4 Checking the Performance of Your Services

This chapter describes how to use the Pulse Dashboard to quickly check the performance of all your Oracle production services in several widgets, as explained in the following sections:

Pulse Dashboard - General Aspects

The Pulse Dashboard ( Pulse Dashboard Icon) displays the recent performance of your organization's services, as follows:

  • the KPIs in the areas of service availability, service requests, and change requests show data for your production active services

  • the KPIs in the areas of storage, and, if enabled, business transactions and Business Insight, refer to all your active services

Click any of the widgets on the Pulse Dashboard to see the selected metrics in their overall context at the Customer or Service Level. By default, the Pulse Dashboard displays data as of the current day.

Accessing the Pulse Dashboard

To access the Pulse Dashboard, sign in to Oracle Pulse as explained in the Accessing Oracle Pulse section in Chapter 1, "Introduction". The Pulse Dashboard is displayed by default. The Pulse Dashboard is also easily accessible from anywhere in the application by clicking the Home icon ( Home Icon) in the upper left corner.

Analyzing Business Insight

This section describes how to use the Business Insight widget on the Pulse Dashboard to get a high-level summary view of provisioned Business Insight reports, as explained in Business Insight Widget.

Business Insight Widget

Note:

Where the Business Insight functionality has not been enabled, this widget is hidden.

The Business Insight widget on the Pulse Dashboard provides a high-level summary view indicating the number of provisioned Business Insight reports that are categorized as being in the following status ranges:

  • Normal: No thresholds that were set have been broken for those reports, or there are no thresholds associated with those reports.

  • Attention Required: Thresholds that were set have been broken for those reports.

Clicking the Business Insight widget opens the Business Insight Reports - Attention Required table, allowing you to quickly review the reports that are in the Attention Required status range:

  • Metric Name: Identifies the name of each Business Insight report that has been provisioned which requires some attention, most likely because a threshold that was defined for the report has been breached.

  • Environment: Identifies the application environment on which each Business Insight report listed is based. Business Insight reports can be based on Applications Unlimited environments, and may extend to other application environments.

Use the Business Insight Reports - Attention Required table to:

For more information about the Business Insight dashboard, see Chapter 10, "Using the Business Insight Reports".

Related Topics

Using the Business Insight Reports

Analyzing Changes

This section describes how to use the change widgets on the Pulse Dashboard to analyze Requests for Change (RFCs), as explained in the following sections:

Upcoming Changes Widget

The Upcoming Changes widget displays all change requests associated with production environments that have been scheduled between the current day and the next 30 days and all change requests requiring customer intervention:

  • Scheduled - The number of change requests associated with production environments which will be applied in the next 30 days.

  • Sev 1 Awaiting Customer - The number of Severity 1 change requests associated with production environments, which have the Awaiting Customer, Awaiting Customer Approval, Awaiting Customer UAT or Customer Working substatus.

Clicking the Scheduled or the Sev 1 Awaiting Customer widgets opens the Scheduled Changes and, respectively, the Sev1 Awaiting Customer Changes tables only if there is at least one scheduled change request or one Severity 1 change request with the substatuses above:

  • RFC ID: Specifies the RFC identifier from My Oracle Support.

  • Environment: Indicates the environment the change request is associated with.

  • Subject: Provides a short description of the change request, as entered in My Oracle Support.

  • Type: Specifies the type the change request is associated with in My Oracle Support.

  • Planned Start Date (UTC): Indicates the date when the change request is scheduled to begin.

  • Planned End Date (UTC): Indicates the date when the change request is scheduled to complete.

  • Severity: Specifies the impact that the change request has on your organization's services.

Use the Scheduled Changes or Sev1 Awaiting Customer Changes tables to:

If there are no scheduled or Severity 1 change requests, clicking any of these widgets opens the Changes menu at Customer Level. For more information about the Changes menu at Customer Level, see Chapter 13, "Using the Change Management Reports".

Last 30 Days (Minutes) Widget

The Planned Maintenance section of the Last 30 Days (Minutes) widget displays the total duration of planned production maintenance periods for the last 30 days, in minutes. Since the outage occurs at an agreed date and time due to regular maintenance or a customer request for change (RFC), planned maintenance outages are not taken into account when calculating availability. To understand more about how availability is calculated, see the Availability Metrics section in Chapter 2, "Key Concepts". Click this widget to open the Last 30 Days Planned Maintenance table:

  • MOS Ref#: Specifies the RFC identifier from My Oracle Support.

  • Environment: Indicates the environment affected by the planned maintenance outage.

  • Subject: Provides a short description of the situation requiring the planned maintenance outage.

  • Type: Specifies the category the planned maintenance outage is organized into, helping users to ensure planned maintenance outages are properly routed and to identify which categories require the most attention and resources at any given time.

  • Status: Indicates whether the planned maintenance outage is open or closed.

  • Sub Status: Indicates where the planned maintenance outage resides in the resolution process.

  • Planned Start Date [UTC]: Indicates the date when the maintenance outage is scheduled to begin.

  • Duration (Min): Indicates how long it took for Oracle to restore service.

Use the Last 30 Days Planned Maintenance table to:

If there are no planned maintenance outages, clicking this widget opens the Availability menu at Customer Level. For more information about the Availability menu at Customer Level, see the Viewing Outage Details section in Chapter 7, "Using the Availability Reports".

Related Topics

Using the Change Management Reports

Analyzing Incidents

This section describes how to use the incident widgets on the Pulse Dashboard to analyze Service Requests (SRs), as explained in Severity 1 Incidents Widget.

Severity 1 Incidents Widget

The Severity 1 Incidents widget provides information about the severity 1 incidents associated with your production environments up to the date and time listed:

  • Review displays all Severity 1 incidents - that is, service requests - created on production environments up to the date and time listed that are awaiting your input or approval.

  • Open displays all open Severity 1 incidents - that is, service requests - created on production environments up to the date and time listed.

Severity 1 indicates a complete loss of service for mission-critical operations where work cannot reasonably continue.

Clicking the Review or the Open widgets opens the Sev1 Awaiting Customer Incidents and, respectively, the Sev1 Open Incidents tables only if there is at least one such incident associated with your organization's production environments:

  • SR ID: Specifies the SR identifier, as entered in My Oracle Support.

  • Environment: Indicates the environment the service request is associated with.

  • Subject: Provides a short description of the SR, as entered in My Oracle Support.

  • Severity: Specifies the impact that the service request has on your organization's services.

  • Create Date (UTC): Specifies the date when the service request was created.

  • Update Date (UTC): Specifies the date when the service request was updated.

  • Product Name: Indicates the product the service request is associated with in My Oracle Support.

  • Component Name: Indicates the component type.

  • Subcomp Name: Indicates the service request subcomponent category.

Use the Sev1 Awaiting Customer Incidents or Sev1 Open Incidents tables to:

Related Topics

Using the Incident Management Reports

Analyzing Services' Stability and Performance

Note:

Where BTM has not been enabled, this table is hidden.

Use the BTM table to identify performance and stability issues for the business-critical user experience and batch transactions for any of your services where BTM has been enabled. This table provides an overview of the performance and stability of all the user experience transactions and batch jobs for each service as observed from the application mid-tier, Oracle data center (both local and remote), and customer data center levels, where configured:

  • Application Local: Identifies a beacon (i.e. an agent which executes the transaction) found on a host within the customer's environment.

  • Data Center (Local): Identifies a beacon found on a host in the same data center.

  • Data Center (Remote): Identifies a beacon found on a host within the Oracle (remote) data center.

  • Customer Center: Identifies a beacon found in the customer's data center.

  • Batch: Shows an aggregated summary of the overall stability and performance status for the monitored batch targets.

The stability and performance status for each of these categories is described by means of indicators, as explained below:

  • Red: This is an issue that requires attention.

  • Amber: There is a potential issue.

  • Green: All is as expected.

  • Grey: This component is not functioning as required – it has not been possible to collect recent performance and stability data from the target component.

  • Black: This component is under a planned outage.

Click either row to open the Transactions table filtered by the selected service:

  • Service Transactions: Indicates the transaction and service name.

  • Run By: For user experience transactions, this column indicates the beacon (execution agent) running the synthetic transaction. For batch job transactions, this column indicates the service environment on which the job is running.

  • Status: Indicates the status of the latest execution of the user experience or batch job transaction.

  • Last Response: Indicates the response time of the last execution of the user experience synthetic transaction or live batch job.

  • Performance: Indicates the transaction performance details for the latest execution of the user experience or batch job transaction.

Use the list in the upper left corner to filter the records in the Transactions table:

  • All: Shows all the transactions – synthetic user experience, and batch jobs - associated with your organization's services which were specifically configured to be monitored by the Oracle Pulse BTM functionality.

  • EBiz Suite Batch Job: Shows only the Oracle® E-Business Suite batch jobs associated with your organization's services which were specifically configured to be monitored by the Oracle Pulse BTM functionality.

  • PeopleSoft Batch Job: Shows only the PeopleSoft batch jobs associated with your organization's services which were specifically configured to be monitored by the Oracle Pulse BTM functionality.

  • User Interaction: Shows only the BTM synthetic user experience transactions associated with your organization's services which were specifically configured to be monitored by the Oracle Pulse BTM functionality.

Icon Name Description
Concurrent Program Icon EBiz Suite Batch Job A sequence of steps required to complete an Oracle® E-Business Suite task, performed without user interaction.
Concurrent Manager Icon E-Business Suite Concurrent Manager Administrative concurrent programs that manage application requests to invoke concurrent programs, batch jobs, and reports.
PSFT Batch Job Icon PeopleSoft Batch Job A sequence of steps required to complete a PeopleSoft task, performed without user interaction.
Process Scheduler Icon PeopleSoft Process Scheduler Centralized tools that enable application developers, system administrators, and application users to manage PeopleSoft batch processes.
User Interaction Icon User Interaction A sequence of steps that a user takes to complete a task.
LTM Transaction A sequence of steps that logs into the application home page and immediately logs out, allowing application access issues that may arise in relation to infrastructure components, capacity, performance, and access to be reported and tracked.

Related Topics

Using the Business Transaction Monitoring Reports

Analyzing Storage

This section describes how to use the storage widgets on the Pulse Dashboard to analyze storage, as explained in the following sections:

Customers with @Oracle services can use this data to understand if the current storage entitlement is adequate or needs to be adjusted.

Storage Utilization Widget

If your organization uses customer-owned storage resources, the Utilization bar within the Storage Utilization widget shows the amount of storage you have consumed, as described in the Storage Metrics section in Chapter 2, "Key Concepts".

If your organization uses Oracle-owned storage resources, the Storage Utilization widget can be useful in identifying services that are consuming a disproportionate amount of storage. Depending on the types of environments available for your services, this widget shows the following information:

  • if your services are associated with Technology Cloud environments only, this widget shows the amount of storage used. Click the bar to open the Storage Utilization chart, with data on the amount of storage used by each service with Technology Cloud environments.

  • if your services are associated with Managed Cloud environments only, this widget compares the amount of storage used by all your Managed Cloud services to your purchased entitlement, on the last collection date. Click either of the Utilization or Entitlement bars to open the Storage Utilization chart, with data on the amount of storage used by each service.

    Color codes are used to determine whether you need to investigate in more detail how the usage is across the services and environments, as follows:

    • if the utilization is lower than the entitlement, the Storage Utilization widget is displayed in green

    • if the utilization exceeds the entitlement by less than 10%, the Storage Utilization widget is displayed in yellow

    • if the utilization exceeds the entitlement by more than 10%, the Storage Utilization widget is displayed in amber

    Thus, you can easily identify if there is a need to increase entitlement, if there is a temporary increase that can be handled or if some environments should be decommissioned or decreased in the storage usage.

  • if your services are associated with both Technology Cloud and Managed Cloud environments, this widget shows the amount of storage used divided by the type of environment:

    • the Managed Cloud bar shows the amount of storage used by your Managed Cloud environments. Click this bar to open the Managed Cloud Storage Utilization chart, with data on the amount of storage used by each service with Managed Cloud environments.

    • the Technology Cloud bar shows the amount of storage used by your Technology Cloud environments. Click this bar to open the Technology Cloud Storage Utilization chart, with data on the amount of storage used by each service with Technology Cloud environments.

Storage Utilization Widget for Service Groups

When a service group is applied, as described in the Working with Service Groups section in Chapter 3, "Working with Oracle Pulse", the information shown in the Storage Utilization widget depends on the storage category associated with the services included in your service group. For information on the storage categories monitored in Oracle Pulse, see the Storage Metrics section in Chapter 2, "Key Concepts".

If your organization uses customer-owned storage resources, the Storage Utilization widget shows the following information:

  • the My Services Utilization bar shows the amount of storage used by the Managed Cloud services included in your service group.

  • the All Services Utilization bar shows the amount of storage used by all your services.

If your organization uses Oracle-owned storage resources, the Storage Utilization widget shows the following information:

  • if the selected services are associated with Technology Cloud environments only, this widget shows the amount of storage used by the services included in your service group. Click the My Services Utilization bar to open the Storage Utilization chart, with data on the amount of storage used by each of the services included in your service group.

  • if the selected services are associated with Managed Cloud environments only, this widget compares the amount of storage used by the Managed Cloud services included in your service group to the storage utilization and the purchased entitlement for all your services, on the last collection date, as follows:

    • the My Services Utilization bar shows the amount of storage used by the Managed Cloud services included in your service group. Click this bar to open the Storage Utilization chart, with data on the amount of storage used by each of the services with Managed Cloud environments included in your service group.

    • the All Services Utilization bar shows the amount of storage used by all your services. Click this bar to open the Storage Utilization chart, with data on the amount of storage used by each of your services.

    • the All Services Entitlement bar shows the amount of storage you are entitled to for all your services. Click this bar to open the Storage Utilization chart, with data on the amount of storage you are entitled to, divided by service.

  • if the selected services are associated with both Managed Cloud and Technology Cloud environments, the Storage Utilization widget shows the amount of storage used by the services included in your service group, as follows:

    • the My Managed Cloud Services bar shows the amount of storage used by the Managed Cloud environments associated with the services included in your service group. Click this bar to open the Managed Cloud Storage Utilization chart, with data on the amount of storage used by each of the services with Managed Cloud environments included in your service group.

    • the My Technology Cloud Services bar shows the amount of storage used by the Technology Cloud environments associated with the services included in your service group. Click this bar to open the Technology Cloud Storage Utilization chart, with data on the amount of storage used by each of the services with Technology Cloud environments included in your service group.

Note:

If your organization uses both Oracle-owned and customer-owned storage, the data on the customer-owned storage resources is not included in the reports.

Storage Growth Trend Widget

Depending on the types of environments available for your services, the Storage Growth Trend report shows the following information:

  • if your services are associated with Technology Cloud environments only, this widget shows the amount of storage used and the forecasted storage usage for the upcoming months. Click the bar to open the Storage Growth Trend table, with data on the collection period, and the storage growth values and forecast.

  • if your services are associated with both Technology Cloud and Managed Cloud environments, this widget shows the amount of storage used and the forecasted storage usage for the upcoming months for both Technology Cloud and Managed Cloud environments. Click the bar to open the Storage Growth Trend table, with data on the collection period, and the storage growth values and forecast for both Technology Cloud and Managed Cloud environments.

  • if your services are associated with Managed Cloud environments only, this widget shows data on the amount of storage used by all your Managed Cloud services and your purchased entitlement, on the last collection date.

Click the chart inside the widget to see more details, depending on the types of environments available for your services:

  • if your services are associated with Technology Cloud environments only:

    • Collection Period: Indicates the period when the data was collected. Thus, this widget can be based on data collected over the last month, last quarter or last year.

    • Storage Growth (%) over Collection Period: Indicates the growth rate, in percentage, over the period when the data was collected.

    • Allocation Extension Date: Indicates the date when the allocation is projected to be reached, based on your usage.

  • if your services are associated with both Technology Cloud and Managed Cloud environments:

    • Collection Period: Indicates the period when the data was collected. Thus, this widget can be based on data collected over the last month, last quarter or last year.

    • Technology Cloud Storage Growth (%) over Collection Period: Indicates the growth rate, in percentage, over the period when the data was collected, for the services with Technology Cloud environments.

    • Managed Cloud Storage Growth (%) over Collection Period: Indicates the growth rate, in percentage, over the period when the data was collected, for the services with Managed Cloud environments.

  • if your services are associated with Managed Cloud environments only:

    • Collection Period: Indicates the period when the data was collected. Thus, this widget can be based on data collected over the last month, last quarter or last year.

    • Storage Growth (%) over Collection Period: Indicates the growth rate, in percentage, over the period when the data was collected.

    • Entitlement Extension Date: Indicates the time when the usage will likely exceed the entitlement, unless entitlement is increased or usage growth trend is decreased.

Click the Export icon ( Export Icon) in the upper right corner to export data, as explained in the Exporting Data section in Chapter 3, "Working with Oracle Pulse".

Storage Growth Trend Widget for Service Groups

When a service group is applied, as described in the Working with Service Groups section in Chapter 3, "Working with Oracle Pulse", the information shown in the Storage Growth Trend widget depends on the storage category associated with the services included in your service group. For information on the storage categories monitored in Oracle Pulse, see the Storage Metrics section in Chapter 2, "Key Concepts".

If your organization uses customer-owned storage resources, the Storage Growth Trend widget shows the amount of storage used by the services included in your service group.

If your organization uses Oracle-owned storage resources, the Storage Growth Trend widget shows the following information:

  • if the selected services are associated with Technology Cloud environments only, this widget shows the amount of storage used and the forecasted storage usage for the upcoming months for the Technology Cloud services included in your service group.

  • if the selected services are associated with Managed Cloud environments only, this widget shows data on the amount of storage used by all the Managed Cloud services included in your service group.

  • if the selected services are associated both Technology Cloud and Managed Cloud environments, this widget shows the amount of storage used and the forecasted storage usage for the upcoming months for both Technology Cloud and Managed Cloud environments. Click the bar to open the Storage Growth Trend table, with data on the collection period, and the storage growth values and forecast for both Technology Cloud and Managed Cloud environments.

Note:

If your organization uses both Oracle-owned and customer-owned storage, the data on the customer-owned storage resources is not included in the reports.

Related Topics

Using the Storage Reports

Analyzing Systems' Availability

This section describes how to use the availability widgets on the Pulse Dashboard to analyze systems' availability, as explained in the following sections:

Production Availability Widget

The Production Availability widget provides information about the uptime and the count of unplanned outages that occurred in your production environments during the current month:

  • Uptime reflects the percentage of time that all your organization's live, production Oracle Managed Cloud services were operating as expected.

  • Unplanned outages count shows the number of unscheduled intervals when your organization's services were completely unavailable and Oracle was responsible for restoring service.

Availability is calculated based on complete unplanned outages, and does not include service interruptions or planned maintenance. To understand more about how availability is calculated, see the Availability Metrics section in Chapter 2, "Key Concepts".

Clicking the Uptime widget opens the Availability dashboard at Customer Level only if the production availability is between 0% and 100%. Clicking the Unplanned Outages widget opens the Unplanned Outages table only if there is at least one associated unplanned outage:

  • Environment: Indicates the environment where the outage occurred.

  • MOS Ref#: Specifies the RFC identifier from My Oracle Support.

  • Outage Start Date (UTC): Indicates the time when the outage started.

  • Problem Summary: Provides a short description of the problem causing the outage.

  • Duration (Min): Indicates for how long your Oracle Managed Cloud services were impacted by the outage.

  • Outage Id: Specifies the outage identifier from Cloud Automation Platform outage tracking system.

Use the Unplanned Outages table to:

If there are no unplanned outages, clicking this widget opens the Availability menu at Customer Level. For more information about the Availability menu at Customer Level, see Chapter 7, "Using the Availability Reports".

Last 30 Days (Minutes) Widget

The Last 30 Days (Minutes) widget provides information about the count of unplanned outages and service interruptions that occurred in your production environments during the last 30 days:

  • Unplanned Outage displays the total duration of unplanned complete outages for the last 30 days, in minutes. Availability is calculated based on outages where end users experience total loss of service - they cannot log in or perform any transactions. To understand more about how availability is calculated, see the Availability Metrics section in Chapter 2, "Key Concepts".

  • Service Interruption displays the total duration of isolated business transactions that could not be completed, while other service transactions could be performed, during the last 30 days, in minutes. Service interruptions are not taken into account when calculating availability. To understand more about how availability is calculated, see the Availability Metrics section in Chapter 2, "Key Concepts".

Clicking the Unplanned Outage or the Service Interruption widgets opens the Last 30 Days Unplanned Outages and, respectively, the Last 30 Days Service Interruptions tables only if there is at least one associated unplanned complete outage or service interruption:

  • Environment: Indicates the environment where the outage occurred.

  • MOS Ref#: Specifies the RFC identifier from My Oracle Support.

  • Outage Start Date (UTC): Indicates the time when the outage started.

  • Problem Summary: Provides a short description of the problem causing the outage.

  • Duration (Min): Indicates for how long your Oracle Managed Cloud services were impacted by the outage.

  • Outage Id: Specifies the outage identifier from Cloud Automation Platform outage tracking system.

Use the Last 30 Days Unplanned Outages and the Last 30 Days Service Interruptions tables to:

If there are no unplanned downtime outages or service interruptions, clicking the Unplanned Downtime or the Service Interruption widgets opens the Availability menu at Customer Level. For more information about the Availability menu at Customer Level, see Chapter 7, "Using the Availability Reports".

Related Topics

Using the Availability Reports

Analyzing Sustained Stress

Note:

Where BTM has not been enabled, this widget is hidden.

Use the User Interactions (Last 24 hours) widget to learn the response-time status of all active user interaction transactions monitored over the last 24 hours. This widget differentiates between transactions with normal response time (green) and transactions undergoing a sustained stress period (orange). Clicking the User Interactions (Last 24 hours) widget opens the Transactions List view at Customer Level, showing the list of transactions filtered by the User Interaction type.

Related Topics

Using the Business Transaction Monitoring Reports

Viewing Data for a Group of Services

Oracle Pulse lets you create groups of services for which to generate your reports. To do this:

  1. Click the Configuration icon ( Configuration Icon) in the upper right corner of the page.

    The Configuration page opens.

  2. Select the check boxes corresponding to the services you want to include in your service group. A minimum of 2 services is required.

  3. Click Apply to save your changes and create your service group. The data on the Pulse Dashboard is refreshed to show data for the services you have selected, and the Service Group icon ( Service Group Icon) is displayed in the upper part of the dashboard.

For more information about the My Services feature, see the Working with Service Groups section in Chapter 3, "Working with Oracle Pulse".