1 Introduction to Middleware Management

This chapter provides an introduction to how you can use Oracle Enterprise Manager Cloud Control to monitor and manage middleware software, including Oracle Fusion Middleware and Oracle WebLogic Server.

This chapter covers the following:

• Middleware Management with Enterprise Manager

• Using Cloud Control to Manage the Fusion Middleware Environment

• Fusion Middleware Control Versus Cloud Control

1.1 Middleware Management with Enterprise Manager

Middleware is the software that enables your enterprise applications to run. Managing the underlying middleware technology can be difficult, and IT organizations often have to rely on a variety of specialized tools. This can lead to inefficiency and may introduce complexities and risks.

Enterprise Manager Cloud Control is the definitive tool for middleware management and allows you to manage both Oracle applications and custom Java EE applications that run on a combination of Oracle Fusion Middleware as well as non-Oracle middleware software.

Enterprise Manager Cloud Control supports the discovery, monitoring and central management of the entire family of Oracle Fusion Middleware components, including:

• Oracle WebLogic Server farms, domains, clusters and single server instances

• Clustered and standalone Java EE applications

• Web tier components, including Oracle HTTP Server

• Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) components

• Oracle Web Cache

• Oracle Identity Management

• Metadata Services repositories

• Oracle WebCenter

• Oracle Portal

• Oracle Business Intelligence Discoverer

• Oracle Forms Services

• Oracle Reports

• Directory Server Enterprise Edition

• Oracle Coherence

• Oracle Exalogic Elastic Cloud

A key benefit of Enterprise Manager Cloud Control is that unlike other Fusion Middleware management utilities - such as Fusion Middleware Control and the WebLogic Server Administration Console - you can monitor and manage multiple target instances, such as all of the WebLogic Server instances within a domain, from a single console.

You can also view real time as well as historic performance metrics collected from middleware targets. This enables you to monitor the availability and performance of Oracle Fusion Middleware software both in real time and from a historical perspective for trend analysis and diagnosing availability and performance problems.

Enterprise Manager Cloud Control also enables you to manage the infrastructure upon which the middle-tier depends. You can manage underlying operating systems and hosts on which the middleware software is installed. You can also monitor the databases used by deployed applications, enabling you to diagnose application performance problems and identify the true root cause of the problem and the tier (middleware, database) on which it occurs.

The built-in topology viewer allows you to visualize and monitor your entire Oracle Fusion Middleware environment in a graphical display. Topologies can be viewed for a single SOA composite, an Oracle WebLogic Domain, or across multiple Oracle WebLogic Domains.

Management of Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) components such as BPEL processes and infrastructure components such as Oracle Service Bus, is also supported. The infrastructure provides monitoring, fault management, configuration management, deployment and dependency views of wiring between components.

1.2 Using Cloud Control to Manage the Fusion Middleware Environment

After you install and configure Oracle Fusion Middleware, you can use Oracle Enterprise Manager 11g Fusion Middleware Control to manage the Oracle Fusion Middleware environment. Fusion Middleware Control is a Web browser-based, graphical user interface that you can use to monitor and administer a farm with a single Oracle WebLogic Server domain.A farm is a collection of components managed by Fusion Middleware Control. It can contain one Oracle WebLogic Server domain, one Administration Server, one or more Managed Servers, clusters, and the Oracle Fusion Middleware components that are installed, configured, and running in the domain.Fusion Middleware Control organizes a wide variety of performance data and administrative functions into distinct, Web-based home pages for the farm, domain, servers, components, and applications. The Fusion Middleware Control home pages make it easy to locate the most important monitoring data and the most commonly used administrative functions-all from your Web browser.However, you can manage only one Fusion Middleware farm with Fusion Middleware Control. Typically, an enterprise would have multiple farms. Managing several farms from different, distinct Fusion Middleware Control consoles becomes very difficult.For centralized management and additional management functionality (such as historical data collections for performance trending, email and page notifications for potential availability and/or performance problems, and service level management), you can use Enterprise Manager Cloud Control.

1.3 Fusion Middleware Control Versus Cloud Control

This section compares the Oracle Fusion Middleware capabilities of Oracle Enterprise Manager Fusion Middleware Control (Fusion Middleware Control) and Oracle Enterprise Manager Cloud Control.

1.3.1 Managing Fusion Middleware with Fusion Middleware Control

Fusion Middleware Control organizes a wide variety of performance data and administrative functions into distinct, Web-based home pages for the farm, cluster, domain, servers, components, and applications. The Fusion Middleware Control home pages make it easy to locate the most important monitoring data and the most commonly used administrative functions all from your Web browser.

Fusion Middleware Control is a part of the Oracle Fusion Middleware installation. With Fusion Middleware Control, you can:

• Manage a single Oracle Fusion Middleware Farm and a single WebLogic Domain.

• Monitor the availability and performance of Fusion Middleware software in real time mode.

• Perform routine administration tasks such as deploying applications, configuring parameters etc.

For more details, see the Oracle Fusion Middleware 11g Administrator's Guide.

1.3.2 Managing Fusion Middleware with Cloud Control

Oracle Enterprise Manager Cloud Control is a Web browser-based, graphical user interface that you can use to monitor multiple Oracle Fusion Middleware Farms and Oracle WebLogic Server Domains. In fact, Cloud Control provides deep management solutions for Oracle technologies including Oracle packaged applications, Oracle Database and Oracle VM. Cloud Control also offers extensive support for non-Oracle technologies through more than two dozen heterogeneous management plug-ins and connectors including Microsoft MOM, IBM WebSphere, JBoss, EMC storage, F5 BIG IP, Check Point Firewall, and BMC Remedy.

Note that Oracle Enterprise Manager Cloud Control is not installed during the Oracle Fusion Middleware installation, but is a completely separate install.

With Oracle Enterprise Manager Cloud Control, you can:

• Centrally manage multiple Oracle Fusion Middleware Farms and WebLogic Domains.

• Manage third party tools such as WebSphere, JBoss, Tomcat, and Microsoft.NET Framework.

• Manage non-middleware software such as underlying operating systems and hardware on which the middleware software is installed. This allows administrators to correlate middleware performance with its underlying host performance.

• Manage database software and diagnose application performance problems and identify the true root cause of the problem and the tier (middleware, database) on which it occurs.

• Monitor the availability and performance of Oracle Fusion Middleware software in real time and from a historical perspective for trend analysis.

• Diagnose availability and performance problems.

• Monitor and trace important end-user requests from the client to the service endpoint across all the servers and applications associated with each transaction.

• Use Application Dependency and Performance (ADP) to analyze J2EE and SOA applications.

• Monitor Java applications and diagnose performance problems in production using JVM Diagnostics.

• Define Service Level Objectives (SLOs) in terms of out-of-box system-level metrics as well as end user experience metrics to accurately monitor and report on Service Level Agreement (SLA) compliance.

• Perform several critical tasks like:

  • Setting thresholds on performance metrics. When these thresholds are violated, email and page notifications are sent.

  • Tracking configuration changes and compare configurations between example test environment and production environment.