Features of the Engineered Systems Packs

The following features are included in the Exadata Management Pack and Zero Data Loss Recovery Appliance Pack.

Topics:

Features, Packs Supporting Them, and the Plug-ins Required:

Feature	Supporting Pack	Required Plug-in
Engineered System Fleet Console	Not licensed	Exadata
Exadata Fleet Dashboards	Exadata Management Pack Zero Data Loss Recovery Appliance Management Pack	Exadata
Engineered System Autonomous Health Framework Administration	Exadata Management Pack Zero Data Loss Recovery Appliance Management Pack	Exadata
Database Impact Advisor	Exadata Management Pack	Exadata
I/O Resource Management Advisor	Exadata Management Pack	Exadata
Exadata Cloud Advanced Monitoring	Exadata Management Pack	Exadata
Exadata Exascale Advanced Monitoring	Exadata Management Pack	Exadata
Exadata Infrastructure Patching Using Fleet Maintenance	Exadata Management Pack	Exadata
Database Fleet Backup Configuration and Scheduling for Recovery Appliance	Zero Data Loss Recovery Appliance Management Pack	Database ZDLRA
Recovery Appliance Protected Database Fleet Archival Backup Management	Zero Data Loss Recovery Appliance Management Pack	ZDLRA
Database Fleet Advanced Backup Configuration for Recovery Appliance Using EMCLI	Zero Data Loss Recovery Appliance Management Pack	Database ZDLRA

Features Common to Both Packs

Engineered System Fleet Console
Although it's a standard Exadata and ZDLRA plug-in feature and not part of a pack, the Engineered System Fleet Console is the gateway to many of the features in Exadata Management Pack and Zero Data Loss Recovery Appliance Management Pack. This page is the new destination for the Exadata and Recovery Appliance menu items under Targets, with a separate tab for each target type. It encompasses all functionality of the previous fleet pages for these target types, plus the following new features:
- Top-level charts summarizing fleet target status, member status, and pack enablement status
- Table columns indicating whether a specific Exadata or Recovery Appliance target has the respective pack enabled
- Launch menu where most fleet-level pack features can be accessed
Exadata Fleet Dashboards
The Exadata Fleet Dashboards distill Exadata component hardware and software metric data for individual Exadata (on-premises and Cloud-based) and Recovery Appliance systems into integrated, detailed, fleet-level visualizations that can be highly customized through an extensive set of filters across different dimensions. The available dashboards are as follows:
- Exadata Fleet Configuration: This dashboard shows the current Exadata hardware and software configuration across the Exadata and Recovery Appliance fleet or filtered subset of the fleet, and includes the following data:
  - Engineered System Overview: Type, hardware generation, deployment type, service type, database deployment option, and switch type
  - Hardware Configuration: Exadata generation, database server model, storage server model, storage server media type, and switch model
  - Software Configuration: Host operating system version, database server ILOM version, storage server Exadata system software version, database server Exadata system software version, and switch version
  - Database Configuration: Container type, database version, pluggable database version, ASM disk group redundancy, and Grid Infrastructure version
- Exadata Fleet Aggregated Capacity: This dashboard aggregates important capacity related metrics to visualize the overall capacity of the Exadata and Recovery Appliance fleet or filtered subset of the fleet, regardless of how each individual system is deployed. Data is averaged over the last 31 days. The dashboard includes the following data:
  - Database Server CPU and Memory: Database server CPU and memory allocation and utilization
  - Storage: Storage allocation and utilization
  - Storage Server I/O: Storage server flash and hard disk read/write utilization, load, throughput, latency and IOPS
- Exadata Fleet Capacity: This dashboard shows individual Exadata capacity across the Exadata and Recovery Appliance fleet or filtered subset of the fleet, allowing comparison by system. Data is averaged over the last 31 days. The dashboard includes the following data:
  - Database Server CPU and Memory: CPU utilization and memory utilization
  - Storage: ASM Data disk group usage, database storage usage growth, ASM Data disk group growth, ASM recovery disk group growth
  - Storage Server I/O: Disk and flash read and write latency, utilization, IOPS, throughput, and total disk/flash IOPS and throughput.
  - Database Server CPU and Memory Details: CPU and memory utilization
  - Storage Details: Disk group space utilization and database tablespace utilization
  - Storage Server I/O Details: Capacity, disk read latency/utilization/IOPS/throughput and flash latency/utilization/IOPS/throughput
- Exadata Fleet Component Capacity: This dashboard shows individual Exadata component capacity across the Exadata and Recovery Appliance fleet or filtered subset of the fleet, allowing identification and comparison of components that may be over or under-utilized. Data is averaged over the last 31 days. The information categories are similar to the Exadata Fleet Capacity dashboard, but the data is shown on a per-component basis instead of a per-system basis.
For details about the feature, see Exadata Fleet Dashboards.
Engineered System Autonomous Health Framework Administration
The Engineered System Autonomous Health Framework (AHF) Administration console provides comprehensive monitoring and management of AHF and Exachk across the Engineered System fleet, including the following features:
- Monitoring of AHF software versions, upgrade status, service status, Exachk status, and Exachk runs across the Exadata and Recovery Appliance fleet
- Management of AHF software automatic and manual upgrades across the Exadata fleet
- Management of Exachk automatic and manual invocations across the Exadata fleet
- Invocation of AHF commands across the Exadata fleet
For details about the feature, see Engineered System Autonomous Health Framework Administration.

Features Specific to Exadata Management Pack

Database Impact Advisor
The Database Impact Advisor can be run against an individual Exadata system to perform system-wide database CPU usage noisy-neighbor analysis in order to identify databases whose performance is potentially impacted by other databases or other operating system processes. The analysis applies algorithms established by the Autonomous Health Framework (AHF) Balance feature to Enterprise Manager historical metric data from past 30 days. Further, the Database Impact Advisor integrates directly with AHF Balance to generate recommendations for optimizing Database Resource Manager (DBRM) settings across all databases to minimize any CPU-based performance impacts that were found.

The Database Impact Advisor offers the following features:
- Summary of potentially impacted databases
- Summary of impacts across clusters, hosts, databases and instances
- Detailed CPU impact breakdown by Exadata, cluster, host, database, and instance:
  - Impact status (PASS/WARNING/FAIL) at each level
  - Number of impacted and exposed hours for each database and instance
- In-context per-instance historical charts showing:
  - CPU usage in comparison with the DBRM guarantee and limit
  - CPU usage in comparison with other instances and process on the host
  - Impacted and exposed time ranges
  - Occurrences of notable database and Exadata incidents
- Overall CPU allocation breakdown across database instances, grouped by cluster and host, and filtered by impact status
- Generation and display of AHF Balance reports at the Exadata, cluster, and database levels
- Integrated management of a specific AHF installation for use with Enterprise Manager analytics
For details about the feature, see Database Impact Advisor.
I/O Resource Management Advisor
The I/O Resource Management Advisor facilitates effective usage of Exadata I/O Resource Management (IORM) by providing tools to analyze flash I/O utilization across all databases running on an Exadata system and to identify potential measures to optimize system I/O resource usage. It provides the following capabilities:
- Comprehensive System-Level I/O Overview: Different visualizations at multiple levels like treemaps, tables and metric charts provide a comprehensive overview of IORM settings and a summary of I/O utilization across the Exadata system. These visualizations allow identification of any container database (CDB), pluggable database (PDB), or non-container database that is experiencing flash I/O throttling due to system limits or I/O usage by neighboring databases.
- Detailed Database-Level I/O Analysis: Once a potentially impacted database is identified, additional drill-down visualizations allow analysis of the I/O performance history of a database and its neighbors across multiple dimensions, including I/O utilization, throughput, and latency. Analysis at this level can assist in determining whether a database is actually experiencing throttling and associated performance degradation, and whether its IORM plan needs to be updated.
For details about the feature, see I/O Resource Management Advisor.
Exadata Cloud Advanced Monitoring
The Exadata Infrastructure target (used for Oracle Exadata Database Service on Cloud@Customer and Oracle Exadata Database Service on Dedicated Infrastructure) home page provides advanced database inventory monitoring through the Databases tab. This tab provides a Sankey-based topology diagram and a tabular listing of database inventory on the system, tracing the topology starting from the database major version down through the minor version (patch release), Oracle home, number of container/non-container databases, number of pluggable databases, ending with the specific pluggable (or non-container) databases.

For details about the feature, see Exadata Cloud Advanced Monitoring.
Exadata Exascale Advanced Monitoring
The Exascale target home page provides advanced IOPS monitoring through the IOPS tab using an interactive Sankey-based illustration of IOPS allocations across the Vaults, Storage Pools, and Databases. You can use advanced filtering options to visually identify IOPS bottlenecks in the Exascale topology and view these in context with historical Exascale IOPS utilization in order to triage performance issues.

For details about the feature, see Exadata Exascale Advanced Monitoring.
Exadata Infrastructure Patching Using Fleet Maintenance
Exadata Fleet Maintenance is a solution designed to simplify and streamline the patching process for your entire Exadata infrastructure, ensuring optimal performance, security, and uptime.
For details about the feature, see Exadata Infrastructure Patching Using Fleet Maintenance.

Features Specific to Zero Data Loss Recovery Appliance Management Pack (ZDLRA)

The Zero Data Loss Recovery Appliance Management Pack offers an integrated suite of tools like UIs, EMCLI verbs, REST APIs, and associated deployment procedures to manage the end-to-end backup lifecycle for a database fleet. For database administrators managing fleet backups, the fundamental initial task is to configure the database fleet to send backups and redo to one or more Recovery Appliances. Next, the Oracle-suggested incremental-forever backup strategy must be scheduled, followed by ongoing fleet configuration updates and maintenance. All aspects of these tasks can be managed by the following tools:

Database Fleet Backup Configuration and Scheduling for Recovery Appliance
- Configure Fleet Backup to Recovery Appliance
  This wizard-style UI provides the ability to configure a hybrid fleet of databases (versions, types, roles) to send backups and redo to a Recovery Appliance, that is, configure them for Recovery Appliance protection. It submits a deployment procedure that fully automates all aspects of configuring the databases, including database, Grid Infrastructure, SQLNET.ORA file, wallet, and recovery catalog settings. The workflow and associated deployment procedure offer the following features:
  - Selection of multiple individual databases or a group target containing the databases to be configured
  - Support for all database versions, platforms, and types (single-instance and RAC)
  - Support for configuring backup from Data Guard primary and standby databases
  - Support for Recovery Appliance Backup and Recovery Continuity (designation of an alternate Recovery Appliance for backups and redo in the event of a failure)
  - Optional auto-configure mode for groups, whereby databases that subsequently join the group will be automatically configured without user intervention
  - UI functionality also accessible via an Enterprise Manager REST API and an EMCLI verb
  For details about the feature, see Database Fleet Backup Configuration for Recovery Appliance.
- Schedule Fleet Backup to Recovery Appliance
  This wizard-style UI is associated with the Configure wizard above. It provides the ability to schedule the standardized Oracle-suggested Recovery Appliance backup strategy for a fleet of databases that have already been configured for Recovery Appliance protection. It schedules a recurring deployment procedure that invokes individual database backups in parallel. The workflow and associated deployment procedure offer the following features:
  - Selection of multiple individual databases or a group target containing the databases to be backed-up (can use the same group targets as Configure wizard)
  - Implementation of Oracle-suggested incremental-forever, daily backup strategy
  - New databases that join the group are automatically picked up in subsequent scheduled backup executions
  - All backups start on same schedule, and run in parallel
  - Individual databases can backup to different Recovery Appliances (depending on which Recovery Appliance they were configured to send backups to)
  - UI functionality also accessible with the Enterprise Manager REST API and EMCLI verb
  For details about the feature, see Database Fleet Backup Scheduling for Recovery Appliance.
For a discussion on end-to-end use case for implementing configuration and scheduling, see Touchless Automated End-to-End Database Fleet Backup Management.
Recovery Appliance Protected Database Fleet Archival Backup Management
A Recovery Appliance administrator may need to perform and manage archival backups of certain databases in the fleet to meet regulatory requirements. This can be accomplished by using the Create Archival Backup workflow, which is accessible from the Recovery Appliance target Archival Backups page. The Create Archival Backup workflow submits a deployment procedure that, for each database, polls the Recovery Appliance for the availability of an indexed backup correlating to the desired archival backup point in time, and then invokes the archival backup. The workflow and associated deployment procedure offer the following features:
- Selection of an individual protected database or all databases within a Recovery Appliance protection policy
- The ability to perform a one-time archival backup or schedule repeating archival backups
- Creation of the archival backup based on a point in time for individual and multiple databases, or a system change number (SCN) or restore point for individual databases
- Specification of the backup retention time
- Specification of compression and encryption options
- Special verification measures to ensure creation of optimized archival backups that contain the minimum possible number of archived log backups
For details about the feature, see Recovery Appliance Protected Database Fleet Archival Backup Management.
Database Fleet Advanced Backup Configuration for Recovery Appliance Using EMCLI
Support for configuration of advanced backup topologies beyond the scenarios covered by the above UI tooling is available via EMCLI. In addition to all the UI capabilities, the EMCLI configure_db_ha command also allows configuration of the databases in a Data Guard configuration to send backup and redo to multiple Recovery Appliances, in accordance with several possible Maximum Availability Architecture (MAA) recommended database protection configurations. Further, even when submitting a fleet operation, use of EMCLI allows highly granular per-database customization of backup configuration and scheduling options. The EMCLI configure_db_ha command submits the same deployment procedure as the above UI workflow, ensuring consistent results regardless of what interface is used. The EMCLI configure_db_ha command offers the following advanced features:
- Configuration of the following Oracle MAA backup configurations (involves Data Guard databases and two Recovery Appliances):
  - MAA Gold: Backups scheduled from both primary and standby databases to different Recovery Appliances that are not configured for backup replication
  - MAA Gold + ZDLRA Backup Anywhere Replication: Backups scheduled from either the primary or standby database to their respective local Recovery Appliance, with Backup Anywhere replication configured between the Recovery Appliances
- Configuration of ZDLRA Backup and Recovery Continuity with the above MAA Gold configurations (involves Data Guard databases and four Recovery Appliances):
  - Specification of a preferred Recovery Appliance and alternate Recovery Appliance for both the primary and standby database (preferred and alternate Recovery Appliances must be configured for Backup Anywhere replication)
  - Backups go to the preferred Recovery Appliance by default and automatically failover to the alternate Recovery Appliance if needed.
- Configuration of ZDLRA Backup and Recovery Continuity for a Non-Data Guard Database:
  - Specification of a preferred Recovery Appliance and alternate Recovery Appliance for the database
  - Backups go to the Preferred Recovery Appliance and automatically failover to the alternate Recovery Appliance ensuring Backup and Recovery Continuity.
For details about the feature, see Database Fleet Advanced Backup Configuration for Recovery Appliance Using EMCLI.