Oracle Enterprise Manager Reviews and Pricing

it_user100257

Oracle Consultant & DBA - Cloud Support Engineer at Amazon Web Services

Mar 27, 2014

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Top features are the ability to consolidate information and access to my databases into a single portal

What is most valuable?

Consolidate information and access to my databases into a single portal.

How has it helped my organization?

We increased our capacity and speed of detection, diagnose & resolution of database issues.

What needs improvement?

UI is the part that I like to see improved in the future.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using EM for almost 6 years.

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What was my experience with deployment of the solution?

Not so much, and all easily fixed.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

Not in version 12c, EM uses Database 11gR2 and WebLogic that both have superb stability.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

None and, in case of need, we can always add another WebLogic Server or another node to the database tier.

How are customer service and support?

Customer Service: Oracle Support is very good most of the time.Technical Support: You start with junior technicians, but you can escalate if necessarily.

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

No, previously we used Enterprise Manager Database Console, that is a local DB console.

How was the initial setup?

We're used to Oracle products, so the deployment wasn't complex at all.

What about the implementation team?

We did the implementation ourselves.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

I don't have a money estimate, but in man-hours, a deploy in a single machine, for an estimate of 100 targets, takes 8 hours.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

Yes, we evaluated Pandora, Nagios and Zabbix.

What other advice do I have?

Follow the installation guide step by step, there won't be any surprises. Check your memory, CPU & disk requirements before implementation.

Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.

it_user97683

Database Senior Manager at a financial services firm with 1,001-5,000 employees

Mar 17, 2014

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Excellent in monitoring and the ability to quickly drill down, see and identify issues. Smooth initial deployment.

What is most valuable?

Monitoring and the ability to quickly drill down, see and identify issues. Also provisionning is an interesting option as long as it works.

How has it helped my organization?

We have set up a lot of alerts which can notify us immediately when something arises and this is keeping our SLA's kept. Additionally we have made customized reports on KPI's in order to quickly get the whole picture and keep management apprised - also so we can show how a change has made an impact.

What needs improvement?

Setting up provisioning can be a challenging. Also there are a lot of bugs and some specific to platforms. Not every platform is equally supported.

For how long have I used the solution?

Personally 6 years, in the company more than that (from version 9 up to 12c)

What was my experience with deployment of the solution?

With the initial deployment no, went smoothly for the last version. In the previous there were some issues that were frustrating but in the end not so hard to overcome.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

Initially after the upgrade/installation of every version we have had issues with stability and performance. After a couple of weeks tuning and tweaking it stabilizes and then we have no more trouble - till the next upgrade.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

No, we have not had any issues. That is probably because at a point we decided to set up a second installation for our test environments and we have divided the workload between the two installations.

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

Before using OEM we had a lot of scripts to check database health, also we have and use some other solutions for monitoring. OEM provided everything in a single package and has a lot more options, plus it is a lot better at monitoring databases then anything else.

How was the initial setup?

With every version it becames easier to set it up. Depending of course on the platform, but still with 12c it is really straight forward.

What about the implementation team?

We tried to involve Oracle for a upgrade and migration project from version 11g to 12c. After more than a year finally they gave up and said it cannot be done. We then did it in-house, workaround it (with their support of course) we migrated the 11g version and then upgraded it. Every other upgrade/installation was done in-house.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

Sorry can not say about the cost, we have always used as little hardware as possible.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

Not a lot. Mainly we looked at what we have and then went for OEM as most of our DBs are Oracle. We have monitoring from HP BAC/Mercury.

What other advice do I have?

It is a must if you have more than a couple of databases to monitor and manage, it can also do a lot of other stuff and monitor various types of targets. It has a good system for testing applications. It has a lot of potentials but best advice is read through the documentation and know what you are getting, check with somebody who is already using it to get the best idea.

Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.

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Learn what your peers think about Oracle Enterprise Manager. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: May 2025.

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it_user92496

Database Manager at a recruiting/HR firm with 51-200 employees

Feb 25, 2014

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I really like that Statspack has evolved into AWR, ADDM and ASH reports, fully automated out of the box.

Valuable Features:

I really like how Statspack has evolved into AWR, ADDM and ASH reports, fully automated out of the box.

Improvements to My Organization:

Being able to capture performance information that occurred in the past is very helpful, when tracking down anomalies.

Room for Improvement:

I would like to see more functionality/information in Standard Edition Oracle for the same performance analysis.

Use of Solution:

I have used Oracle Enterprise Manager since version 9i.

Deployment Issues:

No, not really.

Stability Issues:

No, not really.

Customer Service:

Good.

Initial Setup:

Initial setup is straightforward.

Implementation Team:

DBA Team implementations.

Cost and Licensing Advice:

Cant speak to that.

Other Advice:

Network. Ask what other people are doing and using, and if their environment is similar in terms of use and capacity.

Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.

it_user90537

Database Manager at a energy/utilities company with 501-1,000 employees

Feb 16, 2014

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Valuable reporting and tuning features. Improved my companies central reporting and management tool for Oracle database

What is most valuable?

Reporting and tuning

How has it helped my organization?

Central reporting and management tool for Oracle database and middle-tier products

What needs improvement?

BI Publisher integration; EM CLI commands

For how long have I used the solution?

Four years

What was my experience with deployment of the solution?

Agent deployments are easy

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

Not with 12c OEM

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

Home-built shell scripts required maintenance, incurred higher overhead, and exposed the company to risk if a key employee left

How was the initial setup?

Initial installation of 12c OEM is convenient and straightforward

What about the implementation team?

In-house implementation

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

OEM required 1.5 full-time employees during setup and still requires that much support in production

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

What other advice do I have?

There are several sources of information including IOUG and communities.oracle.com

Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.

it_user89634

Database Manager at a manufacturing company with 1,001-5,000 employees

Feb 12, 2014

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Oracle Enterprise Manager is a must if you have many Oracle databases across the landscape

Valuable Features

Performance tuning, Alerting, SQL Tuning, Database Reporting

Improvements to My Organization

Generating a graphical report on the fly, Diagnose any performance issues

Room for Improvement

There is not much negative about OEM. But with newer versions, maybe more reporting functionality can be added.

Use of Solution

4 years

Customer Service and Technical Support

On a scale from 1 to 5 I would give it a 4.

Initial Setup

The installation was straightforward

Implementation Team

In-house team

Other Advice

Oracel Enterprise Manager is must if you have too many oracle databases across the landscape

Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.

it_user86742

Database Senior Manager with 501-1,000 employees

Feb 3, 2014

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Previously used TOAD, switched to OEM because it offers more functionality.

What is most valuable?

The tight integration with Oracle ASH, AWR and ADDM is invaluable. Management of Oracle Appliances with support for system health monitoring and performance views for all hardware and software components.

How has it helped my organization?

OEM 12 C has simplified management of our Enterprise Systems and has eliminated unnecessary and legacy tools. Oracle Enterprise Manager has a comprehensive set up plug-ins for operating systems, hosts, databases, middleware, security, network, servers, and storage.

What needs improvement?

Prior to Oracle Enterprise Manager 12C I would have said the UI could be improved, however this has achieved in Oracle Enterprise Manager 12C which has a new and improved UI.

For how long have I used the solution?

Since 2004 starting with Oracle OEM 10g

What was my experience with deployment of the solution?

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

How are customer service and technical support?

Customer Service: GoodTechnical Support: Excellent mechanism for support management using ‘My Oracle Support. The support framework is second to none. Excellent interface, with fast response and resolution times, also includes escalation paths and full audit trail.

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

Previously have used TOAD. The main reason for the switch is that OEM is free and offers more functionality.

How was the initial setup?

Very simple to setup within a command line interface known as EMCTL

What about the implementation team?

In House

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

What other advice do I have?

Get OEM 12c integrated into your support tool arsenal. The latest version allows you to manage and diverse group of products other than just the database, these include but are not limited to Web Logic, MySQL, Linux.

Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.

it_user3876Database Manager at a tech company with 51-200 employees

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Apr 6, 2014

Hi Daniel Fisher. What are the major differences between TOAD and OEM in terms of functionality?

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it_user83460

Consultant at a tech services company with 51-200 employees

Jan 29, 2014

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Effective monitoring solution that offers a one-stop shop for scaling into other areas such as jobs, reporting & cloud

What is most valuable?

Monitoring, EM Jobs and IP/BIP Reports

How has it helped my organization?

My company either is outsourced DBA or secondary DBA support. I am able to use EM12c to standardize what would be an almost unattainable goal without the product. With standardized monitoring templates and incident rule sets, we are able to consistently monitor, manage and alert all DBAs in each group to the same level SLA for our customer's needs.

What needs improvement?

We would love to see a migration utility for EM jobs. I've been a proponent for consolidating all database tasks from outside schedulers into Enterprise Manager Jobs. The challenge is if there is an upgrade to EM12c, this must be migrated manually and the interface is almost exactly the same as we had back in EM10g. Some improvements would be greatly appreciated.

For how long have I used the solution?

1 year and 3 months

What was my experience with deployment of the solution?

I do have a number of clients who's primary OS environment is Windows. They have virtualized with this OS and release 3 build of EM12c experienced serious java failures and I had to change the project sign off to release 2. It was a huge "hit" to the initial credibility of EM12c when having to return to two different clients and ask to downgrade to the previous release.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

The stability of the product is excellent. It is sensitive to network issues, but the problem lies in the network, not EM12c.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

High heap usage is a common complaint during top EM job utilization. This is a tuning issue over a scalability issue, but it is impacting to the one receiving the incident notifications.

How are customer service and technical support?

Customer Service: 2 out of 5. I often choose to open an SR as a last resort. My clients just don't have the time it requires to go through an SR process.Technical Support: I would give it a 3 out of 5. There are some service reps that are very helpful and know the product. There are others that I feel I'm wasting my time with and my clients only have me for a set hours per month, so I don't have time to waste.

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

Some of my customers had either customer scripts scheduled through cron schedulers or Windows schedulers. Having all jobs running within the EM12c eases management for any DBA who might not be familiar with my coding style or know where jobs are scheduled. All they need to know is how to log into the EM12c for that client and they are able to mange the environment when I'm unavailable.

How was the initial setup?

Very simple and well documented.

What about the implementation team?

In house- I was the one who implemented.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

As this was for clients and I have 12 that I've implemented, I don't have those costs.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

What other advice do I have?

Consider EM12c over third party products. This is built to be very transparent to the Oracle database environment. Other's, such as Spotlight, Foglight, etc. are a secondary layer and this is using the ASH/AWR data, which is less impacting to anything in the database.

Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.

it_user83301

Consultant at a tech services company with 51-200 employees

Jan 28, 2014

OEM makes sense for my customers’ needs and makes it easy for me to immediately resolve any problems that arise

Many of our company’s customers have multiple databases. Thus they often need help determining how to consolidate them, monitor them and move forward with their business plans. I bring insight to these customers by showing them how to optimize their IT environments. When it comes to helping customers identify best practices, 90 percent of the time I end up talking about Oracle Enterprise Manager. Many of these customers have adopted Oracle Enterprise Manager 12c as their primary monitoring platform.

I recall a situation with an Atlanta-based tax services company that required extremely high availability during the busy tax season (approximately December 15 and April 15). We had to uphold very strict service level agreements that carried serious penalties and huge financial implications. An unscheduled outage of one hour leads to a $1 million fine. Previously this company used five separate monitoring tools, which was causing extra effort for system administrators and was a source of concern regarding unplanned down time. I spent a few days helping these administrators understand the full potential of a centralized monitoring and management solution based on Oracle Enterprise Manager. It took some convincing and it came down to setting them up with a prototype for the next tax season. Using the new system, they had zero problems and were impressed with the stability. After that, they decided to standardize on Oracle Enterprise Manager as their system management foundation going forward.

I implemented the Oracle Enterprise Manager Database Lifecycle Management Pack, complete with the configuration and change management features, simplifying the Sarbanes-Oxley compliance work necessary for this company’s large government customers. Now they can see what is changing in their environment all the time, which gives them a real-time glimpse into the security of the database. This company’s senior management admitted that without Oracle Enterprise Manager their tax season would not have gone successfully. Day and night, if there were issues, we were notified and we resolved problems immediately.

My take on OEM 12c is that I especially like the performance tuning features since they let DBAs identify problems very quickly. The real time ADDM (Automatic Database Diagnostic Monitor) and associated reports let me drill down into these issues without having to prepare snapshots. I can identify and resolve issues immediately. I also likes the Oracle Enterprise Manager Consolidation Planner, which I find to be an extremely flexible and valuable tool. For example, if a client wants to move to an Oracle Exadata system, you can use the Oracle Enterprise Manager Consolidation Planner to identify precisely how big of an engineered system that client will need. This tool simplifies requirements gathering when you are consolidating to engineered systems.

I recommend Oracle Enterprise Manager because today’s DBAs are being asked to do more with the tools and resources that we are given, to drive change within the organization so that IT teams are more knowledgeable and efficient. Oracle Enterprise Manager empowers database administrators to resolve problems quickly—to identify bottlenecks and pinpoint performance issues. Many DBAs still like the command line, but in my experience the GUI makes it twice as fast to resolve issues. This insight is especially helpful at the outset of a project. Too often DBAs don’t get called in until the end of the development cycle, as somebody who can run the database. But ideally they should have input on the front end of that cycle, while there is still time to identify issues with the SQL code or with other aspects of the hardware or software infrastructure. DBAs can drive the changes that optimize applications and make databases run better.

I believe some Oracle customers are slow to adopt cloud models simply because they don’t realize that Oracle Enterprise Manager can help pave the way. It’s an enterprise tool, not just a database tool. Once organizations understand that Oracle Enterprise Manager can help them manage their whole stack they will realize how much it can help in the context of deploying and managing clouds. Deploying a private cloud is often the first step towards a database as a service environment in which developers can provision databases themselves via a self-service portal. This model has the potential to fundamentally change the way developers do things. You can click a button and clone a database. This will shorten the development cycle, especially with Oracle Database 12c, which lets you provision a pluggable database quickly from a multitenant architecture. Developers can provision what they need and move on. I believe that championing these database as a service environments will elevate the role of DBAs. They can lead their organizations to embrace a new type of fast, efficient provisioning. This will make DBAs more important to the development cycle and push them to the front-end of many projects.

Disclosure: PeerSpot has made contact with the reviewer to validate that the person is a real user. The information in the posting is based upon a vendor-supplied case study, but the reviewer has confirmed the content's accuracy.

it_user83598IT Manager at a tech services company

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Feb 1, 2014

Hello Bobby Curtis,

Nice Article, very well explained, through this article I came to know how OEM can solve complex business process.
And I request you to provide some more information on OEM Consolidation Planner.

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