Systems Analyst at a government with 201-500 employees
Real User
Top 5
A freely available solution that provides great integration and enables users to manage everything in their environment
Pros and Cons
  • "We can manage everything in our environment."
  • "The solution is not as simple as people say it is."

What is most valuable?

I am satisfied with the solution. It enables me to keep a check on my business. It is a good product. We can manage everything in our environment. It is the best solution in the market. I am satisfied with the integrations provided by the product.

What needs improvement?

We are facing a problem due to the upgrade of TLSv1.2. We cannot access OEM currently. We have to upgrade our server to the latest version to be compatible with the security layer of TLSv1.2.

The solution is not as simple as people say it is. We need to be trained in it. It is supposed to manage the whole infrastructure. Currently, I'm using it to manage only my databases and Oracle applications. Oracle must provide some training courses to use the solution.

When we procure Oracle products, they should include training courses. Oracle is responsible for training the users before installing the software or the hardware. Other products provide training.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using the solution since 2016.

How are customer service and support?

Technical support is not good. We have to go through Oracle FDP. We have problems with support.

Buyer's Guide
Oracle Enterprise Manager
April 2024
Learn what your peers think about Oracle Enterprise Manager. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: April 2024.
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How would you rate customer service and support?

Neutral

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

The solution is free.

What other advice do I have?

I am not using the product to its full capability. Overall, I rate the product an eight out of ten.

Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
Database Architect, Oracle ACE Director at Bilyoner.com
Real User
Provides comprehensive management and monitoring for Oracle products

What is our primary use case?

We use Oracle Enterprise Manager Cloud Control to monitor and manage our Oracle and MySQL databases.

How has it helped my organization?

The Oracle Databases are key components of our company. All of our services rely on critical customer data and transactions. We need %99.9995 uptime, and Oracle Enterprise Manager helps us to achieve this goal with its superior monitoring and management capabilities. Even mid-level administrators can quickly detect and solve performance problems, and our monitoring team can easily follow the general status of our databases and servers.

What is most valuable?

Oracle Enterprise Manager provides comprehensive monitoring features for all Oracle products. It has an extensible architecture, so it’s possible to add third-party plugins to extend its monitoring abilities. These are valuable features of Oracle Enterprise Manager for all Oracle customers.

On the other hand, I think the most valuable feature of Oracle Enterprise Manager is its management capability for Oracle products. It makes a real difference when comparing it to any other monitoring solution in the market. You can manage your Oracle Databases, Oracle VM, WebLogic, and other products with Oracle Enterprise Manager.

What needs improvement?

It's better to have native agents specially when monitoring legacy systems. So the agents can consume less resources.

For how long have I used the solution?

More than five years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

I have not encountered any serious stability issues since version 13c.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

I did not encounter any scalability issues, and we know that we can easily scale up our Oracle Enterprise Manager system by adding more application servers, and even using RAC database as its repository.

How are customer service and technical support?

At the same level as other Oracle products.

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

I used several monitoring solutions, including open source, both free and proprietary. Most of them are designed to monitor system health and require additional plugins to monitor Oracle databases. Unfortunately, they do not provide the same level of insights when monitoring Oracle products as Oracle Enterprise Manager provides.

How was the initial setup?

It is very straightforward because of its improved installer. Since version 12c, installing Enterprise Manager has been very simple. The installer handles everything even including configuration issues with your database repository and OS kernel parameters.

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

The basic functions are free. You pay license fees only for advanced features. That means you can buy a license for selected (mission-critical) systems which need extensive care, while you can still use basic monitoring for the rest of your target systems.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

I’ve been using this product for years. I evaluated other options from different vendors such as Quest Foglight, CA Unified Infrastructure Management, ManageEngine OpManager, Zabbix, Nagios and maybe some other tools I don’t recall right now.

What other advice do I have?

First, check the compatibility index and be sure that your targets are supported with the version you’re planning to install. I also advise keeping your system up-to-date by installing patches regularly.

Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
Buyer's Guide
Oracle Enterprise Manager
April 2024
Learn what your peers think about Oracle Enterprise Manager. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: April 2024.
769,334 professionals have used our research since 2012.
it_user436173 - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Oracle Database Administrator at a pharma/biotech company with 5,001-10,000 employees
Vendor
As the DBA it give me a graphical representation of what's going on with my Oracle footprint, and it's quick to display where I would have issues and where I can correct them.

Valuable Features:

OEM gives me, as the DBA, a very graphical representation of what's going on with my Oracle footprint, and it's very quick to display to me where I would have issues and where I can correct them. This gives me the capability to see when there are issues happening, which means that I can actually act on the issues pretty quickly before it becomes apparent to the business that there is something going on within the database, that could, for example, have a negative effect on their ability to get a drug out the door.

Improvements to My Organization:

From my point of view, I've found OEM to be one of the easier products to deal with. It's the product that I use day in daily to view all of my databases, and the fact that I can actually integrate multiple databases and multiple middleware solutions into one single point is perfect for me, so I'm really happy with it.

Room for Improvement:

The features that I'd want to use in Enterprise Manager would be in and around the diagnostics and tuning area of the database. Again, that is an additional license. Whilst I can get Enterprise Manager, I can do certain things with it, the really, really high-value part of Enterprise Manager requires additional licenses. So I'd like to see more advanced functionalities that, frankly, don't require us to spend more money.

Deployment Issues:

We've had no issues with deploying it.

Stability Issues:

It's been very stable. I don't recall any big issues with stability.

Scalability Issues:

We've been able to scale it as needed.

Initial Setup:

It was a very, very complicated product to set up. We initially used it with Oracle Single Sign-On to link Microsoft Active Directory to our E-Business Suite instance. It was difficult to set up, and actually now we've migrated to Oracle Access Manager with Identity Manager, and it's even more complicated. 

Oracle Access Manager is a product that Oracle has brought in. They've took over a company which had their own identity management solution. They took it over and re-labelled it, re-branded it to be their product. We had a few enhancements in it, but when they released it is was absolutely full of bugs, and, actually really, really complicated to set up. 

Later releases and scripts is what have made it a little bit easier, but I would like Oracle before they put these products out to the market, to invest some time in making them easier to set up.

Implementation Team:

We implemented it with our in-house team.

Other Advice:

Read the documentation, because we found and still find it extremely complicated to bind the latest versions of the database into Enterprise Manager. It was much easier in earlier versions, but much more complicated now.

Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
Software tech lead at 1DConsulting
Real User
Top 5Leaderboard
It's a scalable, stable solution for databases, but it's expensive and complex to set up
Pros and Cons
  • "I rate Oracle Enterprise Manager eight out of 10 for stability."
  • "I rate Oracle Enterprise Manager six out of 10 for affordability. It's expensive."

What is our primary use case?

We use Enterprise Manager for databases.

For how long have I used the solution?

We haven't used Enterprise Manager for very long. We mostly work with another solution.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

I rate Oracle Enterprise Manager eight out of 10 for stability.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

I rate Oracle Enterprise Manager eight out of 10 for scalability.

How was the initial setup?

Installing Enterprise Manager is complex. The time needed to deploy it varies depending on the environment. 

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

I rate Oracle Enterprise Manager six out of 10 for affordability. It's expensive. 

What other advice do I have?

I rate Oracle Enterprise Manager seven out of 10 overall.

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

On-premises
Disclosure: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer: Partner
PeerSpot user
it_user515583 - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Database Analyst at a financial services firm with 1,001-5,000 employees
Real User
Some of the valuable features are Database Management, SQL Tuning, and Performance Management.

What is most valuable?

Database Management, SQL Tuning, Performance Management, SQL Monitoring, Performance Tuning Pack, SQL Diagnostic Pack, ADDM, AWR, and real time SQL monitoring.

What needs improvement?

it would be helpful if OEM is integrated with OBIEE reports and free report viewer without a license.

For how long have I used the solution?

We have been using the overall OEM for over eight years.

What was my experience with deployment of the solution?

There were no deployment issues.

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

We used DBArtisan, Embarcadero technologies, and Quest tools.

Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
it_user448812 - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Managing Consultant at a tech consulting company with 501-1,000 employees
Consultant
Provides monitoring and alerting to know when there are issues, and the ability to address issues automatically with corrective actions.

What is most valuable?

The monitoring and alerting capabilities and ability for corrective actions in incidents provide the most value.

How has it helped my organization?

Provides monitoring and alerting to know when there are issues, and the ability to address issues automatically with corrective actions. This has saved admin time, as it's saved our admins from having to get up in the middle of the night to address minor issues that corrective actions could take care of automatically.

What needs improvement?

I would like to see Oracle address the multi-data center monitoring and management in a more seamless way where management services are easily spread across the data centers like they can be today, but address the single database repository that can only exist in one data center at a time.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using various versions of Enterprise Manager for over eight years.

What was my experience with deployment of the solution?

There were no issues with the deployment.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

Multi-Data Center High Availability monitoring, alerting and management is the largest challenge as there is a single repository database that is located in a single data center, therefore running across multiple data centers still ties back to a single repository database which runs from one of the data centers, but can distribute the OEM Console and Management servers in each of the data centers. All this works without issue, but the repository traffic from multiple data centers can be a challenge going back to another data center where the repository database resides.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

It's been able to scale for our needs.

How are customer service and technical support?

It's good, there are times that reaching the right technical analysts to resolve or address an issue can take time, but overall the support is responsive and good and when having a severity one in response to a down issue can be excellent.

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

I have not really utilized anything other than Oracle Enterprise Manager for monitoring, alerting and management of Oracle based environments.

How was the initial setup?

Simple single server setups are quite simple to install and upgrade. Multi-Oracle management services with load balancers can be more of a challenge but are not overly difficult to get accomplished.

What about the implementation team?

I am working for a consulting and managed services firm as a consultant and have implemented Oracle Enterprise Manager for many of our clients over several years and we have always had great success in meeting the objectives it was implemented to address.

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

Oracle Enterprise Manager for the base product does not have additional cost when you have an Oracle Enterprise Database licenses, however to get the most value from OEM additional packs are required and have additional costs. Those costs are at the product level and not Oracle Enterprise Manager direct cost as I understand. However, in most enterprise level environments these packs provide huge value to the monitoring, alerting and management of the environment.

What other advice do I have?

It's overall capability for Oracle products is very good and offers the ability to monitor and manage many Oracle products from a single environment and is seamlessly integrated to monitor and manage those products out of the box.

If you run Oracle Products from Oracle OVM, Oracle Database, Web Logic, etc. Oracle Enterprise Manager is by far the best way to provide a single console and monitoring and alerting solution.

Disclosure: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer: The organization I work for is an Oracle Platinum Partner.
PeerSpot user
it_user517617 - PeerSpot reviewer
Director at a financial services firm with 1,001-5,000 employees
Real User
We actively monitor the databases and can get ahead of any issues.

What is most valuable?

I manage a team of Customer Care and Billing Support Administrators. Earlier in our implementation when we were not quite stable we had to request assistance from our DBAs to troubleshoot performance of our databases. We eventually convinced them that it would be to their advantage to provide us with read only access to the graphs and to run AWR reports in OEM so we could troubleshoot ourselves. We actively monitor the databases and can get ahead of any issues. We are also making preparations for using OEM with Oracle Utilities Application Management which will provide application monitoring through OEM.

How has it helped my organization?

We definitely get ahead of issues before they become severe.

What needs improvement?

The reports are very busy. Once you understand the information it was great, but initially it was not very user friendly.

For how long have I used the solution?

Five years.

What was my experience with deployment of the solution?

No problems.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

No issues.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

None.

How are customer service and technical support?

Customer Service:

Good.

Technical Support:

Good.

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

No.

Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
it_user500253 - PeerSpot reviewer
Lead Architect (Oracle Ebusiness Suite, OBIEE, BI Apps, EPM) at a tech services company with 501-1,000 employees
Real User
Metric Extensions can be defined on any target: hosts, databases, and so on.

What is most valuable?

The most valuable features are the Metric Extensions & Advanced Threshold management.

Metric Extensions

  • Extend Oracle's monitoring capabilities to monitor conditions specific to your IT environment
  • Provides a comprehensive view of your environment
  • Create metrics on any target type
  • Can be defined on any target:
    • Hosts
    • Databases
    • Fusion applications
    • BI components…

EM is a one-stop shop used to manage and monitor the entire Oracle E-Business Suite, BI and EPM infrastructure in our company. So, in our BI environment, we wanted to run a script to kill sessions which are running over 60 minutes and wanted to track and tune those sessions. We used Metric Extensions for the same.

Advanced Thresholds allow you to define and manage alert thresholds that are either adaptive (self-adjusting) or time-based (static).

  • Adaptive thresholds are thresholds based on statistical calculations from the target's observed behaviour (metrics).
  • Time-based static thresholds are user-defined threshold values to be used at different times of the day/week to account for changing target workloads.

We used time-based threshold settings for weekday and weekend load on various environments. This way we could fine tune the alerts for varying loads.


How has it helped my organization?

It gives an end-to-end view of our complex IT infrastructure and its health in real-time.

What needs improvement?

The Adaptive Settings descriptions could be clearer. 95% percentile, etc. is not clearly specified.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have used it for over five years.

What was my experience with deployment of the solution?

I have not encountered any deployment issues.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

I have not encountered any stability issues.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

I have not encountered any scalability issues.

How is customer service and technical support?

Customer Service:

Customer service is good.

Technical Support:

Technical support is good.

How was the initial setup?

Initial setup was pretty straightforward.

What about the implementation team?

An in-house team implemented it.

What was our ROI?

It reduced the number of incidents; we could predict failures.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

Before choosing this product, we evaluated Quest/Toad, but it did not do end-to-end monitoring across the stack of products.

What other advice do I have?

It is one of the best, state-of-the-art products from Oracle; truly a single pane of glass to manage IT infrastructure.

Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
Buyer's Guide
Download our free Oracle Enterprise Manager Report and get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions.
Updated: April 2024
Buyer's Guide
Download our free Oracle Enterprise Manager Report and get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions.