10 Oracle Collaboration Suite Management

Oracle Collaboration Suite provides capabilities—mail, calendar, web conferencing, and content services—that are critical to the productivity of an organization. Users access Collaboration Suite services every day to communicate with colleagues, host remote meetings, and share information; therefore, it is important that Collaboration Suite administrators have reliable, comprehensive tools to effectively manage the performance and availability of their Collaboration Suite deployments.

Oracle Enterprise Manager provides the monitoring and administration capabilities administrators need to ensure that the performance and availability of Collaboration Suite services meet customer expectations and service level goals.

This chapter describes how you can use Grid Control to manage your Oracle Collaboration Suite instances and components.

This chapter contains the following sections:

• Visualizing Your Collaboration Suite Deployment

• Automated Collaboration Suite Monitoring and Alerts

• Oracle Collaboration Suite Root Cause Analysis

• Diagnosing Oracle Collaboration Suite Performance and Availability Problems

• Collecting and Using Collaboration Suite Client Configuration Data

• Oracle Collaboration Suite Reports

• Administration for Oracle Collaboration Suite Instances

Visualizing Your Collaboration Suite Deployment

Oracle Enterprise Manager utilizes the following Enterprise Manager concepts to visualize your Collaboration Suite deployment:

• Collaboration Suite Services

• Collaboration Suite Systems

Collaboration Suite Services

Critical application functions are defined and monitored as services in Grid Control. Each Collaboration Suite component (such as Mail, Calendar, Content Services, and so on) is a service. In addition, each component is made up of a set of services.

For example, the Mail service includes services that represent IMAP, SMTP, and the Web Mail application. By breaking down the Mail service into individual sub-services, you can monitor specific Mail functionality separately. You can then, for example, distinguish between all Mail services being unavailable versus just the Web Mail application being inaccessible to users.

Because Collaboration Suite provides critical end-user functionality, it is useful to treat these functions as services. Each service is monitored by Grid Control beacons, which run service tests that simulate real user access to the service. Service availability and performance are monitored automatically, and problems are immediately reported to the administrator. By monitoring availability and performance of Collaboration Suite services, you can identify and resolve user-visible problems more quickly and thus minimize the impact on users.

The hierarchy of services that represent Collaboration Suite is used to visualize a Collaboration Suite deployment in Grid Control. The Collaboration Suite target subtab shows Collaboration Suite services in a hierarchical listing along with critical performance, usage, and availability data for each. You can also see an overview of Collaboration Suite performance, usage, and availability in the Services Dashboard. The dashboard also shows service-level compliance data. Finally, the service topology is a graphical tree view of your Collaboration Suite deployment.

Oracle Enterprise Manager also provides the following features to help you visualize, monitor, and manage your Collaboration Suite instances and components:

• Collaboration Suites Tab

  After you add the Collaboration Suites tab in Grid Control, you can configure a Collaboration Suite service for each of your Collaboration Suite instances, and manage all the instances from the Collaboration Suites tab.

  See Also:

  "Adding the Collaboration Suites Tab" in the Grid Control online help

• Configuring Collaboration Suite Services

  A Collaboration Suite service is a logical target configured by Grid Control that models the hierarchy of a Collaboration Suite instance and its components. You use Grid Control to step you through the process of configuring a Collaboration Suite service for each of your Collaboration Suite instances. After you configure a Collaboration Suite service, that service is displayed on the Collaboration Suite Services page.

  When you configure a Collaboration Suite service for a Collaboration Suite instance, Grid Control also configures services for the Collaboration Suite components.

• Collaboration Suite Services Page

  The Collaboration Suite Services page provides you with a graphical, tree view of Collaboration Suite services. On this page, you can see the relationship between the various services that make up your Collaboration Suite deployment. This page also provides summary information about the availability, performance, and usage of each of the Collaboration Suite instances for which you have configured a Collaboration Suite service. From the Collaboration Suite Services page, you can drill down to more detailed information about your Collaboration Suite instances and components.

• Collaboration Suite Services Dashboard

  The Services Dashboard provides a high-level view of the status, performance, and usage of each Collaboration Suite component. Service-level compliance for various time periods are also included for each service on the dashboard. You can launch the dashboard directly from the Collaboration Suite home page. You can also publish the Services Dashboard so that it can be viewed by non-Enterprise Manager users. This allows you to provide a self-service status web page to your end users.

Figure 10-1 Collaboration Suite Service Home Page

Description of "Figure 10-1 Collaboration Suite Service Home Page"

Service Monitoring

Grid Control enables you to monitor all of your Collaboration Suite services and their component services. Each service is monitored for performance, usage, and availability.

Each service has its own home page. The Service Home pages in Grid Control provide:

• Status, responsiveness, and performance data

• Resource usage data for the service

• Summary information such as status, performance alerts, usage alerts, and policy violations for the service's subcomponents, including other services and associated systems

• Links to home pages for the service's subcomponents

• Alerts and diagnostic drill-downs so that you can identify and resolve problems quickly

• The service's Topology Viewer

• Access to the Services Dashboard

• Related Links to do the following:

  • View metrics for the service

  • View client configurations

  • Manage reports

  • Edit the service

  • View the service target's properties

  • Manage blackouts

  • View and manage metric thresholds and policies

See Also:

Chapter 6, "Service Management"

Figure 10-2 Collaboration Suite Service Topology Page

Description of "Figure 10-2 Collaboration Suite Service Topology Page"

Collaboration Suite Systems

Collaboration Suite services run on a Collaboration Suite system defined in Grid Control. The system includes the software infrastructure components that the Collaboration Suite services rely on. The system includes components such as databases, HTTP servers, OC4Js, and other servers (such as IMAP or Calendar servers) used by Collaboration Suite.

The system is a collection of server targets that are grouped together in Grid Control to give you a view of the "data-center" components that comprise your Collaboration Suite. Grid Control also monitors the performance and availability of these components and provides a System Dashboard to view the health of the Collaboration Suite system in a single window.

Automated Collaboration Suite Monitoring and Alerts

Enterprise Manager automatically gathers and evaluates diagnostic information from Collaboration Suite targets distributed across the enterprise. As with all targets managed by Enterprise Manager, an extensive number of Collaboration Suite performance metrics are automatically monitored against predefined thresholds. Alerts are generated in Grid Control when metrics exceed these thresholds.

Oracle Collaboration Suite Root Cause Analysis

Individual services in Collaboration Suite are associated with the critical service and system components they rely on. This allows Enterprise Manager to perform Root Cause Analysis down to the system level whenever a service outage is detected. When you are configuring a Collaboration Suite service or component service in Grid Control, some of the UI pages give you the option of providing information about beacons, databases, and application servers that are critical for the component. If you do specify this information, Grid Control will be able to take these beacons, databases, and application servers into account when performing a Root Cause Analysis for the service.

See Also:

"Diagnosing Service Problems" in Chapter 6, "Service Management"

Diagnosing Oracle Collaboration Suite Performance and Availability Problems

You can use Grid Control to diagnose performance and availability problems with your Oracle Collaboration Suite services. For example, if a service outage occurs, Root Cause Analysis will determine if the primary cause is an outage of a critical service or system component. If a service performance issue is found, an administrator can examine detailed metrics over time related to that service and any of the service or system components used by that service. When you suspect there is a problem with one or more server components in the Collaboration Suite system, the system home pages provide metrics and charts for diagnosing the issue.

See Also:

"Monitoring Services" and "Diagnosing Service Problems" in Chapter 6, "Service Management"

Collecting and Using Collaboration Suite Client Configuration Data

The Oracle Collaboration Suite extensions to the basic Client System Analyzer (CSA) application enable Collaboration Suite-specific information to be collected from Windows client machines. After CSA for Collaboration Suite collects the information, it uploads it to the Grid Control Management Repository.

See Also:

"Client Configurations" in Chapter 4, "Enterprise Configuration Management"

Collaboration Suite administrators and help desk personnel assisting Collaboration Suite users can use the collected information to identify clients that are not properly configured to use Oracle Collaboration Suite.

After installing and configuring the Collaboration Suite enhancements to CSA, the Collaboration Suite administrator can provide users with the URL for the CSA for the Collaboration Suite application. When users access the URL, they can give permission for the CSA applet to be downloaded to their Windows client machine. After it is downloaded, the applet collects Collaboration Suite-specific information on the Windows client machine, including:

• Operating system user privileges. Only a user with administrator privilege can install Collaboration Suite Connector for Microsoft Office. CSA will check whether a user is an administrator.

• Type, version, and installation location of the mail client. CSA can identify Microsoft Office, Netscape, Mozilla, and Outlook Express mail clients on the client machine. If there are multiple mail clients installed, information on all of them will be collected.

• IMAP server and SMTP server settings.

• Execution mode for Outlook Express 98 or 2000 mail clients. Oracle Connector for Microsoft Outlook Express only works if Outlook Express is configured in Workgroup mode. In Outlook Express 2002 and later, the execution mode is always set to Workgroup.

• Type of Oracle Calendar client installed. If the Oracle Calendar thick client is installed, information about the version and install location of Oracle Calendar is collected.

• Browser versions and minimum recommended versions for optimally using various Collaboration Suite components, such as Web Access Client and Web Conferencing.

• Latency between the client machine and mail servers (IMAP, NNTP, POP, and SMTP).

Users who use CSA will see the summary report the applet displays after it collects the Collaboration Suite-specific data. The report identifies the areas in which the client does not meet Oracle Collaboration Suite requirements.

Administrators can use Grid Control to view the Oracle Collaboration Suite-specific client configuration information collected by CSA by navigating to the Collaboration Suite Service page, then clicking the Client Configurations link in the Related Topics section.

See Also:

"Viewing Collaboration Suite Client Configuration Information" in the Grid Control online help

Oracle Collaboration Suite Reports

You can define reports for Oracle Collaboration Suite services and systems, and also for Collaboration Suite component services, systems, and redundancy groups. For this release, you can view the following new reports for mail systems:

• Mail Queue Information Report

• Mail User Information Report

• Mail Message Information Report

• Mail Application-Tier Host Information Report

• Mail Detail Process Information Report

• Search Mail Message Report

• Unprocessed Mail Messages Report

• Mail Quota Usage Report

Leveraging the Grid Control Management Framework

Grid Control includes many general features that are useful to a Collaboration Suite administrator, including:

• Job Automation: You can use the Grid Control job system to schedule tasks you want to automate.

• Patching: The configuration management capabilities in Grid Control allow you to manage and apply patches to your Collaboration Suite installations. You are also alerted automatically when critical patch updates are released.

• Policies: You can utilize the policy framework to ensure your Collaboration Suite infrastructure adheres to your site-specific standards.

• Database and Application Server Management: Using the single Grid Control console, you can also manage the specific databases and application servers in your Collaboration Suite deployment if needed.

• Extensions: Grid Control also includes monitoring of key network components that may be part of your Collaboration Suite deployment. You can also extend Grid Control to monitor other components that are not recognized out-of-box by Enterprise Manager.

Administration for Oracle Collaboration Suite Instances

When you install an Oracle Collaboration Suite instance, you automatically get Oracle Application Server Control for Collaboration Suite to manage that instance. Each installed Collaboration Suite instance has its own Application Server Control for Collaboration Suite.

Application Server Control Console for Collaboration Suite is the Enterprise Manager Web-based application for managing Oracle Collaboration Suite releases 9.0.4 and 10g Release 1 (10.1). Application Server Control for Collaboration Suite provides Web-based management tools designed specifically for Collaboration Suite.

You can use Application Server Control for Collaboration Suite to monitor and administer a single Collaboration Suite instance, a group of Collaboration Suite instances, or individual components for a Collaboration Suite instance. You can also deploy applications, monitor real-time performance, manage security, and configure the components of your Collaboration Suite instance.

Application Server Control for Collaboration Suite relies on various underlying technologies to discover, monitor, and administer the Collaboration Suite environment.

Application Server Control for Collaboration Suite consists of Application Server Control Console for Collaboration Suite and its underlying technologies:

• Oracle Dynamic Monitoring Service (DMS)

• Oracle Process Management Notification (OPMN)

• Distributed Configuration Management (DCM)

• A local version of the Oracle Management Agent specifically designed to gather monitoring data for the Application Server for Collaboration Suite Control.

For additional management functionality, for example, Service Level Management, deployments, historical data collections for performance trending alerts, and so on, you can use Enterprise Manager.

See Also:

Oracle Collaboration Suite 10gR1 Administrator's Guide

While Application Server Control for Collaboration Suite provides standalone management for a Collaboration Suite instance and its components, you can centrally manage all your Collaboration Suite instances through one tool (rather than through several Application Server Controls for Collaboration Suite) by using Grid Control. For example, suppose you have 10 Collaboration Suite instances deployed on 10 hosts. By deploying a Management Agent on each host, Enterprise Manager automatically discovers the key Collaboration Suite components on these hosts, and automatically begins monitoring them using default monitoring levels, notification rules, and so on.