Discovering Oracle E-Business Suite with Cloud Control

This chapter covers the following topics:

Preparatory Steps for Discovery

Privileges needed to do discovery

To discover an Oracle E-Business Suite instance, a user must have the Add any Target target type privilege.

Prerequisites to do discovery

Note: For an AutoConfig-enabled Release 11i instance, running AutoConfig on the database tier adds the following lines to sqlnet.ora automatically:

tcp.validnode_checking = yes  
tcp.invited_nodes=(11i_HOST)   

In this case, database discovery or application discovery through Oracle Enterprise Manager will fail because the Oracle E-Business Suite instance database tier listener will reject any connection requests other than from itself. To prevent this failure, add the Oracle Enterprise Manager Cloud Control server to sqlnet_ifile.ora as listed below and bounce the database listener before discovery via Oracle Enterprise Manager.

tcp.invited_nodes=(11i_HOST, EMGC_HOST) 

Using the Discovery Wizard

An Oracle E-Business Suite instance is discovered using the Discovery Wizard. It allows you to validate, track, plan, log, and customize Oracle E-Business Suite discovery processes. To access the Discovery Wizard, select the Discovery Wizard from the Administer menu in the Oracle E-Business Suite Management page.

the picture is described in the document text

Adding an Oracle E-Business Suite database

The database should be discovered before you add the database using the Discovery Wizard. Refer to the Oracle Enterprise Manager Cloud Control Administrator's Guide for information on discovering the Oracle E-Business Suite database.

  1. From the Administer menu, navigate to the Discovery Wizard.

  2. Click on the Add Databases button.

    the picture is described in the document text

  3. Select the Oracle E-Business Suite database target.

  4. Once added, the database target shows up in the Discovery Wizard. You can now proceed to discover the Oracle E-Business Suite instance.

Prevalidating Discovery

Prevalidation allows you to analyze the Oracle E-Business Suite instance and Enterprise Manager Cloud Control to ensure successful discovery. Validation checks include verifying the following:

For more information on these checks, see: Prevalidation Checks for Discovery.

  1. To prevalidate discovery, go to the Discovery Wizard.

  2. Select the Oracle E-Business Suite database target and click on Prevalidate.

    the picture is described in the document text

  3. Enter the monitoring schema credentials for the database.

  4. Click Prevalidate Discovery.

    Note: The Normal Host preferred credential needs to be set prior to this step. See the Credentials chapter for more information.

  5. A job will be submitted to prevalidate the discovery.

    The Diagnostics Status column in the Discovery Wizard shows the status of prevalidation as a link. You can drill down to get the details. A detailed report will be generated that can be used to resolve any issues. Only one Oracle E-Business Suite instance can be prevalidated at a time.

Discovering Oracle E-Business Suite Release 11i, 12.0, or 12.1

  1. Navigate to the Discovery Wizard.

  2. Select the Oracle E-Business Suite database target and click on Discover.

  3. Enter the monitoring schema credentials for the database.

  4. Click Start Discovery.

  5. A job will be submitted to do the discovery. The Diagnostics Status column in the Discovery Wizard will show the status of discovery as a link. You can drill down to get the details.

Discovering Oracle E-Business Suite Release 12.2

  1. Set the Normal Host preferred credential where the WebLogic Administration Server is running. Refer to the Credentials chapter for more information on setting this credential.

  2. Navigate to the Discovery Wizard.

  3. Select the Oracle E-Business Suite database target and click on Discover.

    the picture is described in the document text

  4. Enter the monitoring schema credentials for the database.

  5. Enter the username and password for the WebLogic Administration Server.

  6. Click Start Discovery.

  7. A job will be submitted to do the discovery. The Diagnostics Status column in the Discovery Wizard will show the status of discovery as a link. You can drill down to get the details.

    Note: Both run and patch edition targets will be discovered but only run edition targets will be shown in the UI. Patch edition targets will be blacked out immediately after discovery to prevent false incidents from being raised.

Additional Features of Discovery

Discovering multiple Oracle E-Business Suite targets

The Discovery Wizard allows you to discovery multiple Oracle E-Business Suite targets. Select all the needed Oracle E-Business Suite database instances and click on Discover. You must enter the Monitoring Schema username and password for all of them in the next page. For Release 12.2 targets, you must also enter the WebLogic Admin username and password.

Discovering Oracle E-Business Suite as EM_MONITOR user (Recommended)

Oracle E-Business Suite can be discovered and monitored using an EM_MONITOR user which has read-only access to Oracle E-Business Suite tables required for monitoring. By default the EM_MONITOR user is locked so a user would have to unlock it explicitly to use it.

Connect to the database through SQL*Plus as the SYSTEM user and issue the command:

alter user em_monitor account unlock; 

Connect to the database through SQL*Plus as the em_monitor user and change the password:

sqlplus em_monitor/lizard;

Discovering Oracle E-Business Suite by assigning EM_OAM_MONITOR_ROLE to database user (such as DBSNMP)

Oracle E-Business Suite can be discovered and monitored using any database user, provided the user has been granted the EM_OAM_MONITOR_ROLE. This role is been provided with read-only access to Oracle E-Business Suite tables required for monitoring.

Troubleshooting discovery

If anything goes wrong with the discovery, you must check the discovery log to troubleshoot. It is available at:

$<MIDDLEWARE_HOME>/oms/sysman/log/ebsDiscovery_<DBSID>_oracle_database.log

Restrictions for discovery

Customizing discovery

It is possible to customize the discovery. You can exclude the discovery of certain targets and services. To customize the discovery of an Oracle E-Business Suite instance, click on the link available in the Configure column in the Discovery Wizard. You will be prompted to enter the monitoring schema credentials for the database.

Customization at the instance level

The following table explains the different options available for you.

Options for Customizing Discovery
Parameter Description Applicable Oracle E-Business Suite Releases
Customer Group Name All targets discovered for this instance will be grouped under this group. This group will be added to Group: Customer Group Name. All Releases
Customer Instance Group Name If the Customer Instance Group Name is provided, then all the targets discovered for this instance and the Customer Instance Group Name will be added to this group. All Releases
Discover Discoverer Disable/Enable discovery of the Discoverer component. Release 11i only
Discover Workflow Disable/Enable discovery of the Oracle Workflow components. All Releases
Discover Workflow Service Disable/Enable creation of the Oracle Workflow service. If you do not discover workflow targets, then the workflow service will not be discovered. Release 12 and Above
Discover Forms Service Disable/Enable creation of the Oracle Forms service. Release 12 and above
Discover SSA Service Disable/Enable creation of the Self-Service Applications (SSA) Service. Release 12 and above
Discover Patching Information Disable/Enable discovery of the Patching Information Object. This target is essential for any Oracle E-Business Suite patching application and should be enabled if any patching applications are used with this instance. Release 12 and above
Discover Custom Objects Disable/Enable discovery of custom objects configuration. Release 12 and above
Delete Removed Targets Whether to delete an Oracle E-Business Suite member target from OMS which was originally discovered and later detached from the Oracle E-Business Suite target hierarchy with a rediscovery.
For example, say you have discovered an Oracle E-Business Suite instance with five nodes. Later you customize the discovery and exclude two nodes. When you perform rediscovery, the two excluded nodes become orphan nodes. If this option is set to Yes, then the orphan targets will be deleted during rediscovery.
All Releases

the picture is described in the document text

Excluding nodes from getting discovered

The Configure Discovery page lists all the nodes. You can exclude a node from being discovered. Uncheck the check box corresponding to the node in the Enable column. At least one applications node must be selected for successful discovery. Discovery can happen even if you do not select any database node.

For Oracle E-Business Suite Release 12.2, you cannot exclude a node if the WebLogic Administration Server is running on that node.

the picture is described in the document text

Customization at the node level

You can also configure the targets that get discovered in each node. Click on the Configure column corresponding to each node.

the picture is described in the document text

Customization at apps node level

You can exclude Forms and the Apps JVM from being discovered in Release 12.

Mapping an Aliased Host

A host which is uniquely identified by an IP Address can have different alias names in the network. It is possible that the Oracle E-Business Suite context file has one host name while it has been discovered in Cloud Control with a different alias name. In such a situation, you must map the host name available in the context file to the corresponding host name with which it has been discovered. This can be done by configuring the discovery for each node. The section Map Aliased Host serves this purpose. Select the radio button Select overriding hostname. A list of values is shown from which you can select the appropriate host which can be mapped to the host in which this node is running. This feature is restricted to discovery and monitoring only.

the picture is described in the document text

Resetting the customization

From the Configure Discovery page you can reset your customization to default or you can reset it to the last configuration with which discovery was done successfully.

Command-Line Discovery for Oracle E-Business Suite Systems

The Oracle Application Management Pack for Oracle E-Business Suite provides a command-line interface for the batch discovery of multiple Oracle E-Business Suite systems. Command-line discovery is executed using the script ebsdiscovery.sh which is located under $PLUGIN_HOME/scripts/cli.

Prerequisites

The operating system user who runs command-line discovery must have the full permissions on the OMS ORACLE_HOME. Before running command-line discovery, set the following environment variables:

Before running discovery for multiple instances, it is highly recommended that you first try discovering a single Oracle E-Business Suite system.

Discovery

The ebsdiscovery.sh script can be run with the following parameters:

An example of running the command is:

./ebsdiscovery.sh inputfile=ebsList.txt omscred=omscred.conf logdir=/tmp

After the discovery job is started, you can view its status on the Oracle Management Server. From the Oracle Enterprise Manager console, navigate to Enterprise (menu) > Job > Activity. The status of the job is shown in the Status field. Click on the job name link to drill down to details on the discovered Oracle E-Business Suite instance.

The ebsList.txt file

The ebsList.txt file contains parameters and values for the discovery process.

The ebsList.txt file

the picture is described in the document text

The format for the ebsList.txt file is:

DBTARGET=>[[
           DBTARGET=><DBTARGET>;
           DBTYPE=><oracle_database | rac_database>;
           APPS_USER=><apps db user>;
           APPS_PASSWORD=><apps password>;
           ]]

Extra parameters can be provided as <key>=><value> pairs delimited by a semi-colon (;).

For ENCRYPTED_PASSWORD=><encrypted apps password>, the encrypted password will be used to decrypt the password on successive usage of the ebsList.txt file. To override the old password, change the input and add APPS_PASSWORD key value pair again with the new, changed password.

ebsList.txt Parameters

The following table describes the ebsList.txt parameters and their valid values.

Key Supported Release Valid Values Description Default
DB_TARGET All DB Target Name Database Target name of the Apps you want to discover N/A
DB_TYPE All oracle_database or rac_database Database type oracle_database
APPS_USER All Apps username   apps
APPS_PASSWD All Apps password This will be replaced by ENCRYPTED_APPS_PASSWD apps
APPS_MONITORING_USER 12.0 or higher Apps Monitoring username This is used for out-of-box service monitoring  
APPS_MONITORING_PASSWORD 12.0 or higher Apps Monitoring password This will be replaced by ENCRYPTED_APPS_MONITORING_PASSWORD  
DISCOVER_WORKFLOW All Y or N Whether to Discover Workflow targets Y
DISCOVER_WORKFLOW_SERVICE 12.0 or higher Y or N Whether to Discover Workflow Service if DISCOVER_WORKFLOW is Y Y
DISCOVER_FORMS 12.0 or higher Y or N Whether to Discover Forms or not Y
DISCOVER_FORMS_SERVICE 12.0 or higher Y or N Whether to Discover Forms Service if DISCOVER_FORM is Y Y
DISCOVER_SSA 12.0 or higher Y or N Whether to discover SSA Service or not Y
DISCOVER_CUSTOM_OBJECTS 12.0 or higher Y or N Whether to Discover Custom Objects or not Y
DISCOVER_PATCHING 12.0 or higher Y or N Whether to discover Patching Configuration target Y
PROTOCOL 11i http or https Whether to have http or https http
SRVLT_URL_FROM_CTXFILE 11i Y or N Whether to take Servlet URL from Context file or Not. If this value is N, Value for Servlet url will be "/servlet/oracle.forms.servlet.ListenerServlet" Y
ADD_CUSTOMER_GROUP 12.0 or higher Y or N Shall Add Customer Group N
CUSTOMER_INST_GRP_NAME 12.0 or higher Text Customer Instance Group Name N/A
CUSTOMER_GRP_NAME 12.0 or higher Text Customer Group Name N/A
DELETE_REMOVED_TARGETS All Y or N Whether or not to delete removed targets. Default is N N
DISCOVER_DISCOVERER 11i Y or N Whether or not discover discoverer Y
FORMS_SRVLT_PROTOCOL 11i http or https Whether to have http or https for forms servlet mode http
DISCOVER_JVM_USAGE 12.0 or higher Y or N Whether or not to discover JVM usage target A
WLS_ADMIN_USER 12.2 or higher Username of the WLS admin N/A
WLS_ADMIN_PWD 12.2 or higher Password for the WLS admin user N/A

Customer Groups Created by Discovery

Groups are an optional feature in Enterprise Manager that allows the logical organization of targets in accordance to user preference. Command line discovery allows the definition of target groups and placement of Oracle E-Business Suite systems in these groups at time of discovery. Groups can also be created using the normal discovery process available in the management console, as well as after discovery.

To view these groups, navigate within the Enterprise Manager console to Targets (menu) > Groups.

Rediscovering an Oracle E-Business Suite instance

If the Oracle E-Business Suite configuration has changed after discovery, then you must rediscover the Oracle E-Business Suite instance so that such changes are reflected in Enterprise Manager. Examples of changes to the configuration are:

The steps for rediscovery are the same:

  1. Navigate to the Discovery Wizard.

  2. Select the Oracle E-Business Suite database.

  3. Click Discover.

Deleting an Oracle E-Business Suite Instance

If you no longer want to monitor and manage a Oracle E-Business Suite instance, you can delete it. The steps are:

  1. Go to the Oracle E-Business Suite Management page.

  2. Select the Oracle E-Business Suite instance from the section Oracle E-Business Suite instances.

  3. Click Delete.

    By default, the system deletes application server targets (like the HTTP server, OC4J, and so on) when deleting the parent Oracle E-Business Suite target. If you do not want all the application server targets deleted, change the preference. For information on updating preferences, see: Setting Preferences.