1. Oracle Exadata Database Machine Getting Started Guide
  2. Introduction to the Plug-in

1 Introduction to the Plug-in

This chapter provides a general overview of the Oracle Exadata plug-in, including supported hardware and software. The following topics are discussed:

Oracle Exadata Plug-in Features

Highlights of the Oracle Exadata plug-in release 13.4.1.0.0 include the following features:

Monitoring and Notification Features

With the Oracle Exadata plug-in, and related Systems Infrastructure and Virtual Infrastructure plug-ins, you can monitor Exadata Database Machine targets through Enterprise Manager Cloud Control 13c. These plug-ins provide seamless integration with supported Exadata hardware and software so that you can receive notifications on any Exadata Database Machine target. Features include:

  • Monitoring of the Exadata Database Machine as an Enterprise Manager target.

  • Monitoring of the Exadata Database Machine target, including the Exadata Storage Server's I/O Resource Management feature within Enterprise Manager.

  • Support SNMP notification for Exadata Database Machine components.

  • Support dashboard report creation from Enterprise Manager Cloud Control, including a simplified configuration of the service dashboard.

  • Support of client network host names for compute nodes.

  • Enhanced InfiniBand network fault detection and InfiniBand schematic port state reporting.

  • Modification of Enterprise Manager monitoring agents as needed for all Exadata Database Machine components.

  • IORM for multi-tenancy database (CDB/PDB) environment:

    • CDB-level I/O Workload Summary with PDB-level details breakdown.

    • I/O Resource Management for Oracle Database 12c and above.

    • Exadata Database Machine-level physical visualization of I/O Utilization for CDB and PDB on each Exadata Storage Server.

    • Integration link to Database Resource Management UI.

  • Support discovery of locked down Exadata Storage Servers.

  • Since the release of EM 13c, the Exadata Plug-in is able to leverage the enhanced hardware monitoring features offered by the newly introduced Oracle Systems Infrastructure Plug-in. Users can view a photo-realistic schematic of the various hardware (including rack) and monitor the faults on individual hardware components.

Hardware Support Features

You can use the Oracle Exadata plug-in to optimize the performance of a wide variety of Exadata Database Machine targets, including:

  • Oracle SuperCluster, including:

    • Configurations:

      • LDOM: Control domain, IO/guest domain

      • Zone: Global, non-global

    • Discover, monitor, and manage Exadata Database Machine-related components residing on SuperCluster Engineered System

    • See Oracle SuperCluster Support for more details.

  • Multi-Rack support:

    • Supports discovery use cases: Initial discovery, add a rack

    • Side-by-side rack schematic

  • Support for Storage Expansion Rack hardware.

  • Full partition support:

    • Logical splitting of an Exadata Database Machine Rack into multiple Database Machines.

    • Each partition is defined through a single OneCommand deployment.

    • Compute nodes are not shared between partitions.

    • Multiple partitions connected through the same InfiniBand network.

    • Compute nodes in same partition share the same Cluster.

    • Ability to specify a customized DBM name during discovery of the target.

    • User can confirm and select individual components for each DBM.

    • Flexibility to select none, some, or all of the InfiniBand switch as part of monitored network, including the ability to add switches post discovery.

    • Flexibility to select some or all of the Exadata Storage Servers to be shared among Exadata Database Machines.

  • Support for Exadata Extended (XT) Storage: Since XT storage servers do not have flash drives, Oracle Enterprise Manager Cloud Control will automatically suppress all the flash-related monitoring functionalities, and present only those IO Resource Management settings that are appropriate for XT storage. Exadata X8 systems configured with XT storage are automatically recognized by Oracle Enterprise Manager Cloud Control during discovery, and the corresponding Exadata Storage Server targets automatically adapt to the underlying storage server type.

  • Support for the increasing types of Exadata Database Machine targets. See Oracle Exadata Database Machine Supported Hardware and Software for a complete list of supported hardware.

  • InfiniBand Switch Sensor fault detection, including power supply unit sensors and fan presence sensors.

Target Discovery Features

The target discovery process is streamlined and simplified with the Oracle Exadata plug-in. Features include:

  • Automatically push the Exadata plug-in to agent during discovery.

  • Discovery prerequisite checks updates, including:

    • Check for critical configuration requirements.

    • Check to ensure either databasemachine.xml or catalog.xml files exist and are readable.

    • Prevent discovered targets from being rediscovered.

  • Credential validation and named credential support.

  • Ability to apply a custom name to the Exadata Database Machine target.

  • Support discovery using the client access network.

  • Automate SNMP notification setup for Exadata Database Machine components.

  • Support discovery of compute nodes with client network host names.

  • Enterprise Manager Cloud Control Exadata Discovery Wizard lets you discover Exadata Database Machine targets using 13c.

  • An existing Exadata Database Machine target with 12c target types can be converted to 13c target types. For more information, see Convert Database Machine Targets with 12c Target Types to 13c Using the Console for more information.

Note:

Exadata Database Machine targets are configured with OOB default thresholds for the metrics. No additional template is provided by Oracle.

Exadata Storage Server Grid Home Page and Server Home Page Features

The Exadata Storage Server Grid home page and Server home page provides the following features:

  • Provides a fine-grained performance summary for flash and hard disk.

  • Provides usage statistics to highlight flash cache and Smart Scan efficiency.

  • Provides a detailed summary of flash space usage.

  • Provides metrics for:

    • I/O time distribution by flash and hard disk.

    • IORM wait per database.

Exadata Performance Page Features

The Performance page provides the following features:

  • Side-by-side comparison of flash and hard drive performance.

  • Performance comparison between multiple Exadata Storage Servers.

  • Performance utilization for flash and hard drive to identify workload reaching hardware limit.

  • Provides Exadata Storage Server performance charts to help with diagnosing performance issues when I/O reaching hardware limits.

Exadata Metrics Features

Metrics reports are critical to manage your Oracle Exadata Database Machine effectively. With the metrics, you can determine where additional resources are needed, when peak usage times occur, and so forth.

  • Enhanced metric scalability in large environment to reduce time out by reducing calls.

  • Reduce metric collection error for the Exadata HCA metric. Improvements to combine the HCA port data collection in a single call to reduce chances of time out.

Oracle Exadata Database Machine Supported Hardware and Software

The following sections describe the supported hardware and software by the Oracle Exadata plug-in:

Exadata Database Machine Configuration Support

Enterprise Manager Cloud Control 13c is supported on the following Exadata Database Machine configurations:

Hypervisor Support

Exadata Database Machine Monitoring and Management supports both Xen and KVM Hypervisors when used in certified Exadata configurations.

Multi-Rack Support

Enterprise Manager supports managing multiple connected racks of Oracle Database Machine of the supported machine types listed above (Hypervisor Support). Also, the following two racks can be monitored in a multi-rack as these cannot exist as a standalone single rack:

  • Storage Expansion Rack

  • Compute Node Expansion Rack

Partitioned Support

The following partitioned configurations are supported:

  • Partitioned Exadata Database Machine - the logical splitting of a Database Machine Rack into multiple Database Machines. The partitioned Exadata Database Machine configuration must meet the following conditions to be fully supported by Enterprise Manager Cloud Control 13c:

    • Each partition is defined through a single OneCommand deployment.

    • Exadata Storage Servers and compute nodes are not shared between partitions.

    • Multiple partitions are connected through the same InfiniBand network.

    • Compute nodes in same partition share the same Cluster.

    The expected behavior of a partitioned Exadata Database Machine includes:

    • The target names for the Exadata Database Machine, Exadata Grid, and InfiniBand Network will be generated automatically during discovery (for example, Database Machine dbm1.example.com, Database Machine dbm1.example.com_2, Database Machine dbm1.example.com_3, etc.). However, users can change these target names at the last step of discovery.

    • All Infiniband Switches need to be selected as part of the Exadata Database Machine targets for every partition. Inifiniband Switches will not be added automatically to subsequent Exadata Database Machine targets of other partitions. The KVM, PDU, and Cisco switches can be individually selected for the Database Machine target of each partition.

    • User can confirm and select individual components for each Database Machine.

IPv6 Support

Enterprise Manager supports monitoring and managing Exadata environments configured with IPv6. For more details, see IPv6 support status on Exadata Database Machine (Doc ID. 2056895.1), available in My Oracle Support.

Oracle SuperCluster Support

Only Oracle SuperCluster with software Version 1.1 with DB Domain on Control LDOM-only environments are supported. Earlier versions of Oracle SuperCluster can be made compatible if you update to the October 2012 QMU release. You can confirm this requirement by looking at the version of the compmon pkg installed on the system (using either pkg info compmon or pkg list compmon commands to check). You must have the following minimum version of compmon installed: 

pkg://exa-family/system/platform/exadata/compmon@0.5.11,5.11-0.1.0.11:20120726T024158Z

The following hardware configurations are supported:

  • Oracle SuperCluster:

    • T4-4

    • T5-8

    • M6-32

    • M7

    • M8

    • M12-2S

Note: Enterprise Manager Systems Infrastructure plug-in doesn't support firmware monitoring through eXtended System Control Facility (XSCF).

The following software configurations are supported:

  • LDOM

    • Control Domain

    • IO/Guest Domain

  • Zone

    • Global

    • Non-Global

The following software versions are supported:

  • Oracle SuperCluster V1.1 and above

  • Oracle SuperCluster V1.0.1 + October QMU

Supported Component Versions

For information on supported component versions of Exadata, refer to the following notes on My Oracle Support:

Supported Operating Systems

The following operating systems (where OMS and agent is installed on) are supported by the Oracle Exadata plug-in 13.4.1:

  • Management Server plug-in (all OMS-certified platforms):

    • IBM AIX on POWER Systems (64-bit)

    • HP-UX Itanium

    • Linux x86 and x86-64

    • Microsoft Windows x64 (64-bit)

    • Oracle Solaris on SPARC (64-bit)

    • Oracle Solaris on x86-64 (64-bit)

  • Agent Plug-ins for Exadata and Supercluster
    • Exadata Plug-in + SI plug-in + VI Plug-in for Exadata
    • Exadata Plug-in + SI Plug-in for SSC

    • Linux x86-64

    • Oracle Solaris on x86-64 (64-bit)

    • Oracle Solaris on SPARC (64-bit)

Oracle Exadata Database Machine Hardware Not Supported

The following Oracle Exadata Database Machine hardware configurations are not supported for Enterprise Manager Cloud Control Exadata plug-in 13.x:

  • V1 hardware

  • V2 hardware

    Note:

    V2 machines discovered in Enterprise Manager Cloud Control 12c are still supported in 13c. However, discovery of V2 machines in Enterprise Manager Cloud Control 13c is not supported.