39 Setting Up the Environment to Monitor Hosts

Before you start monitoring and administering hosts, it is recommended that you set up credentials and install the needed software. This chapter describes:

Note:

The installation of YaST is only for Oracle Linux 6.0 or below. For Oracle Linux 7.0 operating system, no other installation is needed.

39.1 Required Installations

Note: These required installations are only applicable to hosts running Oracle Linux, Red Hat Linux, and SUSE Linux Operating Systems (x86 and x64 architectures only).

To administer a host through Enterprise Manager, you need to install scripts. To determine which scripts you need to install for your host, follow these steps:

  1. From the Targets menu, select either All Targets or Hosts.
  2. Either type the name of the desired host in the Search field or scroll down to the name of the host in the Name column.
  3. Click the name of the host.
  4. From the Host menu, select Administration, then select Services.
  5. Oracle Enterprise Manager now supports Oracle Linux host administration features without YaST dependency. Host agent must be running on latest Enterprise Manager Agent Bundle Patch 13.2.0.0.0 or later Agent versions.

    Note:

    The credential user must have access to the Agent installation.

    YaST and EM wrapper scripts must be installed for agents running on earlier versions like Oracle Linux 5, Oracle Linux 6, and SuSE Enterprise Linux 9 and 10. The scripts can be downloaded from http://oss.oracle.com/projects/yast

39.2 For Linux Hosts - Installing YAST (Only if the host is not patched with latest 13.2)

YAST is an operating system setup and configuration tool that comes as a standard tool as part of SUSE Linux distribution. The Linux administration feature uses YAST to run scripts. For Oracle Linux and RHEL4 (Red Hat), YAST rpm contains the Enterprise Manager scripts. Therefore installing YAST rpm from the following location will also install the Enterprise Manager scripts:

http://oss.oracle.com/projects/yast

For SUSE, you need to download the Enterprise Manager scripts and additional remote access module from the following location:

http://oss.oracle.com/projects/yast/files/sles9

Before you install YAST, you need to determine the following:

  1. Determine the version of Linux on your machine. For example, the uname -a command lists the RHEL (RedHat), Oracle Linux, or SUSE versions, and the bits of the machine, for example 32-bit versus 64-bit. YAST is supported on RHEL4 and later and on Oracle Linux.

  2. Verify that you have root privileges.

To install YAST, perform the following steps:

  1. Go to http://oss.oracle.com/projects/yast. The Project: Yast page appears.
  2. Click the 'here' link. The Project Downloads: Yast page appears. Click the link that coincides with your version of Linux, for example, EL5.
  3. On the EL5 page, click the link associated with the bits on your machine, either i386 for 32 bits or x86-64 for 64 bits.
  4. Click yast_el5_x86_64.tar and download the tar file.
  5. Once the tar is downloaded, go to the directory where the tar file is available.
  6. untar the file using tar -xvf yast_el5_x86_64.tar
  7. cd to the yast_el5_x86_64 directory.
  8. Type sudo ./install.sh
  9. To verify that YAST is installed, type /sbin/yast2. This should display the YAST control center. If it does not, the YAST installation has failed.
  10. When you return to the Administration menu, the options should now display the available Linux administration features.

For a demonstration of how to install YAST, see the YouTube video Oracle Enterprise Manager 12c: Install YAST located at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ZiwmxZVmAw.

39.3 Setting Up Credentials

Credentials are needed to manage target instances.

To set up various credentials, select the Setup menu (located at the top-right of the UI page), then select Security. The following options are available:

  • Named Credentials are used for the Management Agent install. Named credentials explicitly grant you privileges on the host.

  • Preferred Credentials

    If a target has preferred credentials set, applications that log in to that target will automatically use the preferred credentials. Using preferred credentials simplifies access to managed targets.

    Default credentials can be set for each target type. Default credentials are used for any targets that do not have preferred credentials explicitly set.

  • Privilege Delegation Setting enables you to configure the Management Agent to use Sudo or PowerBroker so you can run privileged scripts.

See the online help for additional information.

39.4 Setup Needed for Host Monitoring

As you begin monitoring a host, you need to know what metrics you are allowed to monitor. You may also find that you need to set up monitoring credentials for target instances.

This section explains the required steps for these tasks.

39.4.1 Viewing Monitoring Configuration

The Monitoring Configuration page reports what monitoring you can do on the selected host.

To access the Monitoring Configuration page, perform the following steps:

  1. From the Targets menu, select either All Targets or Hosts.
  2. Either type the name of the desired host in the Search field or scroll down to the name of the host in the Name column.
  3. Click the name of the host.
  4. From the Host menu, select Target Setup, then select Monitoring Configuration.
  5. The Monitoring Configuration page appears. Details can include, for example, Disk Activity Metrics Collection Max Rows Upload.

    In addition, the Monitoring status is provided. For example, Oracle has automatically enabled monitoring for this target's availability and performance, so no further monitoring configuration is necessary.

39.4.2 Setting Up Monitoring Credentials

Monitoring Credentials allow you to monitor and access various target functionality. You can manage the already existing credentials for various target types using monitoring credentials.

To edit Monitoring Credentials, perform the following steps:

  1. On the Enterprise Manager page, locate the Setup menu located at the top right of the page.
  2. From the Setup menu, select Security, then select Monitoring Credentials.
  3. On the Monitoring Credentials page, select Host and click Manage Monitoring Credentials.
  4. On the Host Monitoring Credentials page, select a row and click Set Credentials to edit the credentials.

By default, a host has the following credential sets defined:

  • Host Credentials For Real-time Configuration Change Monitoring

  • Host SNMP Credentials

  • Host WBEM Credentials

  • Privileged Host Monitoring Credentials

You can add credential sets using the emcli create_credential_set verb with the -monitoring option.

39.5 Target Setup Needed for Host Administration

Before you start administrating the host, you need administrator access.

From the Host menu on the Host home page, select Target Setup, then select Administrator Access. Using this option enables you to determine target privileges for a user.