Exadata Cloud Service Best Practices Using Oracle Enterprise Manager and Oracle Management Cloud

Exadata Cloud Service Best Practices Using Oracle Enterprise Manager and Oracle Management Cloud

Customers are often confused about best practices for using Oracle’s Enterprise and Cloud Manageability Products (specifically, Oracle Enterprise Manager (EM) and Oracle Management Cloud (OMC)) against Oracle Exadata Cloud.  We will try to clear up this confusion in this blog post.

This (short) blog post is partially based on a much deeper white paper entitled “Oracle Enterprise Manager for Exadata Cloud: Implementation, Management, and Monitoring Best Practices.” 

For starters, it’s important to remember that unlike the on-premises Exadata Database Machine, Exadata Cloud is a subscription to a service, not a purchase of hardware and software, and the definition of the Exadata Cloud service does not include customer access to the physical hardware or management of the Exadata Storage Server – indeed, those aspects are managed entirely by Oracle on behalf of our customers.  This is true whether the actual Exadatas in question are deployed at a customer data center or in Oracle Cloud. 

The following is a simplified differentiation of who is responsible for which components in the Exadata Cloud scenario:

Figure 1.  Oracle Exadata Cloud Services stack diagram, showing customer and Oracle responsibility by layer.

Figure 2.  Applicability of Oracle Enterprise Manager and Oracle Management Cloud to various Oracle Exadata Cloud Services stack layers.

Using Oracle Enterprise Manager and Oracle Management Cloud against ExaCC and ExaCS

Oracle customers will use Oracle Enterprise Manager and/or Oracle Management Cloud primarily for Database-specific activities, such as the below examples:

• Discovery of databases and related components (Cluster, ASM, Listener)

• ASM storage space monitoring and management

• Management of In-Memory processing

• Scheduling of database jobs

• Database resource management

• Database feature usage

• Schema management

• Database security management beyond SSH access

• Database performance monitoring (using ASH and AWR)

These activities are primarily accessed as follows: 

• The Database target pages in Oracle Enterprise Manager (such as Performance Hub, Compliance Management, BI Reports, etc.)

• The Database entity pages in Oracle Management Cloud Infrastructure Monitoring

• and the Database-focused “apps” in Oracle Management Cloud IT Analytics (such as Database Performance Analytics, Database Resource Analytics, SQL Analytics). 

While Oracle Enterprise Manager can discover databases, database instances, and grid infrastructure from the agents deployed on the Compute Node VM Host targets of ExaCC and ExaCS, the full detail of the underlying Exadata stack is not exposed to customers.

The following are two examples of cluster and cluster database targets on Exadata Cloud as represented in Oracle Enterprise Manager.

Figure 3.  Example of an Exadata Cloud Cluster target in Enterprise Manager.

Figure 4.  Example of an Exadata Cloud Database target in Enterprise Manager

Similarly, in Oracle Management Cloud the detailed Exadata dashboards in IT Analytics are not populated for Exadata Cloud targets, but the monitored databases (which are available as entities in OMC Infrastructure Monitoring) are available in fleet-wide analytics such as Database Performance Analytics, Database Resource Analyics and SQL Analytics.  In those views, Exadata Cloud databases look just like traditional on-premises Cluster/RAC databases. 

The following are some examples of how ExaCC databases are represented in OMC IT Analytics. 

Figure 6.  Example of Oracle Management Cloud Database Performance Analytics which include ExaCC databases.

Figure 7.  Example of Oracle Management Cloud Database Resource Analytics which include ExaCC databases

Figures 8 and 9.  Examples of Oracle Management Cloud SQL Analytics which include ExaCC databases

Lifecycle Management of ExaCC/ExaCS Databases

For Oracle Cloud Automation to be aware of configuration changes, such as creating or deleting a database, Oracle Cloud Automation must make the changes.  This means that configuration best practices when using Oracle Enterprise Manager for Exadata Cloud are to use Oracle Cloud Automation to perform platform management tasks, and to use Oracle Enterprise Manager to perform management tasks within the database.  Examples of tasks that should be performed via Oracle Cloud Automation APIs include:

• ASM disk group creation

• Stopping, starting, or restarting a database node

• Managing SSH access

• Database creation and deletion

• Control and monitor Exadata IORM

• Database backup and restore

• Database patching

• Creating, deleting, and viewing database snapshots

Connecting Oracle Enterprise Manager and Oracle Management Cloud to ExaCC/ExaCS Targets

Customers can leverage EM and/or OMC by installing an agent into DomU servers.  The actual installation method will depend on the connectivity between the customer’s management environment and their Exadata Cloud environment.  Standard EM agents are used when network access is open between the Oracle Management Server (OMS) and the Exadata Cloud Compute node VM.  This use case is typical when the network is either secured in the customer’s on-premises data center, or by a VPN between the customer’s data center and the Oracle Public Cloud. In use cases where on-premises EM manages Exadata Cloud Service without a VPN, all communication is secured by SSH connectivity between the OMS servers, and in this use case a Hybrid Cloud Agent must be installed on the Exadata Cloud Compute Node VMs.  Oracle Management Cloud Agents are installed on each DomU the same way regardless of connectivity since they communicate over the public Internet to the OMC service via an Oracle Management Cloud gateway.

Monitoring and management functionality is the same in either deployment model.

Summary:  Leverage Oracle Enterprise Manager and Oracle Management Cloud against your ExaCC/CS

In summary, the separation of roles and responsibilities between the customer and Oracle for Exadata Cloud requires service-specific monitoring and management best practices.  In general, monitoring and management of components within the databases themselves can be executed by the customer with Oracle Enterprise Manager and/or Oracle Management Cloud, while database lifecycle operations and Exadata IORM configuration and monitoring should be executed with Oracle Cloud Automation APIs – and everything else (monitoring and lifecycle management of Exadata Cloud infrastructure) is the responsibility of Oracle.  All that said, Oracle Enterprise Manager and Oracle Management Cloud can add significant efficiency to your Exadata Cloud estates.  Please work with your account teams and Cloud Support Managers to leverage Oracle’s Enterprise and Cloud Manageability features most effectively, and enjoy your Exadata Cloud experience!