What is Grid Computing?

In Grid Computing, a user doesn’t care where computing occurs. Users request information or computation and have it delivered.  They don’t care where or how the request was given. This is, of course, a “client-side” view. On the other hand, from the “server-side,” the Oracle Grid is about resource allocation, information sharing, and high availability.

 

What is Oracle Ecosystem?

Oracle Ecosystems are integrated communities of related Oracle components such as application All Oracle Application servers, Oracle Databases, and Oracle collaboration Suite that they are functioning as a unit.

 

What is RAC?

RAC stands for Real Application Clusters. It distributes database workload among multiple instances.

 

What is ASM?

ASM stands for Automatic Storage Management. It manages disk I/O to easily accessed and balanced across disk groups. It is like a Volume Manager.

 

What is ASLM?

ASLM stands for Application Service Level Monitoring. It monitors the overall health of an application server and Oracle database.

 

What is Oracle Enterprise Manager 10g Grid Control?

It monitors and manages farm/cluster, application server, Oracle WebCache, Oracle HTTP Server, Oracle Containers for J2EE, Single Sign-On, Portal, Wireless, Business Intelligence, and host targets.

 

What are the Grid Control Components?

The following are the Oracle Enterprise manager Grid Control components:

1-       Oracle Management Repository (OMR) – It is a container. It is a collection of schema objects within an Oracle database. It contains SYSMAN’s schema objects. The OMR database listener monitors port 1521 by default for any incoming connection requests.

2-       Oracle Management Service (OMS) – It receives information from OMA and passes them to OMR. It provides the Grid Control console Web pages from information within the OMR. It includes Oracle HTTP Server (OHS), Oracle Application Server containers for J2EE (OC4J), and OracleAS Web Cache. OracleAS Web Cache is configured to listen on port 7777 and OHS listens on port 7778 for connection by default.

3-       Oracle Management Agent (OMA) – You need one OMA for each host server. It must be in its own ORACLE_HOME.  It collects information about target availability, configuration, and performance and passes that information to OMS. In most installation, the OHS listens to OMA traffic on port 4889 by default.

 

How to access the Grid Control console?

You use Web browser. (http://<oms host>.<domain>:<port>/em) For example: http://oracle.iselfschooling.com:7777/em.

 

What are the Grid Control Console components?

1. Home – It shows a big picture of system availability, alerts, jobs, and status of targets.

2. Targets – It shows the status of targets such as hosts, databases, applications servers, Web applications, groups, and a global view called “all targets.”

3. Deployments – It shows the software and hardware deployments including their patches. It manages configuration policies to ensure that you comply with generally accepted best practices.

4. Alerts -  It shows and monitors the status of targets.

5. Jobs – It shows, schedules and executes user’s or administrator’s jobs.

6. Management System – It shows an overview of performance of your ecosystem.

 

What is EM2GO?

It is a wireless device for Oracle database administrators to perform their task remotely.

 

How can I customize my Grid Control posts by using a static ports file?

You can use the staticports.ini file to customize your ports when you install OEM.

$ /stage/disk1/runInstaller oracle.sysman.top.em_seed:s_staticPorts=/../staticports.ini

Default Port Numbers and Ranges (Grouped by Component)

 

How can I install the Oracle OMA component?

The OMA – Oracle management Agent connects the OMS to managed targets. We should install the OMA on every managed target host.

There are three ways to install the OMA.

1-       Using the Oracle Product CDs (Interactively). It is the same is regular Oracle installation. $ /stage/Disk1/runInstaller.

2-       Using the batch process (Silent Installation).  It is the same as above but in silence no interaction. $ /stage/Disk1/runInstaller –responseFile ./agent.rsp –silent doDiscovery=True startAgent=TRUE (you can find the sample response file in the $ORALCE_HOME/install directory.

3-       Using the OMS process (On Demand). You don’t need the Oracle product CDs. Go to each server and use its browser and type: http://oms-servername:4889/agent_download and then select the OMA. Make sure that the wget utilize is in /usr/local/bin/wget. If not, then make a link for it. For example: $ ln –s /usr/bin/wget /usr/local/bin/wget.   You should make a new directory for the OMA before doing anything. Then run root.sh

 

What are the Key Configuration files for the OMA?

The key configuration files for the OMA are:

1.        ./sysman/emd/targets.xml

2.        ./sysman/config/emd.properties

3.        ./sysman/config/emagentlogging.properties

4.        ./sysman/log/.   (all OMA log and trace files)

 

How to start and stop the OMA?

-          to start: # $AGENT_HOME/bin/emctl start agent

-          to stop: # $AGENT_HOME/bin/emctl stop agent

 

What is opmnctl?

It is command line utility to control the OMS. It stands for Oracle Process Monitor and Notification control. The following are some of examples of how to manipulate the OMS components.

# opmnctl startall    -- starts all components of OMS.

# opmnctl stopall  -- stops all components of OMS.

# opmnctl startproc ias-component=OC4J  -- starts OC4J component

# opmnctl stopproc ias-component=OC4J  -- stops OC4J component

# opmnctl status – l – show OMS status components.

 

What is emclt?

It is the Enterprise Manger Control Utility (emctl). Like opmnctl, it starts and stops the OMS components. Notice that emctl does not start or stop OracleAS Web Cache.

If OracleAS Web Cache is on then you can access to OEM by: http://oms-server:7777/em and with no OracleAS Web Cache, you need to directly connect to the OHS: http://oms-server:7778/em.

The following are some of examples of how to manipulate the OMS components using emctl.

# emctl start oms  -- start oms components except web cache.

# emctl stop oms  -- stop …

# emctl status oms  -- show the status of oms components

# emctl start iasconsole – starts an individual component

# emctl stop iasconsole  -- stop and …

 

What is Blackouts?

We use blackouts to suspend target monitoring, schedule maintenance periods for these targets. This will prevents unnecessary alerts from being sent while a target is down for maintenance.

 

What are the differences between Application Server Control and Grid Control?

-          Grid control needs to be installed separately but Application Server control will be installed the same time that you install OracleAS.

-          Grid has the OMS and the Oracle Application Server control has no OMS.

-          Grid has may target type but the Oracle Server Control only has OracleAS.

-          With the Oracle Application Server Control, you can do server configuration but you can not do this with the Grid Control.

-          Both can do application configuration.

-          The application server control is Farm/cluster aware but not Grid.

-          With Grid control you can do Group, Historical Monitoring and Alerts, Application Service Level management, Job system, Configuration management, Mobil access via EM2GO. But you can not do any of the above function by Application Server Control.

 

How do we access to Grid control and Application Server control?

-          to access to Grid control: http://oms-server:7777/em

-          to access to Application Server control: http://application-server:1810

 

What are J2EE and OC4J?

Think of J2EE as an application and OC4J as an instance. You deploy the J2EE applications to the OC4J instance.

 

What are the Oracle configurations Infrastructure Services?

-          Identity Management: It provides Internet Directory (OID) and Single Sign-On capabilities.

-          Central Management: It centrally manages an application server instance with a separately installed Oracle management Agent (OMA).

-          Oracle Application Server Clusters: It manages multiple instances using one database repository. You can configure a J2EE and Web Cache instance to use a metadata repository.

 

How can I access to the Oracle Application Server Topology?

http://application-server:1810/emd/console/ias/topology/topologyjsp

             - or -

http://application-server:1810/emd/console/ias/topology/topologyapplet

 

How can I deploy an OC4J Application?

1-       Create an OC4J instance: On the Application Server Control Home page, click create OC4J instance. Then enter instance name, and click Create.

2-       Add a data source: Select the create instance. Click the Administration tab; and under Application Defaults, select Data Sources and click Create. Enter the application data source information, and then click Create.

3-       Deploy a J2EE application: Click Application, from the created instance. Click Deploy EAR file. Click browse and select the .ear file of the application you want to deploy. Enter an application name and then click Continue. 

4-       Now, we can monitor the OC4J application from the Application Server control.

 

 

What is ASLM – Application Service Level Management?

With ASLM, you manage application availability, monitor application performance, and diagnose application response-time issues.

 

What are beacons?

Beacons are a function of the Management Agent. It has responsibility of replaying transactions at specified time and measure the performance and response times of the transaction. To create it, click Management system, agents, and select the agent you want to configure as a beacon.  Select it from the drop-down and then click Go. Once you give it a name and proxy information, click OK.

 

How to configure Web Applications for monitoring an application?

Do the following steps to configure Web application for monitoring.

1-       Create the Web application.

2-       Create transactions.

3-       Create and assign beacons to Web applications.

4-       Define availability.

5-       Configure end-user response-time monitoring.

6-       Configure middle-tier performance monitoring.

 

Basic commands an Oracle Database Administrator must know (using default port).

1. Use the http://<oms host>:7777 URL with your Web browser to connect to HTTP Server.

2. Use the ias_admin username to connect to the OMS.

3. Use the iSQL*Plus tool if was installed by using the http://<database host>:5560/isqlpus URL to connect iSQL*Plus. Make sure that you have started the iSQL*Plus on the database server (# isqlplusctl start).