Oracle Enterprise Manager Reviews

The most valuable feature is the monitoring of all of the different types of targets in our infrastructure, including not only the Oracle Database components, but the SQL Server components also, in the host.

We are able to manage larger numbers of databases with less human resources.

I would probably like to see more plug-ins to manage even more heterogeneous types of resources.

I would say 95% of the time it's up and running without any problems.

It's scaled pretty well for our needs, so far. We're planning on moving over to a server that has more resources available because we are getting to a point where, with some of the features that are available – such as dealing with monitoring compliances, security compliances – it's starting to take up more resources than what we have on that server along with these targets. We're having to move off of this server to have some more resources.

When I open a ticket with Oracle, it is resolved in a timely fashion. I’m happy with the resolution. They work. We have MOS. They work extensively with us to try to get resolutions as quick as possible.

I rate technical support 8/10.

We did have Foglight. It was providing us decent monitoring of the targets, but the OEM, specifically for managing the Oracle databases, is a lot more robust. You have more tools to work with to administer the Oracle databases.

I was involved in deploying and setting it. It was very straightforward and I set up all three of the tiers, from the web to the application to the back-end database. We have them running on just one server, but it's providing what we need out of it. We're currently managing approximately 900 targets.

It's a very robust tool. You will find there are many links and it's easy to navigate, but it might take you some time to learn where everything's at.

The most valuable feature is the automation of the alerting. We can be proactive when we use that program instead of being called in the middle of the night because something’s wrong. You get the alert and the warning before. You can customize every threshold to meet your needs, and have different settings for different database groups.

The company spends less money over time because we are not working overtime hours at the office.

I would like to see better support for Oracle GoldenGate. Right now, it doesn't work well with Oracle GoldenGate. You still have to use GoldenGate monitor if you want to take advantage of the product.

There are some bugs and often we cannot debug the product right there and we have to reconfigure some things. It does the job, as long as you don't encounter a bug.

The stability's not so bad. It's a stable product, a mature product. When we change versions, there are some problems there.

Scalability's good. We went from two databases to over 250. It's working fine.

We have used technical support many times; it is very bad. We often had to dig down ourselves into the source code to find out why it’s not working on our platform. Every time we conferred about that, it became a little more complicated. Their answer is often to just delete the target, rediscover it and it should be fine.

We were pretty much doing our own thing with an in-house script. Since we were growing fast, we could not continue like that.

Out of the box, initial setup is pretty straightforward: You install it, you discover your target and it monitors them. If you want to go further and do custom monitoring, for example, it can become quite complicated. On the other hand, it's very flexible. That's good.

It's been a long time, so I don't remember which other products we were considering. Probably from the beginning, we were considering Oracle because they let us experiment with it first and we saw that it worked. Also, because we kind of expect our versioning to follow the version of the database.

Go only with the out-of-the-box configuration first. Let it run for a while like that to learn the product. Learn a few things before trying to configure everything in it.

When I’m selecting a vendor, price is a big factor. Licensing is a big factor. It has to do the job we need it for. Those are the most important criteria.

We have 200+ databases and monitoring that number of databases without using a enterprise tool would involve a tremendous amount of manual work. Furthermore, early notification about databases and operating system alerts helps our DBA team in fixing the issue before there is any major impact on the business.

Database performance monitoring, dashboards, databases management and Dataguard setup and monitoring are the features that I like the most.
BI Publisher is another cool feature to generate customized reports.

Middleware (weblogic) has some bugs and crashes occur which should be fixed to make OEM more productive.

This

I have been using OEM for 6+ years

We were using custom build application to monitor the systems but this product provides more functionality and GUI interface.

We have an enterprise Corporate License so cost is not an issue.

We checked Quest software (Spotlight and Toad) however we found OEM to be more productive.

I feel that this a 5 star product because of how easy it is to configure and the vast features that are available.

I use Oracle Enterprise Manager for database administration and to manage our IT help desk. It is also used to scope database issues which need support in a production environment.

Oracle Enterprise Manager has eased the responsibilities among our DBAs. We can now assign individual tasks to separate DBAs.

I have found the singular GUI feature very helpful. Fewer DBA resources can be allocated with Toad licenses.

They should improve the hover text context. This would provide assistance whenever a task is attempted by a DBA.

More than five years.

I can run the database, run queries, run reports, see the whole picture, and analyze the data.

I can see the whole picture and analyze the data; I rely on that a lot. I feel like I can see the whole entire database.

It could be faster; sometimes it takes a while to make the connection. Sometimes, it's complicated, too.

It is very stable. Once in a while, I see IT involved in a ticket but I don't think it happens all the time.

I think we used to use Sybase and then we transferred to Oracle. Now they no longer use the Sybase servers. I’m not so sure why we switched from Sybase to Oracle; maybe the technology made them move from Sybase to Oracle, maybe it was more stable, more space or something like that.

I like it. I would encourage a colleague or friend looking for advice to use Oracle.

The most valuable feature is that it is very easy for the novice DBA to drill down and find problems that might otherwise be difficult to find.

It has helped developers and novice DBAs drill down and find the cause for problems. There are two pieces. One, it allows people to pinpoint issues easily, and then drill down and get more details of the issue. Previously, this used to be a skillset in the hands of a very few people, but now virtually anybody can do it. Even if they can't fix the actual problem, they could filter down a lot of the issues, and get only the relevant information, which is helping us.

I probably would like to see better SQL tuning advisors that are built into the product. When you know the issue, rather than just pinpoint it, if it could also give you a solution that might work, I think that would help the product.

There are a few things on the wish list. We would hope that it makes some predictions of what we could fix and also the resources for printing that it takes. In some cases, it is not available when we need it the most.

It is mostly stable, but we have found some issues when we are having resource contention or CPU issues. It is not easy to bring up the product because it is a bit of a resource hog. Sometimes when you need it the most, that is when you find it missing, but those are rare and far between.

It is a very scalable product. No complaints there. We use it for hundreds of databases and it grows.

On a scale of 1 to 10, I would probably give Oracle tech support somewhere between a 6 and a 7. Often, when you know what the issue is, there is a lot of collecting data for root cause which we might have provided just the previous day. We find ramp up is a bit of a waste of time before we can actually get a solution.

We were covered by the Oracle enterprise license agreement and it made more sense for us to go with this product as opposed to looking for another one. They have had it for a very long time.

It is a very straightforward setup and also we had help from Oracle as part of our enterprise license agreement with my company. They helped set it up and it has been working pretty well.

It was an easy choice. The Oracle Enterprise Manager is pretty well known and I don't think anything else, an external product, matches or comes even close.

Look at the reputation and the size of the company. These products are often very expensive. It is better to go with someone who has been around for a long time and who would continue to be in business, as opposed to flavor-of-the-month products.

When I am looking at a vendor such as Oracle, the most important criteria that I am looking for from them are market reputation, the scale of the company, and the stability.

Both OS and Hardware Management, Network Boot, Server Pools, and Live migration of LDOMs over Server Pool are Ops Center's most valuable features to me.

It helps a lot in data center consolidation, P2V, and with LDOM live migration. It reduces overall required downtime and is highly scalable, especially with T5 architecture.

The monitoring feature should be improved, so that it may be used as a dependable monitoring solution, as well as a deployment solution for SPARC-based hardware and operating systems.

I have used the product for three years.

No, I didn’t encounter any issues with deployment, stability or scalability.

I will rate technical support at 9.

I have had the opportunity to work with various other UNIX as well as Linux systems, but among all of them, I found Solaris to be a very stable operating system. Now with the evolution of LDOMs, ZFS and zones, it’s providing a perfect platform for virtualization solutions.

To me installation doesn’t seem complex, but at the same time comprehensive understanding of technology is required.

We performed implementation ourselves, except some time when we requested Oracle’s professional services.

I recommend Oracle solutions like T5 Super-Cluster, T5-8 and Oracle Solaris 11 operating systems, as they are highly scalable and fault-tolerant systems.

Reporting and tuning

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

BI Publisher integration; EM CLI commands

Four years

Agent deployments are easy

Not with 12c OEM

No

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

Initial installation of 12c OEM is convenient and straightforward

In-house implementation

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

No

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