16 Using a Software Library

This chapter describes the Software Library feature of Enterprise Manager and contains the following sections:

Overview of Software Library
Setting up the Software Library
Using the Software Library
De-Configuring a Software Library
Software Library Maintenance Tasks
Software Library Issues

16.1 Overview of Software Library

The Software Library serves as a repository to store certified software images (for example Oracle Database, operating system, Oracle Real Application Clusters, third party softwares) and other related entities. These can then be automatically mass deployed to provision software, software updates and servers using Oracle Enterprise Manger in a reliable and repeatable manner. These provisioning operations, which are unattended and can be scheduled, lead to substantial cost savings.

Software Library can store the following types of entities:

Components: These entities represent the primary building blocks of the provisioning framework. A component can represent Operating system software, Oracle software or any third party software and applications. Software components are individually maintained within the Software Library and versions, states and maturity levels can be associated with each component.
Directives: These are constructs used to associate scripts with software components and images. These scripts contain directions on how to interpret and process the contents of a particular component or an image. Directives encapsulate the script, the command line used to invoke the script, and the script configuration properties. Directives are contained within a file that are stored in the Software Library and referenced from the software components that employ them. Versions, states and maturity levels can be associated with each Directive.
Images, Network Templates, Hardware Templates, and Storage Templates: These entities are associated with the Bare Metal Provisioning application of the Oracle Enterprise Manager and are used to provision software on bare metal and live servers. Briefly, an Image can be described as a collection of components along with the necessary directives that create a deployable configuration for a single or set of target machines. Network templates, Hardware templates and Storage templates are used to define the network, hardware and disk layout configuration of the target machines respectively. Versions, states and maturity levels can be associated with each of these entities.

16.2 Setting up the Software Library

Software Library can be configured using any mounted file system that is readable and writable from the Oracle Management Service (OMS). If Enterprise Manager is configured as a single server setup, then local directories can be used to configure the Software Library. Ensure that there is enough space available for the storage of software binaries, and associated scripts for the entities that you want to create and store.

In case Enterprise Manager is configured as a multiple servers setup, then the directories comprising the Software Library must be accessible by all OMS. Ensure that there is enough space available on the shared storage to store files that hold binary data for your components and other entities.

To configure the Software Library follow these steps:

Access the Oracle Enterprise Manager Provisioning Application by navigating to the Deployments tab.
Under the Deployments tab, go to the Provisioning tab. There are a number of tabs here for creating components, directives and other entities. You can access some or all of the tabs depending on the privileges assigned to the user.
Access the Administration tab. This requires super administrator privileges similar to SYSMAN user. For information about creating the super administrator, see Section 2.2, Creating Super Administrator for Enterprise Manager in the Best Practices for Bare Metal Provisioning on OTN.
In the Software Library Configuration section of the Administration tab, click Add.
On the Add Software Library Location page, enter the directory location and then click OK.

When the Software Library is configured, out-of-box Provisioning Archive files (PAR files) will be deployed. These files contain pre-build entities such as components, directives etc., for various applications such as bare metal provisioning and patching. A PAR file is a collection or bundle of Deployment Procedures and Software Library entities that are used for numerous Provisioning and Patching applications.

Note:

When you add a Software Library location for the first time, the configuration will take some time. Subsequently, adding other Software Library locations will be quicker.

16.3 Using the Software Library

The graphical user interface of the Provisioning application has various tabs for creating Components, Directives, Images, Network and Hardware Templates, which are created and stored in the Software Library. Various subdirectories for storing the entities can be created in the Software Library. These tabs also allow a user to delete and edit an entity stored in the Software Library. They also allow a user to view meta-data information for an entity. Multiple Software Library locations can be configured and when a file/binary is being associated with an entity, the location with the most space is picked.

Refer to the Best Practices for Bare Metal Provisioning on OTN for details on creating entities.

Figure 16-1 shows the Software Library section on the Administration page.

Figure 16-1 Software Library Configuration Section

This figure explains the Software Library features

The Software Library section lists the directory location, free space, used space, and space used by deleted entities. In addition, the following functionalities are also available in the Software Library Configuration section:

Purge

When an entity is deleted, the binary file associated with the entity continues to exists on the disk till it is completely removed. The space usage by such binary files can be monitored using "Used Space By Deleted Entities" column against every location. Use the Purge functionality in the Software Library section to permanently remove deleted entities and their respective binary files from the Software Library.

Refresh

The space usage for all Software Library locations can be computed using the Refresh functionality. On clicking Refresh, the Free Space, Used Space, and Used Space by Deleted Entities display the latest space usage details for each location. The Last Computed column gives the date when free space was computed last.

Check Accessibility

Use Check Accessibility to verify that the Software Library location is accessible from all OMS, in case of multiple OMS in your Enterprise Manager deployment. Ensure that normal preferred credentials are set for all hosts running Oracle Management Service to use the Check Accessibility functionality. You can also use the out-of-box Enterprise Manager policy "Non-Shared Software Library Existence" to check if any non-shared Software Library location exists among all OMS.

Export and Import

You can export Software Library entities and import Provisioning Archive (PAR) files in the Software Library. See Exporting and Importing Entities Across Oracle Enterprise Manager Deployments for more details.

Add, Remove, and Edit

You can add a new Software Library directory location and edit or remove an existing Software Library directory location.

16.3.1 Exporting and Importing Entities Across Oracle Enterprise Manager Deployments

Software Library entities can be exported and imported across different Software Libraries used by different Enterprise Manager deployments.

Provisioning Archive files (PAR files) contain deployment procedures and/or Software Library entities such as components and directives from Software Library. Oracle provides PAR files that contain Oracle best-practices deployment procedures and the Software Library entities required to run them for Provisioning and Patching applications.

Click Export in the Software Library section to select Components/Images/Directives/Suites/Networks to be exported as a PAR (Provisioning Archive) file. This PAR file can then be imported back in a new repository. Figure 16-2 shows the Export Software Library Entities Page.

Figure 16-2 Export Software Library Entities Page

Surrounding text describes Figure 16-2 .

To export the Software Library entities, you will need to specify the following values:

Element	Description
Directory Location	Location where the PAR file will be created. This is a required parameter.
PAR Filename	The file name must end with a .par extension. If the given filename already exists in the specified location, then filename_1.par is created. If that also exists, then filename_2.par is created and so on. The name of file can be viewed in the Job output page. This is a required parameter.
Oracle Wallet Password	This is used to securely store all secret property values in an encrypted Oracle Wallet. This is a required parameter. However, the password is used only if any exported entity has a secret property.
Exclude File	Select this option to exclude file, binary, or script associated with an entity to be exported.
Export	You can choose to either export all entities or export a selected entity. If you choose to export a selected entity, click Add to select entity. In popup to select the entity, search for the entities you want to export, select and add them. You need not select all referenced entities. For example, if an image is referring to a component and a directive, you can select only the image. During the export process, the component and the directive are also exported.

Click Import to import a PAR (Provisioning Archive) file in the Software Library. Figure 16-3 shows the Import Software Library Entities Page.

Figure 16-3 Import Software Library Entities Page

Surrounding text describes Figure 16-3 .

To import the Software Library entities, you will need to specify the following values:

Element	Description
PAR File Location	Location of the PAR file. This location must be accessible by the Oracle Management Server.
Oracle Wallet Password	This is an optional field. The password is required if the PAR file contains an Oracle Wallet that stores secret property values. PAR files provided by Oracle will not have any associated Oracle Wallet. Hence, if you are importing an Oracle provided PAR file, then password need not be provided. However, if you are importing a PAR file that was created by the Export process (using Enterprise Manager Console or PARDeploy script) then you will need to provide this password. The same password that was used during export should be used during import. You can ignore this password if there is no Oracle Wallet contained in the PAR file. If the PAR file has an associated Oracle Wallet, the import process will fail if no password is provided.
Force New Revision	If an entity being imported is already present in the Software Library, then this option allows the user to force a newer revision of the entity to be created during import. If the option is not selected and the PAR file contains an entity in a directory that already exists in the repository, then the import process will fail.

You can also use the deploymentLibrabryExport deploymentLibrabryImport scripts for importing and exporting the Software Library entities respectively. These scripts are present in the bin directory of the OMS Oracle Home and provide the flexibility to transfer entities from a test to production or between different production environments.

The scripts support the following import/export use cases:

Exporting all directives and importing the same.
Exporting all components and importing the same.
Exporting all entities in the Software Library (including Network profiles, Images etc.) and importing the same.

The export script is available at the <OMS HOME>/bin/deploymentLibraryExport.pl location on Linux and Windows.

The import script is available at the <OMS HOME>/bin/deploymentLibraryImport.pl location on Linux and Windows.

For information on using the import and export scripts, type --help in the command line.

16.3.2 Deleting and Purging Software Library Entities

Software Library entities can be deleted from the relevant tabs provided by the provisioning application. But it is to be noted that deleting the entity does not purge the file associated with it from the Software Library file system. If you delete an entity, it will not appear in the user interface, but will continue to exist on disk and take up disk space. To clean up and delete entities completely from the file system of the Software Library, you will need to purge the deleted entities.

To purge deleted entities, click Purge in the Software Library section.

You can also purge deleted entities by running the purgeDeploymentLibrary script. The script is located at the following location:

For OMS on Linux: <OMS HOME>/bin/ purgeDeploymentLibrary

16.4 De-Configuring a Software Library

Go to the Administration tab, Software Library section, choose the Software Library entry and then click Remove to de-configure a Software Library. Once a Software Library entry is deleted, it becomes inaccessible.

Even though the deleted location is not used further for storing binaries/files/scripts of newly-created Software Library entities, it may still store files of already created entities. If the location is not accessible from all Oracle Management Servers, user can experience problems during deployment of such entities later.

If multiple locations for the Software Library are configured, when you deconfigure the Software Library, you can remove all except one Software Library location.

16.5 Software Library Maintenance Tasks

It is recommended that the system administrator periodically performs the following administrative tasks to ensure that the Software Library is functioning properly:

Refresh the Software Library regularly to compute the free and used disk space.
Purge deleted entities to conserve disk space.
Check accessibility of the configured Software Library locations to ensure that they are accessible by all Oracle Management Servers.

For information about these features, see Using the Software Library.

16.6 Software Library Issues

Component creation sometimes fails with "Cannot create under the software library, please contact your administrator."

This may happen if the Software Library is not configured with Enterprise Manager. Configure the Software Library as explained in Section 16.2. Create the components once the Software Library is configured.

"Meta-data for entities is intact in the Management Repository but file system of the Software Library where the associated files are stored has been corrupted."

Restoring the file system should be fine but you will lose the entities that were created since the last backup. These entities will still show up in the Provisioning UI but errors will be encountered while accessing them or attempting to deploy them.

For other troubleshooting issues, refer to the Best Practices for Bare Metal Provisioning on OTN.