.   Click Continue, and proceed to save the rule set.

The incident rule set creation completes.

After one of the agents in the group specified in the rule set is stopped for over 5 minutes, EM will send a mail notification and create an incident as shown in the following screenshot.

In conclusion, you have seen the steps to create an example incident rule set that only creates an incident and triggers a notification after an event has been open for a specified period. Such an incident rule can help prevent unnecessary incidents and alert notifications leaving EM administrators time to more important tasks.

- Loc Nhan 

Getting Agent software in Offline mode

A customer wanted to install the EM Agent on a different platform (the EM OS was Linux, the target OS was IBM AIX) and his OMS was in offline mode. The following was my reply to him. This would be useful to others, so posting it here.

For the Agent install, see the offline instructions below. I have gathered these instructions for you from the manuals. The important points are in boldface. I suggest you try this agent install on a development or test server first.

As you can see, the offline mode has a number of manual steps, so would recommend a MOS  connection to the OMS for future convenience for your team.

From http://docs.oracle.com/html/E24089_21/getstrtd_proc_sw.htm#BACDAJEC

Procuring Oracle Management Agent Software

Oracle Management Agent (Management Agent) is one of the core components of Enterprise Manager Cloud Control, and therefore, its software is part of the Enterprise Manager Cloud Control software. When you install Enterprise Manager Cloud Control, the installation wizard automatically installs a Management Agent.

You can install additional Management Agents using the Add Host Targets Wizard built into the Enterprise Manager Cloud Control console (Cloud Control console). The wizard uses the Management Agent software that is already present in the OMS home.

However, note that the Management Agent software present in the OMS home is always for the version and platform on which that OMS is running. For example, if the OMS is Oracle Management Service 12c and it is running on Linux platform, then the Management Agent software available there is also for Linux platform.

If you want to install a Management Agent for a platform that is different from the one on which the OMS is running, then ensure that you download that software using the Self Update Console, which is built into the Cloud Control console.

From http://docs.oracle.com/cd/E24628_01/install.121/e22624/install_agent.htm#CHDBHJDG

Acquiring Management Agent Software in Offline Mode

If Enterprise Manager is not connected to My Oracle Support via the Internet, it is said to run in Offline Mode.

To download and apply the Management Agent software using Self Update when Enterprise Manager is running in Offline Mode, follow these steps:

1.     Ensure that you have set up Self Update.

For setting up Self Update, follow instructions in http://docs.oracle.com/cd/E24628_01/doc.121/e24473/self_update.htm#BEJJEHDJ   

2.     From the Setup menu, select Extensibility, then select Self Update.

3.     On the Self Update home page, click Check Updates. A message is displayed that contains the URL to be accessed to download a catalog of all updates.

4.     From an Internet-enabled computer, download the catalog file using the aforementioned URL.

Note: Do not unzip the file.

5.     Copy the downloaded file to either of the following:

o   To any host that has a Management Agent and EM CLI installed

o   To the Oracle Management Service (OMS) host (EM CLI is configured out of box on the OMS host machine, so no setup is required)

6.     Navigate to and log in to EM CLI, running the command as the install user, for example:

./emcli login -username=sysman

7.     Synchronize EM CLI:

./emcli sync

8.     Run the emcli import_update_catalog command to import the archive into the Oracle Management Service instance or the Management Agent you want to update. For example:

./emcli import_update_catalog -omslocal  -file=zip file absolute path

Before running this command, ensure that you have set up Software Library in Cloud Control. For information on how to do this, see Oracle Enterprise Manager Lifecycle Management Administrator's Guide.

9.     Return to the Self Update home page and do a refresh to see a count of new updates in the Available Updates column.

10.  For Type, select Agent Software, then select Open from the Actions menu. The Agent Software Updates page appears to show the Management Agent software available for different platforms.

11.  Select an update from the list of available updates. All entries other than the one that matches the platform of the OMS host should show their status as Available.

12.  Click Download. A message displays with a URL and instructions.

13.  From an Internet-enabled computer, download the file from the URL displayed in Step 12. Do one of the following:

o   Copy the file to a Management Agent host and follow the instructions displayed in Step 12.

o   Copy the file to Oracle Management Service host and follow the instructions displayed in Step 12.

At this stage, the update will show up in a downloaded state in the Self Update home page.

14.  Once the download is complete, select the Management Agent, then click Apply. This step will stage the Management Agent software in Software Library and make it available to the Add Host Targets wizard, which you will use to install Management Agents on hosts.

Installation Procedure

This section describes the actions involved in installing Management Agents. It consists of the following:

·        Installing Management Agents Using Add Host Targets Wizard  ===> Follow these instructions

·        Installing Management Agents Using EM CLI

·        Supported Additional Parameters

Regards,

Porus.

My Enterprise Manager book in Oracle Open World 2013

Dear Readers,

The publisher (PACKT) of my latest book, "Managing Data Center Chaos using Enterprise Manager Cloud Control 12c" has sent me a few photos of the bookstore at Oracle Open World and my book being sold there. I am sharing these photos for your viewing pleasure.

If you would like a copy of the book and are living out of India, you can buy it from http://www.packtpub.com/oracle-enterprise-manager-12c-cloud-control/book or if you are in India, please purchase the Indian edition at http://www.shroffpublishers.com/detail.aspx?cat=427&title=5575

Thanks for making it so popular.

Regards,

Porus.