This tutorial describes how to use Enterprise Configuration Management in Oracle Enterprise Manager Grid Control 10g Release 2.
Approximately 1½ hour
This tutorial covers the following topics:
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Overview | |
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Scenario | |
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Collecting Configuration Information | |
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Comparing Configuration Information | |
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Applying Policies Consistently Across Targets | |
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Summary | |
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With the advent of technological diversity, an administrator has to spend a lot of time trying to keep the underlying software updated. Operating systems, applications, and other software must be installed, propagated, patched to the latest level, and duplicated. This can pose to be a cumbersome task to the administrator. Without automation and central management, deployment management could present a huge obstacle to the growth and maintenance of your enterprise.
With Enterprise Manager Grid Control, monitoring, managing, and maintaining your IT infrastructure is simplified through its powerful tools for configuration management, cloning, patching, bare metal provisioning, and policy management. Grid Control collects host configuration, client configuration, and database configuration information and stores them in the Oracle Management Repository. You can view, compare, and search the configuration information in the Management Repository to monitor and manage your enterprise configuration.
In this tutorial, you learn how your enterprise can
benefit from Grid Control's deployment management features.
Linda would like to collect data to create a complete inventory of her hardware and software in her managed environment. Although Grid Control periodically collects all the information she needs, she has made some configuration changes in her environment and wants to manually refresh the configuration information.
Linda is having a problem with a production box that was functioning properly when it was tested in QA. She wants to compare the QA machine and her production machine to be able to determine the cause for the difference in performance.
Linda would like to have consistent configuration on all her boxes. She has a standard for everything from host hardware up to the software patch level that she needs to enforce and be alerted when something breaks the standard.
Grid Control collects host configuration, client configuration, and database configuration information and stores them in the Oracle Management Repository.
Grid Control collects the host information when:
The Management
Agent starts on the host
The automatic
update of the host configuration occurs. The interval for automatically refreshing
host configuration is every 24 hours.
You manually
refresh the host configuration
You can modify the host configuration, for example,
by adding an I/O card, installing a new operating system patch, or installing
a new Oracle product. To update the Management Repository with the host configurations
information, you can manually refresh it.
The client configuration that Enterprise Manager displays for a client is the configuration information currently stored for that client in the Management Repository. A client initiates collection of its configuration data by issuing a browser request for the client configuration collection JSP page. The client is asked to run an applet downloaded from the page. The applet collects the configuration data from the client and posts it back to a receiver JSP page on the Web server, which then writes the data as an XML file into a directory that is readable by Grid Control. The person who configures the client configuration collection applet for your site chooses the directory into which the applet writes client configurations.
Grid Control refreshes the client configuration information in the Management
Repository when it starts. Thereafter, it refreshes the data periodically.
The database configuration that Enterprise Manager displays for an Oracle database is the configuration information currently stored for that database in the Management Repository. The configuration information is collected and stored in the repository when:
The Management
Agent starts on the host
The automatic
update of the database configuration occurs. The interval for automatically
refreshing database configuration is every 12 hours.
Perform the following steps to collect the configuration information of a host:
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1. |
Open a browser and enter the URL to access the server on which you installed the management service, in the following format: http://<management service hostname>.<domain>:<port>/em/ The default port value on a machine with no other database instances installed on it is 7777. However, if there are other instances running on the machine, then the port may be different. The Login page will be displayed. Enter the User Name and Password, and then click the Login button.
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2. |
Click the Targets tab.
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By default, the Hosts tab is selected.
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Click the host for which you want to collect the configuration information.
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It opens the home page for the host that you selected.
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Click the Configuration subtab.
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The Configuration tab shows the configuration information of the host.
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Click the Hardware Details link.
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The Hardware Details page displays detailed hardware configuration information for the host, which is part of the host configuration stored in the Oracle Management Repository. The Local Disk Capacity (GB) field shows the disk space that is physically attached (local) to the host. This value does not include disk space that may be available to the host through networked file systems.
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Click History to access the hardware history information for the host.
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Enterprise Manager automatically collects configuration information for
targets such as hosts and databases. The changes to these configurations
are recorded. You can view all the changes from this page.
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Grid Control collects the host configuration. Enterprise Manager enables you to compare the configurations and determine the differences between two or more hosts, clients, or databases. The Generic Compare Wizard allows you to compare various types of current or saved configurations with one or more current or saved configurations. You can use the comparison results to determine the cause of any difference in performance.
Using this Generic Compare Wizard, you can perform the following tasks:
Compare
the current configuration of a selected target type with one or more current
configurations of other targets of the same type.
Compare saved configurations
with one or more saved configurations of the same or other targets.
Compare saved configurations
with one or more current configurations of the same or other targets.
Compare a specific configuration
with another configuration and list the differences immediately.
Compare a specific configuration
with another configuration and schedule the comparison as a job.
Perform the following steps to compare the host configuration
with other host configuration to compare the difference in performance.
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1. |
Under the Targets tab, click the Hosts subtab.
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2. |
Select the host that you want to compare.
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You can see the home page for the host. Click the Configuration subtab.
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Click the Compare Configuration button.
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You are prompted to choose the second host with which you will compare the first host.
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Click the Compare button to compare. You can use the comparison results to determine the cause of difference in the performance.
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You can see the Comparison Results Summary page. This page shows you the results of the comparison. When two target configurations are compared, all categories of collected configuration information are included. Grid Control presents the summary results of the comparison in a tabular format. More detailed information is available by drilling down from those summary results.
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As the size and complexity of heterogeneous systems increase and the number of distributed applications executing on these systems increase, the task of managing these resources can become overwhelming to the system administration team. You can automate the process of detecting problems. After the problems are identified, you can perform the actions required to correct the problems.
Policies define the activities of systems. By using preconfigured or customized
policies, automated assessments of systems and applications are performed with
you being notified of any deviations, such as inappropriate settings or incorrect
system configurations. By automating these assessments, your productivity is
significantly improved and you are able to more quickly identify systems that
are not in compliance.
A policy is said to be compliant if it is determined that the managed targets
meet the desired state—that is, the policy test did not identify any violation.
The detection of a policy violation can optionally take action automatically
to bring systems back into compliance. Corrective actions are special types
of jobs that automatically execute in response to a policy violation.
Perform the following steps to apply policies consistently
across targets. You create a Monitoring Template and apply policy for it.
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1. |
Click Setup.
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Click Monitoring Template on the left navigation pane.
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Click the Create button to create a Monitoring Template.
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Click the flashlight icon beside the Target text field to select a target for the template.
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The Search and Select: Targets window is displayed. From the Target Type drop-down list, select Host.
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Select a target host.
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Click the Select button.
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The host name appears in the Target text field. Click
the Continue button.
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You can see the Create Monitoring Template page. On the General subtabbed page, specify a name for the template in the Name field. Specify the purpose of the template in the Description field.
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Click the Metric Thresholds subtab.
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You can use the Metric Thresholds page to select the metrics to be included in the Monitoring Template.
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You can use the Metric Thresholds page to select the metrics to be included in the Monitoring Template.
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Click the Policies subtab.
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You can use the Policies page to associate policies with this Monitoring Template. The initial policies that are set are those that are associated with the targets of the Monitoring Template. You can remove these policies. You can also add new policies for the Monitoring Template. After it is added, the policy can also be modified. On this page, you can:
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To edit a policy, you can click the pencil icon.
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You may want to change or update the policy settings
after its creation. You have the edit option to change the policy settings
to better reflect your ever-changing environment.
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Click Continue.
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Click OK to create the Monitoring Template.
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You have successfully created the Monitoring Template.
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Scroll down and select the template that you just created. Click the Apply button to apply this template to multiple targets.
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On the Apply Monitoring Template page, click the Add button.
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The Search and Select: Targets window is displayed. From the Target Type drop-down list, select Host. From the hosts listed, you can select the targets on which you want to apply this template.
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Click the Select button.
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Click the Select All link to select all the targets. Click the OK button to apply this template.
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You have successfully applied the template on multiple targets.
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Click the Policies subtab to verify the various policy violations.
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The Policy Violations page summarizes all the policy rule violations in your enterprise. Viewing all the policy violations on one page enables you to prioritize your tasks so you can deal with the most critical policy violations or those that have the biggest impact on your enterprise.
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In this lesson, you learned how to:
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Collect configuration information | |
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Compare configuration information | |
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Apply policies consistently across targets | |
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