Oracle Enterprise Grid Control – key features part b
The article will provide a user with information and guidance on the Oracle Enterprise Grid Controls’s key features.
Some of the key features have already been explained in my previous article i.e., Oracle Enterprise Manager Grid Control – part a. Let’s have a look at some more key features of Oracle Enterprise Grid Control.
Unmanned monitoring
Enterprise Manager monitors IT resources around the clock and it gathers all performance indicators at every fixed interval. Whenever a performance indicator goes beyond the defined acceptable limit, Enterprise Manager records that occurrence. For example, if the acceptable limit of CPU utilization for a server is 80%, then whenever CPU utilization of the server goes above 80% then that occurrence is recorded.
Enterprise Manager can also send notification of any such occurrence through common notification mechanisms like email, pager, SNMP trap, and so on.
Historical data analysis
All of the performance indicators captured by Enterprise Manager are saved in the repository. Enterprise Manager provides some useful views of the data using the system administrator that can analyze data over a period of time. Besides the fine-grained data that is collected at every fixed interval, it also provides coarse views by rolling up the data every hour and every 24 hours.
Configuration management
Enterprise Manager gathers configuration data for IT resources at regular intervals and checks for any configuration compliance violation. Any such violation is captured and can be sent out as a notification. Enterprise Manager comes with many out-of-the-box configuration compliance rules that represent best practices; in addition to that, system administrators can configure their own rules.
All of the configuration data is also saved in the Enterprise Manager repository. Using data, the system administrator can compare the configuration of two similar IT resources or compare the configuration of the same IT resource at two different points in time. The system administrator can also see the configuration change history.
Managing multiple entities as one
Most of the more recent applications are built with multi-tiered architecture and each tier may run on different IT resources. For example, an order booking application can have all of its presentation and business logic running on a J2EE server, all business data persisted in a database, all authentication and authorization performed through an LDAP server, and all of the traffic to the application routed through an HTTP server.
If user wants to monitor such applications thta he/she has to monitor all the underlying resources. A user should note that Enterprise Manager provides support for grouping such related IT resources and by using this support a system administrator has an opportunity to monitor all related resources as one entity and all performance indicators for all related entities can be monitored from one interface.
Service level management
Enterprise Manager provides necessary constructs and interfaces for managing service level agreements that are based on the performance of IT resources. A user can use this to measure service levels and expected service levels. An example will hep in understanding this. A service representing a web application can have the same average JSP response time as a service indicator, the expected service level for this service is to have the service indicator below three seconds for 90% of the time during business hours.
Enterprise Manager keeps track of all such indicators and violations in the context of a service and at any time the user can see the status of such service level agreements over a defined time period.
If a user has read this article then he/she would have learnt about Oracle Enterprise Manager Grid Control’s key features.
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