Oracle Enterprise Manager Concepts Guide 
Release 1.6.0 
A63730-01
 
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Overview Of Oracle Enterprise Manager

Oracle Enterprise Manager is a system management tool which provides an integrated solution for managing your heterogeneous environment. It combines a graphical console, agents, common services, and tools to provide an integrated, comprehensive systems management platform for managing Oracle products.

From the Oracle Enterprise Manager's Console, you can do the following tasks:

This chapter presents an overview of the Oracle Enterprise Manager's benefits and major components.
Topic  See Page 

Benefits of the Oracle Enterprise Manager 

1-2 

The Basic Components 

1-5 

 

Benefits of the Oracle Enterprise Manager

This section discusses the major benefits of the Oracle Enterprise Manager. The topics are listed below:
Topic  See Page 

Centralized Console for Single Point of Management 

1-2 

Scalability for Growing, Distributed Environments 

1-2 

Automated "Lights Out" Administration 

1-3 

Autonomous Intelligent Agent 

1-4 

Easy-to-Use Security 

1-4 

 

Centralized Console for Single Point of Management

You can manage your distributed systems and databases from the Oracle Enterprise Manager Console. The Console gives you a central point of control for the Oracle environment through an intuitive graphical user interface (GUI) that provides drag-and-drop system management. The interface enables an administrator to be effective with minimal training.

The Oracle Enterprise Manager enables you to manage a heterogeneous environment as easily as a homogeneous one. You can schedule and run jobs on multiple nodes simultaneously or monitor groups of services together.

Scalability for Growing, Distributed Environments

Designed to provide the flexibility and customization required by administrators of rapidly growing distributed environments, the Oracle Enterprise Manager easily scales upward to maintain performance and automate routine tasks. Even in a large system you can customize the Console GUI to display any part of the system.

Automated "Lights Out" Administration

In a large, distributed database environment, the proportion of nodes per administrator increases rapidly, requiring tools that can automate tasks and detect problems on multiple nodes and databases. Oracle Enterprise Manager offers "lights out" (automated) task management and proactive event management.

With the Job Scheduling system, you can automate routine tasks in the network such as backing up databases or running reports on a regular basis. Jobs can be scheduled to run on remote sites, providing the kind of "lights out" management that is vital in a large, distributed environment.

Using the Event Management system, you can remotely monitor for critical database and system events. The events of interest are pre-registered by the administrator; and when one of these events occurs, it is detected and represented graphically on the Console. You can also choose to be notified through electronic mail or page.

Oracle Enterprise Manager can also automate problem correction. When registering an event, you can specify that a task be performed in response to the event. For example, you can register an event for the monitoring of space usage in a tablespace, and also register a fixit job which would automatically allocate a new datafile to the tablespace whenever the event occurs. Proactive management of an event ensures that a problem is corrected before it noticeably impacts end-users.

Note: See Chapter 3, "Job and Event Systems" for more information on jobs and event sets. For detailed information, refer to Chapter 4, "Job Scheduling," and Chapter 5, "Event Management," of the Oracle Enterprise Manager Administrator's Guide.

Autonomous Intelligent Agent

With Oracle Enterprise Manager, you can localize database administration (DBA) task execution so that tasks are completed even when a crucial part of the network is down. Localized tasks are dependable since all job processing is performed by Intelligent Agents which reside on managed nodes in the network.

For example, if you schedule a job on a node, the job is executed locally at the specified time. Since it is executed locally, the job runs even if a network outage occurs between the node and the Console. The messages are saved until they can be delivered, even if a network connection is down.

Note: For information on the Intelligent Agents, refer to Chapter 6, "Agents and Communication Daemon," of the Oracle Enterprise Manager Administrator's Guide.

Easy-to-Use Security

Oracle Enterprise Manager provides easy-to-use administrator-level security. Each administrator's privileges are stored in a credentials file and are used by the Oracle Enterprise Manager to manage your connections. When you connect to a database from the Console, your credentials are transparently passed on by Oracle Enterprise Manager; therefore, you do not have to log in repeatedly.

The security management is flexible enough so that you can change it to suit the security roles and policies of the system. Your preferred credentials for nodes and services can be stored throughout the network. Because a separate list is stored for each administrator, you can share credentials or have unique ones.

The Basic Components

Oracle Enterprise Manager's client/server architecture consists of a centralized Console, common services, and Intelligent Agents running on the managed nodes. Various applications reside on top of the common services, performing comprehensive system management tasks.

This section describes the following components of Oracle Enterprise Manager:
Topic  See Page 

Console 

1-5 

Common Services 

1-7 

Integrated and Value-Added Applications 

1-10 

Command Line Interface 

1-10 

Online Help 

1-10 

 

Console

The Oracle Enterprise Manager Console is a graphical user interface that provides menus, toolbars, launch palettes, and the framework to allow access to Oracle tools, plus utilities available through other vendors. The format of the Console screen and the number of applications are determined by user preferences and the products purchased. See Figure 1-1, "Oracle Enterprise Manager Console," for an illustration of a Console screen.

The Console's interface consists of the Navigator, Map, Job, and Event windows. The Navigator discovers and displays a tree list of all the objects in a network, providing a direct view of databases, user-defined groups, listeners, nodes, plus the objects that they contain. The Navigator shows all the objects in the network with their relationships to other objects.

The Map system allows you to monitor network objects at a glance. With the Map system, you can create, save, modify, and recall views of the network. To set up the various groups for monitoring, you simply drag and drop objects from the Navigator into the Map view.

The Console menu bar provides access to the Navigator, Map, Job, Event, and DBA applications. You can also use toolbars and tool palettes to access the applications.

Figure 1-1 Oracle Enterprise Manager Console

 

Note: See Chapter 2, "The Console" for descriptions of the basic components and how they are organized. For information on the Console menus, see the Oracle Enterprise Manager Administrator's Guide, Chapter 1.

Common Services

Oracle Enterprise Manager has a set of common services that help you manage nodes throughout your network. This section describes the Oracle Enterprise Manager common services:
Topic  See Page 

Job Scheduling System 

1-7 

Event Management System 

1-7 

Repository 

1-8 

Intelligent Agents and Communication Daemon 

1-8 

Service Discovery 

1-9 

Security 

1-9 

 

Job Scheduling System

The Job Scheduling system allows you to manage job scheduling and execution among the databases, groups, listeners, and nodes that you are administering.

With the Job Scheduling system, you can schedule and run jobs on remote sites throughout the network. Jobs can be scheduled at various times, such as daily or weekly, and at single or multiple destinations.

For example, you can schedule a report to be run every Sunday night on a predetermined set of databases; and you only have to schedule the job once. Oracle Enterprise Manager ensures that the job is run on schedule on all specified databases, and it keeps a history of the job and record of the job's status.

Event Management System

The Event Management system allows you to track and display the status of events occurring on the databases, groups, listeners, and nodes in your network system.

When a registered event occurs and is detected, it is represented graphically on the Console. In addition, you can choose to be notified through electronic mail or page. The Oracle Enterprise Manager Console provides support for paging and email when a registered event is encountered. The Console currently supports alphanumeric paging systems that use the TAP (Telocator Alphanumeric Paging) protocol for automatic paging and both SMTP and MAPI for email notification.

You can also automate the correction of system problems by creating fixit jobs that you specify to be run in response to particular events.

Note: See Chapter 3, "Job and Event Systems" for information on how these systems execute jobs and monitor events. For information on the Job and Event menus, see the Oracle Enterprise Manager Administrator's Guide, Chapters 4 and 5.

Repository

Each Oracle Enterprise Manager administrator is associated with a specific repository (a set of tables in an Oracle database) where any information related to the tasks performed by the administrator is stored.

A repository provides a central location for storing information about the state of the environment managed by Oracle Enterprise Manager from the perspective of each Console user. It contains information on configurations, jobs and events, historical collections, tuning recommendations, the preferred credentials for each user, and other information associated with each Oracle Enterprise Manager Console log-in.

The repository tables can be installed in any database accessible to the Console, and you can log on to the database where your repository resides from any network machine. Also, the repositories for the administrators do not have to be in the same database.

Intelligent Agents and Communication Daemon

Oracle Enterprise Manager uses Intelligent Agents and a communication daemon to manage remote tasks such as scheduling and running remote jobs and monitoring events on remote sites.

Intelligent Agents are processes that run on remote nodes in the network and execute jobs and monitor user-defined events sent by the Console via the communication daemon. Intelligent Agents are also used to discover services on the nodes where they reside.

Each Console has a communication daemon that communicates with the Intelligent Agents. For instance, when a registered event occurs on a managed service, the Intelligent Agent notifies the daemon, which then updates the Console to reflect the new information.

High availability of the agents is ensured because the agents function regardless of the status of the Console or network connections. Intelligent Agents also run independently of the services they manage, so they can be used to shut down and start up those services.

Note: For information on the Intelligent Agents, refer to Chapter 6, "Agents and Communication Daemon," in the Oracle Enterprise Manager Administrator's Guide.

Service Discovery

The communication daemon and Intelligent Agents work together to discover services on the network nodes. When these services are discovered, they are displayed in the tree view in the Navigator window of the Console. The manner in which the services are located depends on the version of the Intelligent Agent that is on the node where the service is being discovered.

Note: For information on the communication daemon, refer to the Oracle Enterprise Manager Administrator's Guide. For information on using Oracle Network Manager, see the Oracle Network Manager Administrator's Guide. For information on Oracle Enterprise Manager configuration files, see the Oracle Enterprise Manager Configuration Guide.

Security

Access to Oracle Services on the network is controlled by a set of user-defined, preferred credentials for the available nodes and services. Oracle Enterprise Manager encrypts the user authentication information in the repository and provides it as part of the connection request from the Console or Console-launched applications.

Integrated and Value-Added Applications

Oracle Enterprise Manager includes a set of standard, integrated database administration applications. These applications are specialized management tools that can be launched directly from the Console or from the Oracle Administrator Toolbar.

Note: For an overview of the database tools, refer to Chapter 4 of this guide, "DBA Applications" or to Chapter 7, "Overview of the Database Tools," in the Oracle Enterprise Manager Administrator's Guide.

Oracle Enterprise Manager's functionality can be extended further by adding one or more of the specialized applications found in three optional system management packs: the Oracle Diagnostics Pack, the Oracle Tuning Pack, and the Oracle Change Management Pack. Combined with Oracle Enterprise Manager, these three packs offer a single integrated solution for monitoring system bottlenecks, optimizing and tuning system performance, managing system changes, and planning for increases in resource utilization of your entire information system environment.

Third parties can also write applications that integrate into the Console and use the available common services. These applications can be launched directly from the Console.

Command Line Interface

A command line interface is sometimes necessary or desirable. Oracle Server Manager provides a conversational line mode. In line mode, you can explicitly execute DBA commands on a command line.

Note: For more information about using Server Manager in line mode, refer to Appendix A of the Oracle Enterprise Manager Administrator's Guide.

Online Help

Oracle Enterprise Manager uses the Microsoft Windows online help system to provide you with information on windows and dialog boxes in the Console and database tools. The Help system is context sensitive, but you can also search through the online help contents or index to find a particular topic.

Note: For information on the Help menu, refer to the Oracle Enterprise Manager Administrator's Guide, Chapter 1.



 
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