Zero Downtime Monitoring with Enterprise Manager 24ai

Many businesses rely on Oracle Enterprise Manager (EM) for monitoring their mission-critical databases and applications.  Undetected incidents could lead to outages in applications that, in turn, could disrupt business critical operations and negatively affect a company's reputation.  EM provides high availability (HA) configurations to mitigate against unplanned downtime.  For planned downtime, when EM itself is unavailable during a Release Update (RU), the Always-On Monitoring (AOM) application can be configured to send email notifications for critical alerts.  While AOM does provide some monitoring visibility, administrators have often asked that it be enhanced with the full enterprise-class monitoring features available in EM.  In Enterprise Manager 24ai, we're happy to introduce the Zero Downtime Monitoring service that continuously provides full enterprise-class monitoring features even during EM planned maintenance windows.

EM 24ai Zero Downtime (ZDT) Monitoring service eliminates monitoring gaps

Zero Downtime Monitoring (ZDT Monitoring) is a new service in Enterprise Manager 24ai that provides continuous, uninterrupted monitoring and alerting even during EM planned maintenance.  It provides enterprise-class monitoring features including event management and processing, event compression, incident creation and all notification capabilities including integration with event and ticketing systems.  All these features continue to work seamlessly even when EM is undergoing planned maintenance for a Release Update (RU).  ZDT Monitoring is part of the Oracle Management Service (OMS).

Benefit from monitoring continuity with ZDT Monitoring

Consider a scenario where you've configured EM to send email and open a ServiceNow ticket for a target down event.   Let's say your EM 13.5 site is undergoing an RU update.  During this time, if a target goes down, while EM is unavailable, AOM can send an email notification for this target down event.  When the RU update is complete and EM is fully operational, EM would create an incident for the target down event and send you (another) email notification and also open a ServiceNow ticket.  

Let's see how this same scenario is optimized in EM 24ai with ZDT Monitoring.  

Assume your EM 24ai site is undergoing an RU update. During this time, if a target goes down, then the EM agent will detect this and send a 'fatal' event to ZDT Monitoring. ZDT Monitoring will take the appropriate actions based on the configured incident rule sets, e.g. create an incident, send an email notification and open a ServiceNow ticket.   Now assume the RU update is complete and the target has been brought back up.  The EM agent will again detect this and send a 'clear event'  to ZDT Monitoring.   ZDT Monitoring will process the event, correlate it with the 'fatal' incident to clear the incident, and also send a 'clear' severity to ServiceNow to close the ticket.  From the administrator's perspective, there is monitoring continuity, i.e., there is no change in incident lifecycle, notifications and ticketing even throughout EM 24ai RU updates.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

Q: Is there additional setup needed to enable ZDT Monitoring during RU updates?

There is no extra setup needed to enable the ZDT Monitoring service.  The main requirement is to configure at least two OMS instances in your EM24ai site, which is part of the general best practices for EM high availability.  During EM24ai RU updates, ZDT Monitoring will continue to be available to process events and send notifications based on your configured incident rule sets.

Q: Can I use ZDT Monitoring when upgrading to EM 24ai?

A: No.  ZDT Monitoring is an exclusive feature of EM 24ai. When upgrading from EM 13.5 to EM 24ai, use  Always-On Monitoring (AOM) to get visibility into critical alerts.  When you are at EM 24ai, ZDT Monitoring will be available for future EM 24ai RU updates.

Q: Do I need a special license to use the ZDT Monitoring service?

A: No special license is necessary. ZDT Monitoring is a standard feature included with Enterprise Manager 24ai.

Take the next step: Upgrade to Enterprise Manager 24ai

To leverage ZDT Monitoring for uniterrupted monitoring, upgrade to EM 24ai.  Begin now by downloading Oracle Enterprise Manager 24ai.

Stay ahead of the curve with Oracle's innovative monitoring solutions, designed to keep your business running smoothly.

Resources

• ZDT Monitoring webinar
• ZDT Monitoring (documentation)