Oracle Enterprise Manager Reviews

I have mainly used it for management, monitoring and tuning for Oracle databases.

We manage and monitor many databases for customers (some customers have a few hundred databases) and OEM is extremely helpful in performing operations for monitoring and management from one single place. Setting up various jobs including RMAN backups is extremely helpful via OEM. We also use features such as corrective actions, where we can ask OEM to take appropriate corrective actions when an event occurs in the middle of the night.

I have been using OEM 13c which is their latest release and I would have expected that the product would have been more stable and should not have bugs for very simple things like CPU utilisation or amount of physical memory on Linux hosts. These are very fundamental metrics to monitor and should not be an issue. These are not a new features and I would have expected a much better release of the product.

I have been using OEM since 2002.

I have deployed OEM 11g and 12c in High availability mode and was not too complicated to implement. I have not tried HA with 13c. However, installation for all the releases have been fine.

We've experienced no issues with performance.

It's been able to scale for our needs.

To me its like a lottery, if I am lucky I get a support engineer who knows what they are talking but many a times you get someone who just keeps asking very fundamental questions until you have to ask on duty manger to be involved and have the SR escalated. But I guess, it is the same across any other vendor.

I have used custom scripts and still do use it for standard edition of databases where OEM cannot be used. However, I prefer to use OEM wherever possible.

Although custom scripts might be easy to setup, the issue is when the person who wrote the scripts leaves an organisation, all the knowledge walks out as well.

Like any product, it is best that the implementation is done by someone who understands it well, whether done in-house or by third party. It saves a lot in long run and you know that its done right.

For any Enterprise edition database customer, I highly recommend that they should implement OEM and at a minimum purchase license for Diagnostic and Tuning pack for database. Amount of time required to perform many activities such as tuning and diagnostics pays off.

Do it once and do it right.

The most valuable feature is the way it shows me, on top in one screen, right there, my availability options. Then if I have to drill down the performance, it shows me what's running, rather than me going in and doing my own scripts. It provides AWR reports, active session reports, and things like that.

The biggest bang for our buck with Enterprise Manger is automated patching. We have at least 1000 or so databases, so automation in patching, applying security patches, and PSU's has been huge for us. We are working heavily with Oracle and their representatives to have patches written up.

We've had a lot of struggles patching automation. There's no good log file that you can debug. We have to go back to the account managers and work with Oracle internals. I'm hoping that 13c will bring something better on that front.

We've been OK deploying it within our company.

It's been stable, but the patching is the biggest pain-point right now for us.

We are not there yet with scaling it. Like I said, if you patch one single database, it works OK. If you have, on one server, ten different databases, that's where it hangs, and we don't know where it failed and when it might fail.

The initial setup was good and fairly straightforward. We didn't have a whole lot of trouble with it.

We implemented it with our in-house team.

If you're a newbie who doesn't want much hands-on in a CLI, it's a good solution.

Over and above the monitoring, alerting and incident framework, all of which are excellent, I would say the Lifecycle Management Pack is of most value to us.

For a particular client, they had a large database estate with over 750 databases and it wasn't actually possible to measure their compliance position against their own security standard at any given time. They had a view of a few systems, but the collection and aggregation of data was manual intensive and time consuming.

The Lifecycle Management Pack for Enterprise Manager has allowed the organization to have an almost real-time view of security and compliance across every single database within the estate. This was also based on their own internal security standard which has been created in Oracle Enterprise Manager via pre-packaged and customized compliance rules.

I think with the documentation there could be improvements. Although the core database compliance functionality is well documented some of the other areas of compliance aren't for example the Real Time monitoring rules. Also, further information on how compliance rule data is collected from repository to agent would be helpful and would assist when digging into the Oracle Enterprise Manager repository for building BI reports using BI Publisher.

I've been using it for four years.

Understanding how to build custom compliance rules was probably the area which took most time but that was still relatively simple. Also, while using the product this area was refined in 12.1.0.4 release with Agent Side rules, we started using this feature in 12.1.0.3 with Repository Side rules.

We have had no issues with the stability.

There have been no issues scaling it.

On the whole, technical support was good. Some of the very niche questions I had regarding some of the internal workings and collection of data took a little while longer to get answers for, but, to be fair, I always managed to find an answer to those queries.

For managing estate-wide security compliance, the only previous option was a scripted solution which was costly and not scaleable.

Deployment of Oracle Enterprise Manager is straightforward as the documentation is good and the issues in deployment are rare. The challenge comes in ensuring that you configure all the relevant aspects of Enterprise Manager prior to rolling out agents and using the product in anger. This isn't necessarily an issue with the product, but rather the mindset of how sometimes it's deployed. I've assisted in a number of projects which was to retrospectively fix Oracle Enterprise Manager deployments.

Having assisted on many Oracle Enterprise Managers implementations and seen the common mistakes, I wrote an article about it for the Oracle Scene Magazine Issue 57 (http://tinyurl.com/hxe4q9n). In summary, it's about planning what you want Oracle Enterprise Manager to do in helping you manage your IT estate and then undertaking the necessary configuration. Too often, people put little thought or effort into understanding what the product can do and just start rolling out management agents and then undertake a period of protracted reconfiguration.

Don't underestimate the time you invest in deploying and managing Oracle within your wider IT estate. The Lifecycle Management Pack needs to be seen as an essential purchase with Diagnostics and Tuning Packs. You may be able to create some 'home brew' solutions for software deployment, compliance and configuration management, but it will be light years behind what the LCMP can do and it's something that will continually be developed and improved.

Oracle Enterprise Manager is an Enterprise Management tool and should be treated as such. It's not a glorified DB console. Companies should look to configure it in a way which takes away all the low-level, least value-add activities that DBAs have to do on a day-to-,day basis. As an organization look at the value the product could bring and deploy it as you would any other software asset.

The main usage is for monitoring performance, a major part of the software is you can define some virtualization for RAM utilization. You can set up something and then you will start getting alerts which you can do some optimizations from the information.

It is the best monitoring tool for Oracle databases. 

You have full visibility with the tool, it is a complete solution. 

The software is simple to use.

In my experience, the monitoring could be improved. 

If the solution had an auditing feature, I would not look into other software, for example, Imperva or IBM Guardium. These other solutions have an audit feature and monitoring together, this one is strictly monitoring only. Oracle does have a separate product for auditing, which is very expensive.

I have been using the solution for seven years.

It is a very stable product.

We have five administrators that are using the solution, as it is only for administrators.

We have access to the support but the product is really easy to use, we have not needed any help.

The setup was easy, we encountered no problems and it took us only three hours.

We did the implementation ourselves.

The solution is inexpensive to purchase.

I have evaluated Imperva and IBM Guardium. 

I am going to continue to use this product in the future.

I rate Oracle Enterprise Manager a nine out of ten.

The speed at which I can drill down to isolate issues.

• As a troubleshooter, I was able to quickly resolve memory issues.
• Finding the top 10 longest running queries helped to control query performance issues. 

Metrics settings could be improved to be more intuitive.

Installation process could be easier. 

There could be better configuration documentation.

10 years.

No issues.

Stability is good. No issues.

I do not have a need for this product's scalability.

No.

It was complex. The installation document was tough to understand.

I installed the tool myself.

Get this tool.

Yes, DBArtisan.

I am very happy with this tool.

It is a comprehensive, end-to-end solution for managing database consolidation, something that has been missing and difficult to do. The Database Consolidation Workbench provides a risk-free and accurate approach to consolidation by eliminating guess work and human errors. Most of the errors that lead to severe issues in production environments are due to poor sizing of the configuration and so-called “educated guesses”. The Workbench provides a flexible approach for various customer scenarios: every environment is unique and several scenarios are possible.

Database consolidation has been for years a tedious process for many clients. The benefits are enormous. By using the Database Consolidation Workbench, companies achieve the following:

• Reduce complexity
• Improve efficiency
• Lower costs
• Better security
• Better monitoring
• Harmonized backups and easier restore
• Better performance
• Simplify maintenance
• Fewer servers in fewer locations
• Harmonized environment

It needs to support the Database versions lower than 10.2.

I have been using the Database Consolidation Workbench since its release with OEM 13c. I am even going to give two keynote speeches over the next month at Oracle conferences in Europe. The subject is of major interest to both business professionals and technical resources.

We've had no issues with deployment.

We've had no issues with the stability.

There have been no issues scaling it for our needs.

10/10

We used just spreadsheets and common-sense practices, which were often doomed to fail. The solution provided now by Oracle covers the last missing piece of the complete set-up when consolidating databases. One can think of Database Consolidation Workbench OEM 13c as the “Holy Grail” of Database Consolidation.

The initial setup was more than straightforward. It's easy to set up, configure, and use.

Reasons to upgrade to Enterprise Manager 13.2: https://blogs.oracle.com/oem/e...

It is part of Real Application Testing, so no new investment is necessary for clients who already are already using RAT.

There are no products available that can be compared with Database Consolidation Workbench. Not even close.

This is one of the most important additions to Oracle Enterprise Manager from both the business perspective and DBA point-of-view. Start first with upgrading OEM 11g or 12c to 13c as the Database Consolidation Workbench was introduced first in Oracle Enterprise Manager Cloud Control 13c as part of the Real Application Testing option. Run different scenarios within different projects in order to pick the best strategy. Always validate at the end.

Oracle Enterprise Manager provides a single pane of control that gives you the visibility to see all Oracle products, plus the non-Oracle products; hardware, software, middleware. It covers it all.

The benefits to my organization are with administration, plus it centralizes your control.

There are a lot of plugins. I would like to see more and more plugins for different software. Most of them are third-party software. If Oracle Enterprise Manager could provide a standard web service to interface with any application, that would be ideal.

I don't think anybody can walk on water. Software is buggy and that's the nature of the beast.

Stability is excellent now; not so much, before.

Scalability is endless because you can use Oracle technology to expand the back end and also use Oracle technology to expand the front end.

Technical support is very helpful. They were efficient. Usually, Oracle support is very good.

We previously used vendor-specific monitoring or control systems to administer different type of resources; hardware, software. OEM gives me the ability to expand that by putting everything under one control console.

I was involved in the initial setup, and it was pretty straightforward. Over the years, they have even simplified a lot of processes. Before, you had to install this and that, but now it's just one single installation that does it all.

For me, choosing this solution was a no-brainer because we are an Oracle shop. From having all different types of vendors for hardware and software, we are gradually becoming an Oracle shop.

Try to understand what OEM can do for you. Exploit it and its feature set. For example, I can modify the back-end storage through OEM. I don't have to go to my ZS4 console to see how much space I have, how to administer it, or how to allocate storage space to a particular project. I can do that through OEM. That's the power of having a single pane for control.

When I’m looking at a vendor such as Oracle, support is the most important criteria. Over the years, Oracle product has improved the stability, so that the most important thing now is how fast they can provide solutions when I need their help. That's the most important thing.