Oracle Enterprise Manager (EM) it’s been the go-to tool to monitor and manage on-premises Exadata deployments for quite some time. By doing a quick search in this blog I found presentations dated back from 2019 about choosing EM 12c or 13c to monitor and manage Exadata. Time has gone quick and now it’s time to discuss a new generation of Cloud services.
During the recent years Exadata appliances have evolved into Exadata Cloud Service (ExaCS) and Exadata Cloud @ Customer (ExaCC). Customers have the same monitoring requirements though. It is more than necessary to have proper observability mechanisms in place for these cloud services.
This post is meant to guide you through the process of discovering your Exadata Cloud @ Customer services into Oracle Enterprise Manager 13.5
First things first. You can find all the required information in the EM 13.5 documentation.
One of the questions that I get from customers is, what are the features in EM for your ExaCC deployment? Here are some of them:
- Automatically identify and organize related targets
- Visualize the database and related targets associated with ExaCC
- Monitor performance for ExaCC components like Storage Grids, ExaCC DomU, GI and database targets on a single pane of glass
For more information about these features, refer to the Features section in the Oracle documentation.
Let’s get now into the discovery process. There are some pre-reqs that you will have to meet before attempting the discovery process. Please read carefully Part II of the Oracle documentation. Here are some highlights:
- Create Named Credentials for OCI
In this step you will generate the required OCI API Signing Keys in order to create an EM Named Credential. Follow the instructions in this section but also look at below MOS note:
EM13.5: Manage OCI Connectivity Named Credentials Test Failed with Invalid Private Key. (Doc ID 2792126.1) - Discover Exadata C@C
On this step we will discover ExaCC in EM. Staring with EM 13.5 RU14 you can discover it using the UI (console). Before that the only available option was to use CLI. I strongly recommend you apply RU14 before attempting the discovery process.
Follow the steps on the documentation in order to discover your ExaCC service.
During the discovery process you will have to designate or install an EM agent that will be responsible of monitoring your ExaCC service. This agent must have access to Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI).
Open the Discovery Wizard in EM
On the “Add Targets Manually” page choose the guided process.
Select “Oracle Exadata Infrastructure” and click the “Add” button.
On the “Exadata Cloud Discovery” wizard select the required inputs:
- Management Agent
- Backup Agent (optional)
- Agent’s Named Credential
- OCI Cloud Home Region
- OCI Named Credential (created on the pre-reqs section)
- OCI Subscribed Region (where your tenancy resides)
After this, click on the “Next” button.
On the “Discovery” section of the wizard, EM will discover all the ExaCC related targets. On this page, set the “Storage Server Credentials” in order to monitor the Storage Servers. Click “Next”
On the next page a summary will be displayed. Verify all the targets and then click “Submit”.
At this point you will have your ExaCC service, discovered in EM. You can see all your ExaCC services by navigating to “Targets” -> “Exadata”.
The “Exadata” dashboard shows all your Exadata appliances and services. Click on the recently discovered ExaCC service.
The “Home Page” shows all ExaCC components along with resource utilization.
Use the “Overview Tab” in order to navigate on all the available monitoring sections. Below screenshot provides an insight into “CPU” utilization by selecting the “Resource” section.
Follow the Oracle documentation in order to understand all the available options and sections in the ExaCC Home Page.
At this point your ExaCC is discovered and ready to be managed and monitored.
Next steps are to setup your monitoring metrics, thresholds and rules in order to receive notifications. Also look at the available OAS reports available for your ExaCC.
We will cover the integration of this EM monitoring and management of ExaCC with OCI Observability & Management services on future posts. These O&M services like Operations Insights help you to forecast utilization, provide advanced capacity planning insights by using Machine Learning algorithms.
Update!!!: Royce Fu just created a wonderful post about EM and O&M integration for ExaCC. Please find the link below.
Thanks,
Alfredo