The Oracle Exadata plug-in provides a consolidated view of the Exadata Database Machine within Oracle Enterprise Manager, including a consolidated view of all the hardware components and their physical location with indications of status.
This chapter highlights the significant features and enhancements provided by the Oracle Exadata plug-in in the following release summaries:
New Features and Enhancements for Oracle Exadata Plug-in 12.1.0.6.0
Features and Enhancements for Oracle Exadata Plug-in 12.1.0.5.0
Features and Enhancements for Oracle Exadata Plug-in 12.1.0.4.0
Features and Enhancements for Oracle Exadata Plug-in 12.1.0.3.0
Oracle Exadata plug-in Release 12.1.0.6.0 includes a variety of bugs fixed and enhancements implemented for the following feature areas:
I/O Resource Monitoring (IORM) for Multi-Tenancy Database (CDB/PDB) Environment
Exadata Storage Server Grid Home Page and Exadata Storage Server Home Page Improvements
Check the list of patches required along with the Oracle Exadata plug-in release 12.1.0.6.0. For patch details, see Enterprise Manager 12c Support For ORACLE EXADATA DATABASE MACHINE X5-2 (Doc ID 1967701.1), available in My Oracle Support (https://support.oracle.com):
https://support.oracle.com/rs?type=doc&id=1967701.1
As Oracle releases new hardware and software, the Oracle Exadata plug-in is updated, tested, and certified to accommodate the new products. For complete hardware and software support details, see Oracle Exadata Database Machine Supported Hardware and Software in Chapter 1.
Oracle Exadata Plug-in Release 12.1.0.6.0 supports the following hardware and software:
Oracle Exadata Server versions:
11.2.3.3.1 or earlier.
12.1.1.1.0, includes support for Oracle Database 12c.
12.1.2.1.0
12.1.2.1.1
12.1.2.1.1 release and patch 2024004. See Doc ID 1959143.1 in My Oracle Support:
https://support.oracle.com/rs?type=doc&id=1954819.1
12.1.1.1.2
12.1.1.1.2 release and patch 20699031. See Doc ID 1995937.1 in My Oracle Support:
https://support.oracle.com/rs?type=doc&id=195937.1
Exadata hardware:
X4-2, X4-8
Note:
For the Exadata X4-2 and X4-8, Enhanced PDU monitoring and management support is provided. However, to monitor and manage an Enhanced PDU, you must set the set the SNMP MIB option to Original-MIB on the PDU. See Enhanced MIB Incompatibility for details.X5-2
Extreme Flash storage servers
Oracle SuperCluster hardware:
T5-8
M6-32
Note:
For details about support for the Oracle SuperCluster M6-32 server, see Oracle Enterprise Manager Exadata plug-in Support for SuperCluster M6 (Doc ID 1920159.1), available in My Oracle Support:https://support.oracle.com/rs?type=doc&id=1920159.1
Oracle SuperCluster v2.0 software:
Extends virtualization capabilities and introduces new and enhanced tools like Oracle VM Server for SPARC 3.1.1 support, IO Domain Creation Tool, OVM Templates, and so forth.
Elastic Configuration
Oracle Exadata Plug-in Release 12.1.0.6.0 supports the following IORM for multi-tenancy database (CDB/PDB) environment enhancements:
CDB-level I/O Workload Summary with PDB-level details breakdown.
I/O Resource Management for Oracle Database 12c.
Exadata Database Machine-level physical visualization of I/O Utilization for CDB and PDB on each Exadata Storage Server.
Integration link to Database Resource Management UI.
Oracle Exadata Plug-in Release 12.1.0.6.0 supports the following updates to the Exadata Storage Server and Storage Server Grid home pages:
Reorganized home page UI to address customer use cases.
Provides a fine-grained performance summary for flash and hard disk.
Provides new usage statistics to highlight flash cache and Smart Scan efficiency.
Provides new metrics for:
I/O time distribution by flash and hard disk.
IORM wait per database.
Oracle Exadata Plug-in Release 12.1.0.6.0 supports the following updates to the Performance page:
New UI look and organization.
Side-by-side comparison of flash and hard disk performance charts in a single page.
Performance comparison between multiple Exadata Storage Servers.
Performance utilization for flash and hard disk to identify workload reaching hardware limit.
Logical splitting of an Exadata Database Machine Rack into multiple Database Machines.
Supported configuration:
Each partition is defined through a single One Command deployment.
Compute nodes are not shared between partitions.
Multiple partitions connected through the same InfiniBand network.
Compute nodes in same partition share the same Cluster.
Expected behavior:
Ability to specify a customized Exadata Database Machine name.
User can confirm and select individual components for each Exadata Database Machine.
Flexibility to select "small-p" targets for individual partitions.
Flexibility to select some or all of the InfiniBand switch as part of monitored network, including the ability to add switches post discovery.
Flexibility to select some or all of the Cells to be shared among Exadata Database Machines.
The Exadata plug-in discovers, manages, and monitors virtualized Exadata Database Machine in conjunction with the Virtualization Infrastructure plug-in. See Virtualized Exadata Database Machine for more information.
Enterprise Manager includes support for Oracle Database though the Database plug-in. The Exadata plug-in leverages the features of the Database plug-in to allow access for additional functionality such as:
Support for Snap Clone on Exadata:
Available through the Cloud Management Pack for Oracle Database features of Enterprise Manager, you can create test masters on an Exadata system and create time- and space-efficient multitenant database and Database clones on Exadata.
For a summary of Database plug-in, see:
http://docs.oracle.com/cd/E24628_01/doc.121/e25353/whats_new.htm#CHDDCBAI
See the following video for an overview of the Database Snap Clone on Exadata feature:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nvEmP6Z65Bg
Features of Snap Clone include:
Fast space-efficient Snapshot database creation with the ability to create a snapshot database or snapshot multitenant database that reads from the base read-only copy of the database and writes to sparse diskgroup.
Integration with multitenant database enables creation of the database snapshot with single click (rapid database snapshots using sparse technology).
All Exadata features work on Snapshots (smart scans, smart flash cache, resource management, and so forth).
Code deployed on Exadata Storage Cells allocates on first write.
Built on clonedb code, which is database-centric rather than file-centric.
Leverages "sparse files" to reduce storage footprint.
Snapshot source is called a "Test Master" and must be read-only:
No snapshot of prod database
Enables Smart Scan and other Exadata-specific features for your development and test environment.
Initiated by using other Database snapshot integration features:
SNAPSHOT COPY (for multitenant databases).
CLONEDB (for non-container databases).
The automation kit deploys the Enterprise Manager Cloud Control 12c Release 5 agents on Exadata to enable monitoring of Exadata via Enterprise Manager and (optionally) to setup Database as a Service (DBaas) on Exadata.
The Exadata plug-in Release 12.1.0.6.0 now provides the following support for the Oracle SuperCluster v2.0:
Rapid Setup Kit: Set up Database as a Service (DBaaS) in minutes.
The DBaaS Rapid Start Kit is integrated with the Setup Automation kit for both Exadata and SuperCluster. This kit extends your experience of managing the SuperCluster to setup the cloud within minutes thereby increasing the ROI on SuperCluster.
The Rapid Start Kit provides a single command solution to set up Cloud for DBaaS. You can use this command to create all the Cloud artifacts, such as Roles, Administrators, Named Credentials, PaaS Infrastructure Zone, Database Pools and Service Templates. Once the Rapid Start Kit has been successfully executed, requests can be made to provision dedicated databases from the self-service console.
Setup Automation Kit: Support on-boarding and monitoring.
The kit deploys the Management Agent on all the clusters and discovers multiple Real Application Clusters (RACs) that are part of Oracle SuperCluster v2.0 in Enterprise Manager.
Oracle Exadata Plug-in Release 12.1.0.5.0 includes a variety of bugs fixed and enhancements implemented for the following feature areas:
As Oracle releases new hardware and software, the Oracle Exadata plug-in is updated, tested, and certified to accommodate the new products. For complete hardware and software support details, see Oracle Exadata Database Machine Supported Hardware and Software in Chapter 1.
Oracle Exadata Plug-in Release 12.1.0.5.0 supports the following hardware and software:
Certified and supported for the Exadata X4-2 with Exadata Server version 11.2.3.3 when the following Enterprise Manager patch is applied:
Patch 17965602: Platform patch based on Enterprise Manager Cloud Control 12c Release 3 (12.1.0.3), which is required for compute node monitoring.
Patch 17861041: Plug-in patch for the Oracle Exadata Plug-in Release 12.1.0.5.0, which is required for Exadata Storage Server monitoring.
The above patches also include fixes for issues in the Exadata Software version 11.2.3.3, which is installed with the Exadata X4-2 server. For details about these and other patches, see Exadata Storage software versions supported by the Oracle Enterprise Manager Exadata plug-in (Doc ID 1626579.1), available in My Oracle Support (https://support.oracle.com):
https://support.oracle.com/rs?type=doc&id=1626579.1
Certified for Oracle Database 12.1.0.1 June Release on Exadata 11.2.3.2.1 + patch.
Note:
To successfully generate thedatabasemachine.xml file using OneCommand, you must first upgrade to the latest OneCommand on MOS and confirm your OneCommand Deployment Configuration Assistance is at BP 18 (11.2.0.3.18) or later.
See the "OneCommand" section of Database Machine and Exadata Storage Server 11g Release 2 (11.2) Supported Versions (Doc ID 888828.1) for a complete list of patches available for download in My Oracle Support:
https://support.oracle.com
The Oracle Exadata plug-in allows you to manage your Oracle Exadata Database Machine through Enterprise Manager Cloud Control.
The Oracle Exadata Plug-in Release 12.1.0.5.0 includes the following features for managing your Database Machine:
Database Machine target now supports Software and Hardware Inventory feature.
Database Machine navigation tree also displays databases residing on the Database Machine.
Database Machine Home page has additional tab to show key software components, including databases, ASM, and Clusters residing on Database Machine.
Database Machine Discovery Summary Page provides optional link to Database Discovery.
With the Oracle Exadata plug-in, you can maximize the performance of your Exadata Storage Server.
The Oracle Exadata Plug-in Release 12.1.0.5.0 includes the following features for managing your Exadata Storage Server:
I/O Resource Management (IORM.) configurations metric now supports display of Category plan data.
Note:
The above is for display purposes only. The IORM user interface still does not allow the IORM Category plan to be set.Through the Oracle Exadata plug-in, you can use Enterprise Manager Cloud Control to manage the individual components of your Exadata Database Machine, including the InfiniBand Network and Switch.
The Oracle Exadata Plug-in Release 12.1.0.5.0 includes the following features for managing your InfiniBand Network and Switch:
Additional InfiniBand Switch Sensor fault detection, including power supply unit sensors and fan presence sensors.
Metrics reports are critical to manage your Oracle Exadata Database Machine effectively. With the metrics, you can determine where additional resources are needed, when peak usage times occur, etc.
The Oracle Exadata Plug-in Release 12.1.0.5.0 includes the following metrics enhancements:
Enhanced metric scalability in large environment to reduce time out by reducing cellcli calls.
Reduce metric collection error for the Exadata HCA metric. Improvements to combine the HCA port data collection in a single cellcli call to reduce chances of time out.
Reduced metric collection error from Exadata IORM Status metric. The metric was removed, and the user interface now uses the available configuration data.
Oracle Exadata Plug-in Release 12.1.0.4.0 includes a variety of bugs fixed and enhancements implemented for the following feature areas:
Oracle SuperCluster Engineered System.
1/8 Rack and Multi-Rack Database Machine.
Storage and Compute Node Expansion Rack Database Machine.
Exadata Server Version: 11.2.3.2.1.
Additional hardware/fault monitoring on compute node ILOM, including:
Fault detection for ILOM CPU, memory, and PCI error on Exadata Linux and Oracle Solaris.
Support for on-demand refresh of InfiniBand schematic.
Enhanced performance of InfiniBand pages.
Version 11.2.3.2.0 IORM Lite new features:
IORM Status is "Active" by default and cannot be modified.
IORM default disk objective is "Basic" which enables I/O throttling using IORM out of box.
Version 11.2.3.1.0 new features:
Share-based plans.
Enhanced Exadata Storage Server performance charts to help with diagnosing performance issues when I/O reaching hardware limits.
Enhanced guided resolution for "cell down" incident.
Provided Configuration Data SDK views.
Scalability enhancements for Cell Performance Monitoring metrics.
Oracle Exadata plug-in Release 12.1.0.3.0 includes over 228 bug fixes and enhancement requests. Highlights of the Oracle Exadata plug-in include features and enhancements implemented for the following feature areas:
Note:
Exadata Database Machine targets are configured with OOB default thresholds for the metrics. No additional template is provided by Oracle.Exadata Database Machine X3-2 and X3-8.
Oracle SuperCluster software:
Oracle SuperCluster V1.1
Oracle SuperCluster V1.0.1 + October QMU
Oracle SuperCluster hardware:
LDOM.
Control domain.
IO/Guest domain.
Newly certified Exadata Server versions: 11.2.3.2.1 and 11.2.3.2.2.
Automate SNMP notification setup for Exadata Storage Server and InfiniBand Switches.
Support discovery of compute nodes with client network host names.
Support discovery using the new catalog.xml file generated from the OEDA Java-based Configurator.
Automatically push Exadata plug-in to agent during discovery.
Additional credential validation and named credential support.
Support customization of Exadata Database Machine name.
Discovery prerequisite checks:
Checks for critical configuration requirements.
Check to ensure databasemachine.xml and catalog.xml files exist and are readable.
Check to ensure that required discovery software (KFOD) is available.
Prevent discovered targets to be rediscovered again.
Support enabled for discovery using the client access network.
Logical splitting of an Exadata Database Machine Rack into multiple Database Machines.
Supported configuration:
Each partition is defined through a single One Command deployment.
Cells and Compute nodes are not shared between partitions. (See Full Partition Support in Release 12.1.0.6.0 for updates to supported configuration.)
Multiple partitions connected through the same InfiniBand network.
Compute nodes in same partition share the same Cluster.
Expected behavior:
Ability to specify a customized DBM name.
User can confirm and select individual components for each DBM.
Flexibility to select "small-p" targets for individual partitions.
Flexibility to select some or all of the InfiniBand switch as part of monitored network, including the ability to add switches post discovery.
Support dashboard report creation from Enterprise Manager Cloud Control:
A new dashboard creation script is included.
Simplifies the configuration of the service dashboard.
Enhanced InfiniBand network fault detection and InfiniBand schematic port state reporting.
Performance improvements for Exadata Storage Server and IORM pages.
Support of client network hostnames for compute nodes.
Enterprise Manager monitoring agents can now be modified for all Exadata Database Machine components.
Credential validation and named credential support.
SNMP notification setup for Exadata Storage Server and InfiniBand Switch.