Oracle® Enterprise Manager Cloud Control Administrator's Guide 12c Release 1 (12.1.0.1) Part Number E24473-15 |
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As the monitoring and management framework for your ecosystem, an important part of your high availability strategy is to ensure Enterprise Manager is regularly backed up so that it can be restored in the event of failure.
This chapter covers the following topics:
Although Enterprise Manager functions as a single entity, technically, it is built on a distributed, multi-tier software architecture composed of the following software components:
Oracle Management Services (OMS)
Management Agent
Management Repository
Each component, being uniquely different in composition and function, requires different approaches to backup and recovery. For this reason, the backup strategies are discussed on a per-tier basis in this chapter. For an overview of Enterprise Manager architecture, refer to the Oracle® Enterprise Manager Cloud Control Basic Installation Guide.
The Management Repository is the storage location where all the information collected by the Management Agent gets stored. It consists of objects such as database jobs, packages, procedures, views, and tablespaces. Because it is configured in an Oracle Database, the backup and recovery strategies for the Management Repository are essentially the same as those for the Oracle Database. Backup procedures for the database are well established standards and can be implemented using the RMAN backup utility, which can be accessed via the Cloud Control console.
Management Respository Backup
Oracle recommends using High Availability Best Practices for protecting the Management Repository database against unplanned outages. As such, use the following standard database backup strategies.
Database should be in archivelog mode. Not running the repository database in archivelog mode leaves the database vulnerable to being in an unrecoverable condition after a media failure.
Perform regular hot backups with RMAN using the Recommended Backup Strategy option via the Cloud Control console. Other utilities such as DataGuard and RAC can also be used as part of a comprehensive strategy to prevent data loss.
Adhering to these strategies will create a full backup and then create incremental backups on each subsequent run. The incremental changes will then be rolled up into the baseline, creating a new full backup baseline.
Using the Recommended Backup Strategy also takes advantage of the capabilities of Enterprise Manager to execute the backups: Jobs will be automatically scheduled through the Job sub-system of Enterprise Manager. The history of the backups will then be available for review and the status of the backup will be displayed on the repository database target home page. This backup job along with archiving and flashback technologies will provide a restore point in the event of the loss of any part of the repository. This type of backup, along with archive and online logs, allows the repository to be recovered to the last completed transaction.
You can view when the last repository backup occurred on the Management Services and Repository Overview page under the Repository details section.
A thorough summary of how to configure backups using Enterprise Manager is available in the Oracle Database 2 Day DBA guide. For additional information on Database high availability best practices, review the Oracle Database High Availability Best Practices documentation.
The Oracle Management Service (OMS) orchestrates with Management Agents to discover targets, monitor and manage them, and store the collected information in a repository for future reference and analysis. The OMS also renders the Web interface for the Enterprise Manager console.
Backing Up the OMS
The OMS is generally stateless. Some configuration data is stored on the OMS file system.
A snapshot of OMS configuration can be taken using the emctl exportconfig oms
command.
$ <OMS_HOME>/bin/emctl exportconfig oms [-sysman_pwd <sysman password>] [-dir <backup dir>] Specify directory to store backup file [-keep_host] Specify this parameter if the OMS was installed using a virtual hostname (using ORACLE_HOSTNAME=<virtual_hostname>)
Running exportconfig captures a snapshot of the OMS at a given point in time, thus allowing you to back up the most recent OMS configuration on a regular basis. exportconfig should always be run on the OMS running the WebLogic Admin Server. If required, the most recent snapshot can then be restored on a fresh OMS installation on the same or different host.
Backup strategies for the OMS components are as follows:
Software Homes
Composed of Fusion Middleware Home, the OMS Oracle Home and the WebTier (OHS) Oracle Home and multiple Management Plug-in Oracle Homes.
Software Homes change when patches or patchsets are applied or updates are applied through the new Self Update feature. For this reason, filesystem-level backups should be taken after each patch/patchset application or application of updates through Self Update. You should back up the Oracle inventory files along with the Software Homes and save the output of opatch lsinventory –detail to make it easy to determine which patches are applied to the backed up Oracle Homes.
Note:
If you do not have filesystem-level backups, you can also reinstall the software homes using the “Installing Software Only” install method.Important: The location of the OMS Oracle Home must be the same for all OMS instances in your Cloud Control deployment.
Instance Home
The gc_inst directory, composed of WebLogic Server, OMS and web tier configuration files.
The Instance Home can be backed up using the emctl exportconfig oms
command.
Administration Server
The Administration Server operates as the central control entity for the configuration of the entire OMS instance domain. The Administration Server is an integral part of the first OMS installed in your Cloud Control deployment and shares the Software Homes and Instance Home.
The Administration Server is backed up at the same time as the Instance Home, the emctl exportconfig oms
command (only run on the first OMS with the Administration Server).
The Management Agent is an integral software component that is deployed on each monitored host. It is responsible for monitoring all the targets running on those hosts, communicating that information to the middle-tier OMS and managing and maintaining the hosts and its targets.
Backing Up Management Agents
There are no special considerations for backing up Management Agents. As a best practice, reference Management Agent installs should be maintained for different platforms and kept up-to-date in terms of customizations in the emd.properties file and patches applied. Use Deployment options from the Cloud Control console to install and maintain reference Agent installs.
If a Management Agent is lost, it should be reinstalled by cloning from a reference install.