1 Introduction to Database Lifecycle Management

This chapter covers the following:

• Information Map for Lifecycle Management Solutions
• Overview of the Lifecycle Management Solutions

Information Map for Lifecycle Management Solutions

The Information Map for Lifecycle Management Solutions lists the chapters and sections relevant to the various lifecycle management solutions offered by Enterprise Manager. Consider this an information roadmap to learn about the solution and perform the required operations.

Table 1-1 Information Map for Lifecycle Management Solutions

Domain	Target Type	Solution Area	Reference Links
Database	Oracle Single-Instance Database Oracle Grid Infrastructure Oracle Real Application Server (Oracle RAC) Oracle RAC One Database	Discovery	Discovering Hosts Automatically and Adding Targets Manually Discovering Hosts Manually and Adding Targets Manually
		Provisioning	Creating and Provisioning Oracle Databases Provisioning Oracle Grid Infrastructure for Oracle Databases Creating Databases
		Update (patching)	Database Maintenance Concepts
		Upgrade	Upgrade databases and Grid Infrastructure Using Fleet Maintenance
		Change Management	Manage Database Schema Changes
		Configuration Management	Manage Configuration Information
		Compliance Management	Manage Compliance
		Enterprise Data Governance	Managing Enterprise Data Governance
	Pluggable Database	Discovery	Discovering Hosts Automatically and Adding Targets Manually Discovering Hosts Manually and Adding Targets Manually
		Provisioning	Managing Pluggable Databases Using Enterprise Manager
	Oracle Database Replay Client	Discovery	Discovering Hosts Automatically and Adding Targets Manually Discovering Hosts Manually and Adding Targets Manually
Configuration and Compliance	Enterprise Manager managed targets	Provisioning	Provisioning Oracle Database Replay Client
		Change Management	Manage Database Schema Changes
		Configuration Management	Manage Configuration Information
		Compliance Management	Manage Compliance
		Enterprise Data Governance	Managing Enterprise Data Governance

Overview of the Lifecycle Management Solutions

In today's world, with the cloud infrastructure, numerous low cost servers and software deployments on those servers have brought in a fresh set of lifecycle management challenges. The challenges range from discovering and monitoring the health of existing software deployments to provisioning new software deployments and maintaining them over a period of time.

Besides that, other problems include difficulty in managing consistency and compatibility across these software deployments and operating systems, managing configuration changes, and managing security vulnerabilities that lead to lack of compliance.

These lifecycle management challenges eventually force you to engage more human resources and devote significant amount of time in managing the data center operations.

Oracle Enterprise Manager Cloud Control (Cloud Control) offers lifecycle management solutions that help you meet all lifecycle management challenges easily by automating time-consuming tasks related to discovery, initial provisioning and cloning, patching, configuration management, ongoing change management, and compliance management.

Table 1-2 Lifecycle Management Solutions

Solution Area	Coverage
Discovery	Automatically discovers software deployments using IP scanning techniques (NMAP). Converts unmanaged software deployments to managed targets in Cloud Control so that their health can be monitored. Offers an integrated workflow for deploying Oracle Management Agents and discovering targets on selected auto-discovered hosts. All discovery solutions are covered in the Oracle Enterprise Manager Host Lifecycle Management Guide under: Discovering Hosts and Software Deployments.
Provisioning	Discovers bare metal servers and live target servers. Provisions Linux operating system on bare metal servers (hypervisors and virtual machines). Associates patching templates with provisioning so that patches can be applied automatically once the operating system is provisioned. Provisions Oracle Databases, Oracle Real Application Clusters (Oracle RAC), Oracle Grid Infrastructure (for standalone servers and clustered environments), and Pluggable Databases. Provisions clusters in virtualized Exadata systems. Supports mass upgrade of single instance, Oracle RAC, and Oracle RAC One database instances one at a time.
Patching	Database Fleet Maintenance allows administrators to maintain groups or pools of Oracle Homes and associated databases by applying database updates that include interim one-off patches including quarterly security patch updates (SPUs/CPUs), Patchset Updates (PSUs), Release Updates (RUs) and Release Update Revisions (RURs). Perform migrate, deploy and update patching operations using Fleet Maintenance's user interface or through EM CLI or REST API. Validates patches for applicability in your environment, validates patching operations, and automatically receives patches to resolve conflicts. Fleet Maintenance integrates Oracle Fleet Patching and Provisioning (FPP) solution. Leverage native capabilities of Enterprise Manager automated risk assessment, security patch recommendations, and proactively patch databases and Grid Infrastructure. Offers out-of-place patching (only for standalone databases), in-place patching, and rolling and parallel patching modes, both in offline and online mode.
Change Management	Captures database object definitions and initialization parameters at different points in time. Compares databases; compares baselines. Propagates changes from database definitions and initialization parameters captured in a baseline or from a database to a target database. Specifies, groups, and packages object metadata changes. Creates change plans from ad hoc changes, comparison-based differences, or developer tools. Compares data between a local and remote database, and determines how seed data customizations will be affected by application upgrades.
Configuration Management	Searches configuration data across the enterprise. Displays configuration data in the context of a single managed entity—configuration item types and properties, system configuration data, system target relationships, custom configuration data. Monitors change activity across the enterprise—includes changes both to configurations and to relationships, which are associations that exist among managed entities. Compares configurations of a particular target type using comparison templates, which enable you to ignore the obvious differences and set alerts on critical issues that need immediate attention. Identifies files and other configuration data that Cloud Control does not already collect from well-known target types or from a target type introduced as part of the custom configuration definition. Creates new relationships between managed entities using the Topology Viewer or a generic system target type. Helps you perform dependency analysis and impact analysis on assets in your enterprise using the Topology Viewer.
Compliance Management	Evaluates the compliance of targets and systems as they relate to your business best practices for configuration, security, and storage. Advises of how to change configuration to bring your targets and systems into compliance. Helps you define, customize, and manage Compliance frameworks, Compliance standards, Compliance standard rules. Helps you test your environment against the criteria defined for your company or regulatory bodies using these self-defined entities.
Enterprise Data Governance	Provides the means to identify databases within the enterprise that potentially contain sensitive data, and then to evaluate the data within these candidates to determine if sensitive data exists. Uses metadata discovery to identify databases containing objects that are protected by security features known as Protection Policies. Discovers sensitive database candidates by identifying application signatures, a set of database objects such as schemas, tables, and views that are unique to a specific application. Performs metadata discovery automatically whenever a database target is discovered. This feature can be disabled if you want more control over when and how the metadata discovery job runs. Enables you to associate a sensitive database candidate with a new or existing Application Data Model (ADM) and set sensitive columns for the ADM.

Note:

The provisioning and patch management solutions are based on Oracle-supplied predesigned deployment procedures, that help you accomplish the provisioning and patching tasks. The three Oracle-supplied deployment procedures used in provisioning and patching are: Deploy an Oracle Home, Migrate Listener, and Switch a Database to run from new Oracle Home.

Deployment procedures contain a hierarchical sequence of steps, where each step might contain a sequence of other steps. Essentially, they encapsulate the workflow of all the tasks that need to be performed for a provisioning or patching operation.