Introduction to Plug-ins

Enterprise Manager Extensibility Paradigm

Enterprise Manager is system management software that delivers centralized monitoring, administration, and life cycle management functionality for the complete IT infrastructure, including systems running Oracle and non-Oracle technologies.

Enterprise Manager has grown in size and magnitude over the years to offer a spectrum of powerful IT management and monitoring solutions. This growth has lead to changes in managing support for new features, enhancements, and bug fixes.

Considering these developments, Oracle has carefully redesigned the architecture of Enterprise Manager in such a way that the framework or the core base on which the product runs is clearly separated from the layer that offers IT solutions by means of features. This new architecture implemented in Enterprise Manager 12c and future releases enables Oracle to provide a much stronger framework with capabilities to extend itself seamlessly from time to time for supporting new features and enhancements.

You no longer have to wait for the next release of Enterprise Manager to access the latest monitoring features for released products. The pluggable framework in Enterprise Manager 12c and future releases allows target support to be included soon after new versions of targets ship. You can install a new Enterprise Manager system or upgrade an existing one, as soon as the Enterprise Manager release is made available by Oracle.

Based on the new design, the Enterprise Manager 12c and future releases architecture constitutes the following logical parts:

EM Platform: Consists of a set of closely integrated UI and backend services that most monitoring and management functionality in Enterprise Manager depends on. Examples of platform subsystems include the Enterprise Manager target and metric model, the job, event, and provisioning framework. The platform also includes Oracle Management Agent (Management Agent) as well as the core background services such as the data loader, job dispatcher, and notification manager. The platform is delivered as part of an Enterprise Manager release, and can only be upgraded by upgrading to a new version of Enterprise Manager.
EM Plug-ins: Modules that can be plugged to an existing Enterprise Manager Platform to provide target management or other vertical functionality in Enterprise Manager. Plug-ins offer special solutions or new features, for example, connectivity to My Oracle Support, and extend monitoring and management capability to Enterprise Manager, which enable you to monitor a particular target on a host. Plug-ins work in conjunction with OMS and Management Agent to offer monitoring services, and therefore they are deployed to the OMS as well as the Management Agent.

The plug-in releases happen more often than Enterprise Manager Core Platform releases. The plug-ins enable Enterprise Manager 12c and future releases to be updated with new features and management support for the latest Oracle product releases, without having to wait for the next platform release to provide such functionality.

Plug-Ins

Plug-ins are modules that can be plugged into an existing Enterprise Manager Cloud Control deployment to extend target management or other vertical functionality in Enterprise Manager.

At a high level, plug-ins contain archives for monitoring and discovering OMS instances and Management Agents. The archives contain Java and SQL codes, and metadata.

Plug-Ins Deployed by Default

As a part of Enterprise Manager Cloud Control installation, a set of basic plug-ins is deployed by default. You can deploy other plug-ins to extend the basic functionality of Enterprise Manager Cloud Control.

The plug-ins that are deployed by default, or are shipped out of box are as follows.

Oracle Database: oracle.sysman.db
Oracle Fusion Middleware: oracle.sysman.emas
Oracle Systems Infrastructure: oracle.sysman.si
Oracle Exadata: oracle.sysman.xa
Oracle Cloud Framework: oracle.sysman.cfw

Plug-In Releases

Plug-in releases happen more often than Enterprise Manager Core platform releases. This new pluggable framework enables Enterprise Manager Cloud Control to be updated with management support for the latest Oracle product releases, without having to wait for the next platform release to provide such functionality.

For example, when a new version of Oracle Database is released, you can simply download and deploy the latest Oracle Database plug-in, which will include management support for the latest Oracle Database release. You can also work with plug-ins in Offline Mode.

Obsolete and Deprecated Plug-ins

Obsolete plug-ins are plug-ins that are not supported for the 13c Release 1 and future releases of Enterprise Manager. These plug-ins must be undeployed from the Management Agents and Oracle Management Services before upgrading to Enterprise Manager 13c Release 1 or higher.

Deprecated plug-ins are plug-ins for which support will not be available in the future releases of Enterprise Manager. Oracle recommends you limit your deployment of the deprecated plug-ins.

To undeploy obsolete and deprecated plug-ins from Enterprise Manager, first undeploy the plug-ins from the Management Agent (see Undeploying Plug-Ins from Oracle Management Agent), and then from the OMS (see Undeploying Plug-Ins from Oracle Management Service).

It is recommended that you remove the plug-in binaries of the undeployed plug-ins from Self Update.

Roles Required to Manage Plug-Ins

You need one or more of the following out-of-the-box roles to download, manage, and deploy plug-ins:

EM_PLUGIN_OMS_ADMIN: Enables you to manage the lifecycle of plug-ins on Management Server instances.
EM_PLUGIN_AGENT_ADMIN: Enables you to manage the lifecycle of plug-ins on Management Agents.
EM_PLUGIN_USER: Enables you to view the plug-in lifecycle console.