Enterprise environments consist of a wide variety of components: OS platforms, hardware, software, network, and storage devices. All of these components work in concert to deliver critical information and functionality required to keep enterprise operations performing optimally and providing information to make important business decisions. While Oracle Enterprise Manager Grid Control allows you to monitor and manage a variety of components out-of-box, you may want to monitor third party components or custom applications specific to your environment. For example, with this release, you can seamlessly monitor WebLogic and WebSphere application servers. Additional plug-ins are being developed and will be announced as they become available.
In addition, you can use the same mechanism used by Oracle and partners to extend Enterprise Manager to monitor custom components via modular Management Plug-ins. Once a plug-in is defined, you use the Enterprise Manager Grid Control console to deploy the new plug-in throughout your enterprise environment.
Extending Enterprise Manager for monitoring additional components provides the following benefits:
Centralize management information in a single console: When deployed, components defined by the Management Plug-in automatically appear in the Grid Control console. Being able to monitor all targets in your environment provides a consolidated view of your entire enterprise, thus allowing you to monitor and manage all components from a central point.
Extend Enterprise Manager's monitoring and management features to non-Oracle components: Newly added components automatically inherit Enterprise Manager's powerful monitoring and management features, such as: alerts, policies, blackouts, monitoring templates, groups/systems, configuration management, and enterprise reporting.
Comprehensive Service-Level Management: By managing all of your enterprise components with Enterprise Manager Grid Control, you can more fully utilize the Service-Level Management features offered in Enterprise Manager Grid Control.
Complete Management Plug-in development information can be found in the Oracle Enterprise Manager Extensibility Guide.
The latest information on all aspects of Oracle Enterprise Manager extensibility can be found at the Oracle Enterprise Manager Grid Control Extensions Exchange located on the Oracle Technology Network web site.
http://www.oracle.com/technology/products/oem/extensions/index.html