This chapter covers the following topics:
Application Management Pack collects Oracle E-Business Suite technology stack configuration information at regular intervals. Customers can modify the collection frequency. Customers can view the configuration and compare the configurations using time-based configuration snapshots or compare configurations between multiple Oracle E-Business Suite instances.
You can get the details of how the Oracle E-Business Suite instance is configured by looking at the configuration metrics collected for the Oracle E-Business Suite target. Select Configuration > Latest from the Oracle E-Business Suite instance target menu.
To see the configuration of each member target of Oracle E-Business Suite, you would have to go to the home page of each target and follow the navigation path mentioned above. As this would be inconvenient, the Configuration of All Members page simplifies this task. You will get a link to see configuration of all members in one place. Select Configuration of All Members from the Oracle E-Business Suite target menu.
Here you can see the links to see the last collected configuration of all member targets grouped as nodes, host, services, and so on. You can search for any context variable by clicking Search Context Variable. You can also search for patches applied and patch set information.
Comparing configurations is very important while managing Oracle E-Business Suite targets. You may be able to spot configuration differences between two Oracle E-Business Suite instances that are supposed to be identical or you may be able to find differences in configuration caused by human error or patching activities. You can compare the configuration of one or more Oracle E-Business Suite instances. You can also compare configuration snapshots taken on different dates and times. By comparing configurations, you can ensure consistency across all of your Oracle E-Business Suite systems, troubleshoot issues, or keep track of configurations for tracking and auditing purposes.
To compare configurations select Configuration > Compare from the Oracle E-Business Suite instance target menu.
In Enterprise Manager, a comparison template is an example for fine-tuning a comparison of like configurations. A template is associated with a specific target type, which determines the configuration item types, items, and properties to be compared. A set of default templates ships ready-to-use to support certain target types. A template enables you to establish specific settings to take into account when comparing configurations of the given target type; for example, which property differences to ignore and which property differences trigger an alert. For more information on comparison templates, see the Oracle Enterprise Manager Lifecycle Management Administrator's Guide.
The Oracle E-Business Suite plug-in includes a set of comparison templates for the following target types:
Oracle E-Business Suite
Oracle E-Business Suite Node
Oracle Concurrent Manager
Oracle E-Business Suite Custom Objects
Oracle E-Business Suite Patch Information
Oracle E-Business Suite Workflow
These templates will be available once the Oracle E-Business Suite plug-in is deployed. You can use these templates to compare the configurations of similar target types without creating new comparison templates.
You can use these templates as-is, or as a guideline. For example, you might decide that an existing comparison template, with just a few changes, can meet your requirements. Perhaps a shipped template ignores property differences that you are concerned about. In this case, you can use the "Create Like" feature to make the adjustments to the existing template and save the new template under a different name.
Click on Enterprise > Configuration > Comparison & Drift Management.
In the Search region, select one of the above target types in the Target Type List. Click on the Search button.
Select the configuration against which other configurations will be compared. Click Next.
Click Add Configuration to select a single or multiple configurations to compare with the first. Click Next.
Select the template with the same name as the target type. In the same page you can view the template settings and member settings of the comparison template.
Click Submit.
Check the comparison result. The comparison report should adhere to the selected template rules. That is, if there are any ignored members or properties present from comparison, the same properties/members should not be present in the result report.
Click on Enterprise > Configuration > Comparison Templates. Select an existing template's row and click Create Like. Give the new template a name and edit the copy of the template.
Once you initiate a patching cycle by starting the prepare phase, you need to keep track of the configuration changes that are happening in the run edition. These changes will not be present in the new run edition once the cutover is performed. Doing this tracking manually is error prone. Configuration comparison is there for the rescue. You must follow the steps as follows:
Go to the home page of the Oracle E-Business Suite instance and refresh the configuration data to the latest value. See the section Viewing Configuration Data in the Enterprise Manager Lifecycle Management Administrator's Guide.
Go to the home page of the Oracle E-Business Suite instance and save the latest configuration. Give an appropriate name. This will be used to compare with the configuration which will be collected after patching is complete. See the section Working with Saved Configurations in the Enterprise Manager Lifecycle Management Administrator's Guide.
Once the patching is over, before starting the cutover, refresh and save the latest configuration of the Oracle E-Business Suite instance.
Now that you have the configurations collected before and after the patching cycle, compare it with the template by the name Detect run edition configuration changes to get the details of the changes which were implemented.
This template compares the configurations of the following targets in an Oracle E-Business Suite instance:
Oracle E-Business Suite
Oracle E-Business Suite node
Forms WebLogic server
Self-service Applications WebLogic server
Oracle HTTP server
You can download the differences as a spreadsheet. See the section Understanding the Comparison Wizard in the Enterprise Manager Lifecycle Management Administrator's Guide.
Important: In an Oracle E-Business Suite instance featuring online patching, all patch edition targets are blacked out except for the node target. This is to prevent false alerts as the patch edition is supposed to be down. The node target is not blacked out because that target is used to collect metrics to detect a cutover and trigger corrective actions. See the section Monitoring Online Patching to Detect Cutover.
So, while comparing the configuration, the configuration of the patch edition node target will also show up as it is not blacked out. You must ignore it. In the Mapping compartment of the configuration comparison wizard, search for the target Oracle E-Business Suite Node. Check the box in the Ignore column for patch edition nodes and node system. You must also ignore the database nodes and node system because there is no run and patch editions.
Configuration comparison capabilities of Enterprise Manager can help you get the details of configuration changes introduced by patching. Follow the steps below:
Refresh and save the configuration.
First, you must refresh and save the configuration before initiating the patching cycle, as mentioned in the above section. Once the patching cycle is complete, refresh and save the configuration again.
Compare the configurations.
Compare with the template Compare Run and Patch Edition Configurations. Here, we are comparing only the node target because that is the only target that is not blacked out in the patch edition.
Map run and patch editions.
When you perform the comparison between configurations collected for an Oracle E-Business Suite instance at different intervals, by default, the configuration of same targets are compared. In this case, the default mapping is to compare configurations of run edition node, which was collected before initiating the patching cycle, with the one collected before initiating the cutover. Since we want to know the changes that took place in the patch edition due to the patching cycle, we have to create the mapping to compare between the run and patch editions and ignore the default.
In the mapping compartment of the comparison wizard, use the Create Mapping button and link the run edition node target to the patch edition node target.
You must ignore the following mappings:
Between run to run App nodes
Between database nodes
Note: When the comparison report is shown, it will show all targets. You must filter the search to show only those targets where differences were found in the configuration.