18.2.1 Document the Topology of the Systems in the Environment

The scope of this task varies depending on the systems that you need to monitor. It is important to monitor all components of the system that can affect performance, including any external services that your system relies on.

Enterprise Manager can automatically provide complete topology documentation for a typical modern environment. If all the systems involved are provided by Oracle, you can be sure that Enterprise Manager is capable of discovering and monitoring all the components. Enterprise Manager can also be used to monitor many non-Oracle systems, for example, using the Oracle System Monitoring Plug-in for Microsoft Active Directory.

However, many systems include components that are unique, for example a system that still relies on a call to a legacy mainframe system. Before you can troubleshoot a complex system, it is important to understand each component and dependency. In some organizations, dependencies can be forgotten as staff changes, so it is important to produce a document relating to that system topology to enable troubleshooting to occur in the future. Some examples of Deployment Topologies are: