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Discussion: Why companies are not using EM Grid Control
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jazzymike108 |
20. RE: Why companies are not using EM Grid Control
Dec 6 2007, 6:03 PM EST
Getting EM Grid Control installed and working has been like trying to hear the proverbial one hand clapping. We have OEM V9 monitoring our 9i databases and have had a number of hurdles in implementing OEM V10.• We spent months trying to install OEM V10 on Linux. After multiple install issues and multiple calls to Oracle Support, Oracle Support said that we would have to modify their source code and recompile it on our servers. We refused to maintain and compile Oracle’s source code and installed OEM on HP-UX, which installed fine. • Disk Space Requirements. The OEM client needs to be installed on each server, in addition to the Oracle 10 binaries. This requires about 1.5 gig of disk space. Unfortunately, we did not have that space immediately available in the Oracle binary file system and the file system needed to be expanded, which caused an outage on each server. • The tnsnames.ora file must be reformatted for Oracle 10 compatibility. Although this is not a big issue in itself, the testing effort is significant for 50 databases. • The Oracle 10 client will not talk to OEM V9. The DBAs are forced to use the Oracle 9 client to continue using OEM 9, because the Oracle 10 client will not talk to OEM 9. I am now in favor of using Embarcadero's Performance Center. Oracle seems to assume that OEM 10 is being installed in a pristine, new, environment, however, most companies will be upgrading from previous versions of Oracle and will need to overcome an unreasonable number of hurdles. 7 out of 20 found this valuable. Do you? |
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kbadeau |
21. RE: Why companies are not using EM Grid Control
Dec 7 2007, 10:11 AM EST
What are folks seeing in terms of pricing?Seems everything you want to plug into EMGC is $3k per CPU everywhere? Here's the pricelist from oraclestore... http://oraclestore.oracle.com/OA_HTML/ibeCCtpSctDspRte.jsp?section=53604 Seems pricey to me. How are others finding the cost of licensing? 1 out of 13 found this valuable. Do you? |
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kbadeau |
22. RE: Why companies are not using EM Grid Control
Dec 7 2007, 10:13 AM EST
I should say... it's $3k or $1.5k depending on the item.
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anshaw |
23. RE: Why companies are not using EM Grid Control
Dec 7 2007, 10:46 AM EST
I find that GC can be as simple or as complex as you want. Admittedly, there's tons of stuff packed into it that may not be for everyone, especially for smaller installations.But in our case, we have (so far) configured 306 targets; including 25 databases. We've also developed 5 of our own plug-ins for non-oracle products. We're starting to wonder how we lived without it before. 2 out of 15 found this valuable. Do you? |
HayrolR |
24. RE: Why companies are not using EM Grid Control
Dec 7 2007, 10:58 AM EST
OEM GC has all what you need to use in the administration (and more) world of Oracle 10g.If you are not using it and you have a Oracle 10g environment, then you have to do. Of course there are several issues that you can find in the implementation: - OS Imcompatibilities: Hard to avoid and fix... for sure it's comming soon, in the new releases (or at least, we hope). - DBA's and other Oracle people used to play with SQL*Plus - DBA's and other Oracle people used to use software from Quest, Embarcadero, etc. (which also have budget influence) - $$$$$: investment unavoidable - $$$$$: in learning courses - Heterogeneous environment - Too small to need it - Too big to implement it, lots of effort and time - and so on... But finally the effort of OEM GC implementation will become in a secure and centric Control Center (monitoring, getting data for tuning, backup & recovery, high availability, etc.) for your environment, and once you have crossed the learning curve and have it administering all you Oracle platform you will can rest. There is not nothing "dark" in OEM GC, it's just that companies has not found how to implement it for obvious reasons and, of course, has not invested the the effort enough (effort = time, work, money). I have configured it in a small enviroment with two DB (one DB is a two instances RAC) and three OAS and making use of Grid with excelent results in all my tests. But I can't do the same for our real production enviroment and 3 DBA's, for two or three of the reason listed above. Best regards. 3 out of 15 found this valuable. Do you? |
dlord |
25. RE: Why companies are not using EM Grid Control
Dec 8 2007, 11:10 AM EST
I'd second many of the comments already made: its hard to install (my favourite was when I tried to install a second management server connecting to an existing repository that was patched to 10.2.0.3; because the only available installer was 10.2.0.1, it complained that the repository was the wrong version. The solution suggested by oracle support was to 'downgrade' the repository by updating the table that contained the version number). People used to the 9i version have problems finding the features that they know and love (well, maybe not love). The DBA culture values doing it from the command line. The command line is simple, robust and always available in whatever company you move to.Having said all that, I've jumped all the hurdles to install it and now find it increasingly invaluable, particularly the alerts, the job scheduler and the performance pages. David 3 out of 15 found this valuable. Do you? |
Jeepman |
26. RE: Why companies are not using EM Grid Control
Feb 13 2008, 1:00 PM EST
Thanks for the pointer... I will try to recreate my EM fixit job and i hope I won't have to write an OS script to do it...I was under the impression that EM was supposed to get me away from writing OS scripts... So now I have to go back to my scripts?!?! Here's a thought... How about keeping EM Grid Control consistent between releases. This is the kind of thing that makes management nervous. Man hours are everything! Thanks! 3 out of 13 found this valuable. Do you? |
PLOPES |
27. RE: Why companies are not using EM Grid Control
Feb 18 2008, 7:59 AM EST
Well, I guess one of the problems is related to the multitude of versions you can manage with grid control.For instance, I think that the TopSQL is not available on GC for 9i targets :S Your second disappointment has no reason to be. You can make it happen. You can define a report in GC that will be applied to a group and even schedule and save for further reference :) Just try it a bit harder ;) cheers 0 out of 10 found this valuable. Do you? |
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lwsledge |
28. RE: Why companies are not using EM Grid Control
Feb 18 2008, 10:33 AM EST
Was just curious, what version did you have the AIX installation problems on?
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sdancisin |
29. RE: Why companies are not using EM Grid Control
Mar 23 2008, 12:59 PM EDT
A Couple of ClarificationsReporting Against Multiple Targets Yes that can be done, you need to create a group that contains all the targets then you can create a report that uses that group. I do this all the time. I do think the reporting is overall pretty weak out of the box. But you can custom write anything you want from the repository. I suggest you take a look at the views in the Extensibility Guide. 10g is 9i GC formatted for the Browser Well, some of the features in Grid Control have not been migrated to the web yet, which is why they still include the Java version. We have been told multiple times that the comparison between databases will be in the "next" release of Grid Control. I think it has a better case in making it in 11g, as I did see a demo of it at Open World. Hard to find. I agree, but you eventually get used to it and now I can navigate all around. Tablespace Map It is still there, you need to go to the tablespace in question and then in a drop down you can pick to see the segments in a tablespace or see a map of the segments. It is pretty slow, but it works. One of the features I like the best is that I can share the use of this tool with my development areas and they have a way to look at the important performance levels in production without needing advanced security privileges. I suggest you look at the following items - very powerful if you use them the right way. Notification Methods - was able to tie in Grid Control to our Standard Event Console and provide for some additional functionality. Templates - Very key for making your environment standardized. There were some issues prior to 10.2.0.4 - but there are work arounds for these. (10.2 was a big leap in this functionality as you now can apply templates with the emcli... Will continue........ 0 out of 2 found this valuable. Do you? |
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sdancisin |
30. RE: Why companies are not using EM Grid Control
Mar 23 2008, 1:00 PM EDT
Continued from last post..Problem Areas: Alerts that don't go away - Have a SR open for a year on this issue Blackouts that don't blackout - have a SR open for 1/2 a year on this Tablespace %Full metrics that are not calculated correctly have a SR for 1.5 years Watchout For: Amount of work done by the OMR is HUGE... It is amazing. I had to do a recovery of this environment due to corruption a year or so ago, it it cut like a 1/2 Terabyte of Logs in a week that I had to roll my way through. I now do backups more often. Packs - by default everything is enabled. It is a little scary that you can accidently use things without even knowing you have violated the license agreement. Quirks in the Interface - There are places where you can see two different groups have worked on the GUI interface as it works differently. I am now used to it and probably would have a hard time telling you the exact location. I have: ================== 19 Agents (Linux x86, Linux x86-32, Solaris) 19 Host 1 OMS/OMR (2 - 2 Core CPUs - 32GB of memory - I run other things on this server). 282 Oracle Databases (as of today) 447 Targets Total 0 out of 2 found this valuable. Do you? |
thtsang |
31. RE: Why companies are not using EM Grid Control
Mar 27 2008, 2:41 AM EDT
I visited http://oraclestore.oracle.com/OA_HTML/ibeCCtpSctDspRte.jsp?section=53604. It seemed to me that all the products are add-ons... Which product corresponds to the 'base version' of the product?For example, if I only want to to oversee some Oracle Databases of a supported version, which one should I pick? 0 out of 1 found this valuable. Do you? |
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sdancisin |
32. RE: Why companies are not using EM Grid Control
Mar 27 2008, 8:53 PM EDT
Grid Control is included with the database as a feature - ie no extra charge.
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arifgulzar@gmail.com |
33. RE: Why companies are not using EM Grid Control
Mar 27 2008, 9:55 PM EDT
Hmm, EM Database control is cool, easily manageable and wonderful features....as compared to grid control
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yngmrmoon |
34. RE: Why companies are not using EM Grid Control
Mar 28 2008, 4:35 PM EDT
The database control is nice, if you want to remeber all of the web address for the 200+ databases that you have to monitor. That is the main purpose for Grid Control. It gives you complete access to all of the information that the DBAs or systems administrators may need from one place. I guess one of the things that concerns me the most about implementing GC is that everyone seems to think there is a charge for everything. The basic functionality that you would get from the fat client, you get for free with GC. Its not until you want to start doing performance tuning, change management, and/or configuration management that you start getting charged for the packs.I read a post ealier that GC wouldn't run on OE Linux 5. I have GC installed on a server running that version of Linux and it has been very stable. Now we have had our problems, just like everyone else out here that has had an SR open on GC. We've had problems with Notification Methods, Alerts not clearing, Agents not reporting, and so on. I guess the point that I want to make is that we took the time to make our tool work. We worked through the Notification System and now have Remedy tickets being auto created when critical alerts are raised. As most people out here have stated, GC when it's in place and people are using it, it becomes an invaluable tool for the organization. 2 out of 3 found this valuable. Do you? |
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gayathriherath |
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Apr 4 2008, 7:33 AM EDT
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psmith@epx.com |
36. RE: Why companies are not using EM Grid Control
Jul 10 2008, 6:42 PM EDT
First of all, it's prohibitively costly. This is probably the single greatest reason it's not more widely employed. Secondly, it's rather unwieldy and cumbersome, requiring substantial investment in mastery and administration of the tool itself. Except for those sites with large numbers of environments, these costs will typically out-weigh the benefits of central administration and deployment. Compare it with previous versions of the Oracle Enterprise Manager, which were almost 'turnkey', 'point and shoot', which required very, very little investment to deploy and not much more to use effectively. Compared to those products, Grid Control is simply a pain in the you-know-what. Lastly, it requires component installs on target systems. For shops with tight change control, this introduces yet another element of cost in its use. Lastly, although it certainly has its good points, a lot of things that were very easy in the old java based OEM, either aren't as easy, or entirely unavailable, in Grid Control, so a lot of DBAs (as well as other types of users) just don't 'like' it, and so are resistant to its use. If someone could sell a relatively cheap interface to allow the older OEM to access 10g+ versions, I think they'd make quite a bit of money. 1 out of 1 found this valuable. Do you? |
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psmith@epx.com |
37. RE: Why companies are not using EM Grid Control
Jul 10 2008, 6:45 PM EDT
No, it's not "that" hard....but it is a lot harder, and what that means is increased COO. And that's the nut of the issue. The earlier OEM may not have been as 'omnicapable' , but it was highly intuitive, simple to deploy and use, and had near zero COO. That's not at all the case with GC. The bottom line is that it's simply over-engineered for the vast majority of sites.
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forbrich |
38. RE: Why companies are not using EM Grid Control
Jul 28 2008, 9:22 PM EDT
Let me count the ways ...1) It's Oracle, therefore is DBA responsibility. The marketing is totally wrong from what I can tell. For example, Grid Control could be marketed to management as an SLA tool; to the Help Center as an health monitor.; etc. And nearly every time I mention a Grid Control capability, some SysAdmin pipes up with 'we already have scripts for that'. 2) Apparent price People don;t realize that the Grid Control framework itself is actually included in the product (database, app server) being licensed. So people think that they have to pay extra just for the basics. (Marketing again) It's actually funny that Oracle has a huge Grid Control licensing manual that talks about the license for each pack, and does not explicitly give the license terms of the base framework. 3) Actual Price Once I get them over that 'apparent price' hurdle by reading chapter and verse in the Database Licensing manual, we need to talk about the Pack licenses. Hmmmm. CPU based licenses that match the product (eg: database) license criteria. A quick calculation and a comparison to HO Open View, or Spotlight or BMC Patrol ... and the discussion is over for another month. 4) Installation 10.2.0.4 is the first one that really is relatively clean (few bugs). Install 10.2.0.1 and patch takes an unacceptably long time. And I have yet to get the silent install to work. (Demos, Oracle U classes ...) 5) Functionality Every site I visit, after the demo or discussion ... "You need to pay for that basic function?" My view: It's not the DBas you need to convince. It's the SysAdmins and the Management. for SysAdmins - give them the full scheduler with the DB11g Remote Execution as part of the base functionality. Suitable cron challenger. for Management - make the (core) license terms clearer. 1 out of 1 found this valuable. Do you? |
porushh |
39. RE: Why companies are not using EM Grid Control
Aug 1 2008, 2:51 AM EDT
Its just a matter of knowing what is possible. I have shown a lot of managers/techos what can be done with Grid Control with their Oracle databases, and all of them have been pleasantly surprised if not outright amazed. 99% expressed an interest to use Grid Control to simply make their lives easier. I have mentioned this on my blog at http://enterprise-manager.blogspot.com/
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