Oracle® Application Management Pack for Oracle Communications

Release Notes

Release 12.1.0.3

E64962-01

July 2015

This document provides release notes for Oracle Application Management Pack for Oracle Communications releases 12.1.0.2 and 12.1.0.3. Release 12.1.0.3 is a maintenance release that includes the capabilities of 12.1.0.2 and augments them with new features.

This document contains the following sections:

About Application Management Pack for Oracle Communications

Application Management Pack for Oracle Communications helps you reduce operational costs of managing and monitoring Oracle Communications applications and solutions by helping you achieve high levels of application availability, performance and control.Application Management Pack for Oracle Communications is delivered as a plug-in for the Oracle Enterprise Manager Cloud Control platform that provides operational management for the following Oracle Communications applications:

  • Business support systems (BSS):

    • Oracle Communications Billing and Revenue Management (BRM)

    • Oracle Communications Elastic Charging Engine (ECE)

    • Oracle Communications Network Charging and Control (NCC)

    • Oracle Communications Pipeline Configuration Center (PCC)

    • Oracle Communications Pricing Design Center (PDC)

  • Operations support systems (OSS):

    • Oracle Communications ASAP

    • Oracle Communications Order and Service Management (OSM)

    • Oracle Communications Unified Inventory Management (UIM)

  • Integrations:

    • Oracle Application Integration Architecture for Communications (Oracle AIA)

You use the plug-in with Enterprise Manager Cloud Control to discover, provision, control, patch, monitor, and ensure configuration compliance of Oracle Communications applications in your environment. Not all functions are supported for each application.

For more information about features and application support see Application Management Pack for Oracle Communications System Administrator's Guide.

New Features in Release 12.1.0.3

Application Management Pack for Oracle Communications release 12.1.0.3 includes the following new features:

Support for OSM with Oracle Real Application Clusters Database

You can provision OSM with Oracle Real Application Clusters (Oracle RAC) databases.

After discovering an OSM system and its Oracle RAC database, you can associate the OSM system target to the Oracle RAC database target for viewing on the topology page.

Support for OSS Targets on 11g and 12c

You can provision, discover, and monitor OSS targets on Oracle Database 11g and 12c and Oracle WebLogic Server 11g and 12c. The following versions are supported:

  • OSM:

    • 7.2.4.1 with WebLogic Server 11g and Oracle Database 11g and 12c

    • 7.3 with WebLogic Server 12c and Oracle Database 12c

  • UIM:

    • 7.2.4.1 with WebLogic Server 11g and Oracle Database 11g and 12c

    • 7.3 with WebLogic Server 12c and Oracle Database 12c

  • ASAP:

    • 7.2.0.3 with WebLogic Server 11g and Oracle Database 11g and 12c

    • 7.3 with WebLogic Server 12c and Oracle Database 12c

To support WebLogic Server 12c, you supply information for the Oracle Fusion Middleware Repository Creation Utility (RCU) during the procedure for provisioning OSS applications. You must also provide this information for UIM with WebLogic Server 11g.

The provisioning procedure uses this information to create database schemas with RCU as a prerequisite step to setting up the WebLogic Server domain on which the applications will be deployed.

Monitor UIM Compliance

You can monitor and manage compliance for UIM targets and the WebLogic domain on which they are deployed. The compliance rules provided by Application Management Pack for Oracle Communications assess how well your UIM configuration complies with Oracle's recommendations. The compliance rules are targeted at UIM on WebLogic Server 11g.

New Features in Release 12.1.0.2

Application Management Pack for Oracle Communications release 12.1.0.2 includes the following new features:

New Features for BSS

This section describes the new features for Application Management Pack for Oracle Communications release 12.1.0.2 that apply to BSS.

These features let you quickly install BRM in high-availability mode and upgrade PDC.

Provision BRM Multischema Systems with More Than Two Schemas

You can provision BRM multischema systems with up to 9 secondary database schemas.

Upgrade PDC

You can use the Communications Suite Installation Procedure to upgrade PDC deployments.

New Features for Operations Support Systems

This section describes the new features for Application Management Pack for Oracle Communications release 12.1.0.2 that apply to operations support systems (OSS).

These features provide advanced monitoring for OSM and increase the reliability of your OSM configurations.

Monitor OSM Order Metrics

You can monitor in-depth order, task, infrastructure, and performance metrics for OSM. You can view the metrics for the entire system, or categorized by server, order type, or cartridge.

Monitor OSM Compliance

You can monitor and manage compliance for OSM targets and the WebLogic domain on which they are deployed. The compliance rules provided by Application Management Pack for Oracle Communications assess how well your OSM configuration complies with Oracle's recommendations.

New Features for Integrations

This section describes the new feature for Application Management Pack for Oracle Communications release 12.1.0.2 that applies to integrations.

This feature provides centralized management and monitoring for Oracle AIA Pre-Built Integrations, lets you track and resolve faults at the integration layer, and increases your ability to analyze and diagnose faults.

Monitor Communications Integrations

You can discover and monitor Oracle AIA Pre-Built Integrations targets. The home page for integrations targets shows details about integrated applications, deployed integration packs and composites, fault summaries, and metrics for performance, order throughput, and faults. You can quickly resolve integration faults within Enterprise Manager Cloud Control.

Common New Features

This section describes the new features for Application Management Pack for Oracle Communications release 12.1.0.2 that apply to all applications.

These features enable you to automatically monitor changes made to application targets, provide the ability view a solution as a whole by grouping applications, and increase your ability to analyze and diagnose system faults by showing application and infrastructure relationships.

Discover BSS and OSS Applications Automatically

You can now configure Application Management Pack for Oracle Communications to discover all supported applications automatically.

Group Targets in Deployment Solution Stacks

You can group Oracle Communications targets that comprise a collection of integrated products, as in an Oracle Rapid Service Design and Order Deliver or Rapid Offer Design and Order Delivery solution. You can monitor these grouped targets from a single home page and view the topology for all components at once.

View Target Topology with Infrastructure Relationships

The topology view for application and suite targets includes the relationships between the applications and infrastructure elements, including the Oracle WebLogic Server targets, Oracle Real Application Clusters Database targets, and Oracle Database targets with which the applications are associated.

Known Problems in Release 12.1.0.3

This section describes the known problems and fixes that apply to release 12.1.0.3. All known problems in this section also apply to release 12.1.0.2.

Cannot Discover Multiple Cloned BRM Services

SR number: 3-10160357431

BugDB number: 20641426

Enterprise Manager Cloud Control discovers only the first entry for each service listed in the BRM pin_ctl.conf file. If you list cloned versions of the ready to use services in pin_ctl.conf, Enterprise Manager Cloud Control will not discover them.

To fix this problem, do the following:

  1. Configure automatic discovery for the BRM instance as described in Oracle Application Management Pack for Oracle Communications System Administrator's Guide.

  2. Run automatic discovery on demand for the BRM instance.

    The first entry for each service is discovered.

  3. Promote the discovered BRM service targets.

  4. Open the pin_ctl.conf file for your BRM instance.

  5. Comment out all but one version of each service. For example, if you have already discovered the ready to use dm_oracle and cm services and want to discover the cloned services that follow them:

    #dm_oracle
    dm_oracle_aia
    #dm_oracle_bre
    #cm
    cm_aia
    #cm_bre
    
  6. Save and close the file.

  7. Re-run automatic discovery on demand for the BRM instance.

    The next entry for each service is discovered.

  8. Promote the discovered BRM service targets and confirm that they appear in the Enterprise Manager Cloud Control BRM system target home page.

  9. Repeat steps 4 to 8 for each cloned service.

  10. Open pin_ctl.conf.

  11. Uncomment all services.

  12. Save and close the file.

Application Home Created on Administration Server Instead of Target Host

SR number: NA

BugDB number: 17581621

When using the Communications Suite Installation Procedure to provision Oracle WebLogic based applications in non-clustered deployments on multiple host targets, application home directories are created on the administration server instead of the target hosts.

In such implementations, use the administration server to access application homes and to control services running on the WebLogic servers on host targets.

Inability to Fix Cluster Property Error During User Entry

SR number: NA

BugDB number: 17517959

During the Communications Suite Installation Procedure interview process, when providing cluster information such as an OSM cluster database service name, an invalid entry causes redundant error messages to appear when adding subsequent target hosts.

To fix this problem, do one of the following:

  • Select the Defer Validation until Submit check box in the procedure parameter entry screen to prevent validation until all parameters for all target hosts have been entered.

  • Deselect the target host row causing the error, select the cluster configuration row, and then correct the invalid parameter before proceeding with your configuration.

BATCH_CONTROLLER Process Not Started After BRM Provisioning

SR number: NA

BugDB number: 17593991

After provisioning a Billing and Revenue Management instance containing the Batch Controller component the batch_controller process does not start.

To fix this problem you must manually configure and start the Batch Controller for your environment using the instructions in the chapter on controlling batch operations in Oracle Communications Billing and Revenue Management System Administrator's Guide.

Pipeline Configuration Center Provisioning Does Not Support SSL

SR number: NA

BugDB number: 17593368

The Communications Suite Installation Procedure does not support provisioning of Pipeline Configuration Center with SSL.

There is no workaround.

PDC Upgrade Supported Only When Administration Server is Named AdminServer

SR number: NA

BugDB number: 20126953

You can upgrade PDC instances only when the administration server of the WebLogic Server domain is named AdminServer. AdminServer is the name of the administration server for PDC instances that were originally provisioned using Application Management Pack for Oracle Communications. If PDC was provisioned independently of Application Management Pack for Oracle Communications, the administration server might have a different name and upgrade is not supported.

There is no workaround.

Steps Fail When Patching BRM on Solaris

SR number: NA

BugDB number: NA

When patching BRM on Solaris environments using Patch Set 10 with Patch 19921037, the following steps on the Procedure Activity page fail:

  • Stage BRM Solaris Patches

  • Unzip Solaris BRM Patches

To fix this problem:

  1. Log in to the Enterprise Manager Cloud Control administration console.

  2. From the Enterprise menu, select Provisioning and Patching, then select Procedure Activity.

    The Deployment Procedure Manager page appears.

  3. In the Run column, click the name of the failed patching procedure.

    The Procedure Steps table for the selected BRM patching procedure appears.

  4. In the Name column, expand the BRM Patching Phase and host name entries.

    All of the steps for the BRM patching procedure appear.

  5. Select the check box beside Stage BRM Solaris Patches.

    A tab with details about the step appears.

  6. From the Actions menu, select Ignore.

  7. In the Procedure Steps table, select the check box beside Unzip Solaris BRM Patches.

    A tab with details about the step appears.

  8. From the Actions menu, select Ignore.

    The patching procedure continues automatically.

Incorrect Target Status Reported for ASAP Targets After Discovery

SR number: NA

BugDB number: NA

After discovering ASAP instances not installed with the Communications Suite Installation Procedure, Enterprise Manager Cloud Control incorrectly reports that the ASAP instance is down.

The Oracle Enterprise Database on which ASAP is configured has a maximum processes number set too low (for example 150). To fix this problem, configure a higher number of maximum server processes available to the ASAP database. See the discussion of recommended Oracle Database initialization parameter settings in Oracle Communications ASAP Installation Guide.

Known Problems in Release 12.1.0.2

This section lists the known problems and fixes that apply to release 12.1.0.2 only. The problems listed here have been fixed in release 12.1.0.3.

The problems listed in "Known Problems in Release 12.1.0.3" also apply to release 12.1.0.2.

WebLogic Server Performance Summary Link Broken

SR number: NA

BugDB number: 20134164

On the home page for ASAP, UIM, and OSM node targets, in the Quick Links region, the WebLogic Server Performance Summary link is broken. When you click this link, nothing happens.

To access the performance summary for the WebLogic Server target on which the ASAP, UIM, or OSM node is deployed:

  1. Log in to the Enterprise Manager Cloud Control administration console.

  2. From the Targets menu, select All Targets.

  3. In the Target Type tree, select ASAP, Unified Inventory Management, or Order and Service Management Node, depending on the type of target for which you want to view server performance.

  4. In the list of targets, click the name of the target you want to view.

  5. In the Summary region, note the server name in the server name in the Deployed On field.

  6. In the System Availability region, click the name of the server listed in Summary region in the Deployed On field.

    The home page for the managed server on which the target is deployed appears.

  7. Under the target name, from the WebLogic Server menu, select Monitoring, then select Performance Summary.

    The Performance Summary page for the managed server appears.

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Oracle Application Management Pack for Oracle Communications Release Notes, Release 12.1.0.3

E64962-01

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