Chapter 10. Ease the Chaos with Exadata Management

Many people know about Exadata, the extreme performance machine from Oracle for OLTP as well as data warehousing applications. The Exadata Database Machine combines Sun Hardware with Oracle database and storage software, and is installed as a highly optimized and fully engineered system of servers, storage, and software.

One of the open secrets of Exadata is its massively parallel grid architecture, that uses multiple Exadata compute nodes with Oracle Real Application Cluster (RAC) active-active databases, and multiple Exadata storage cells. This results in fast, predictable performance.

The Oracle technologies used in Exadata are complex and manifold, and these technologies must be managed efficiently. One example is controlling the I/O across all the storage cells in an Exadata Database Machine rack. How do you know what database consumes the most I/O across all the cells? Can you control it efficiently?

How do you apply database patches...

Meeting the challenges

There are many challenges in the Exadata world. When deploying such a complicated machine, it is very important to reduce deployment costs and minimize errors. First, you need to identify the databases that will be moved to Exadata, that is, plan your consolidation. You need to make sure the applications that are migrated will continue to work as efficiently as before, or even better, on Exadata. Once you have completed the migration, there needs to be a continuous monitoring of all the hardware and software components of this machine, and you also need to ensure that there is no configuration drift.

Oracle Enterprise Manager Cloud Control 12c is very advanced in its management of the Exadata machine. There is an integrated view of the hardware and software, with the ability to monitor storage cells, compute nodes (database servers), as well as the all-important Infiniband network. The ILOM (Integrated Lights Out Manager), Cisco switches, KVM (Keyboard, Video, Mouse...

Discovering Exadata

The discovery of Exadata Database Machines in Enterprise Manager Cloud Control 12c is wizard-driven, and is considerably faster than the previous version. Components, such as storage cells and Infiniband switches, are now discovered in an out of the box fashion and do not require a separate plugin to be installed for each of these components. Other Exadata components, such as the Cisco switches, KVM switches, and the PDU are also discovered during the guided discovery process, which automatically deploys the Oracle Exadata plugin—a collection of JAR files used to monitor all the Exadata components.

The actual Enterprise Manager agents are installed on the compute nodes, and can be set up during the discovery process to also monitor and manage the storage cells (without physically installing the agent on these cells).

There is a new option in Enterprise Manager Cloud Control 12c to discover a new Exadata Database Machine, or to rediscover it. The latter can be useful in...

Monitoring and managing Exadata

Exadata monitoring covers the databases, compute nodes (database servers), storage servers, the Infiniband network and switches, KVM switches, Cisco switches, ILOM, and PDU. We will have a look at how Exadata appears in Enterprise Manager Cloud Control 12c.

Move to Targets | Exadata and drill down to the Database Machine. The Database Machine home page appears with the following schematic:

This shows, at a glance, an integrated view of the entire Exadata system in an illustrative, schematic diagram. The Compute Nodes and Storage Cells are seen in a full Exadata Database Machine rack, along with the KVM, Ethernet switch, and Infiniband Switches.

Note that the temperature of the components is also monitored—you can show the temperature on the diagram by selecting the Temperature checkbox. The temperature is considered to be very important in an Exadata system. It should ideally be between 15 and 35 degrees since overheating can affect performance.

The left panel...

Total capabilities

We have seen that Enterprise Manager Cloud Control 12c offers an integrated hardware and software view of the Exadata Database Machine. The hardware view on the database machine home page displays a schematic diagram of the compute nodes, storage servers, and the Infiniband/Ethernet switches. It also displays incidents for the hardware components.

Besides the hardware view, Enterprise Manager Cloud Control 12c also offers a software or system view of Exadata, showing the availability and performance of the databases and services, and the manner in which the databases are consuming CPU and IO bandwidth. Incidents are also raised for the software, including the database, ASM, and cluster.

There is a dashboard available at Database Machine | Members | Dashboard. The related incidents can be seen on this page. There is also a topological view, where you can see the entire database machine topology. This is accessed via Database Machine | Members | Topology.

There is also a ...

Summary

In this chapter, we have examined the use of Enterprise Manager Cloud Control 12c in detail, for monitoring and managing the Exadata Database Machine. Discovery is done with greater ease, and the entire Exadata system can be monitored (both the hardware and software). SLAs can be set up for Exadata systems. The management of a number of Exadata components is possible via the Enterprise Manager interface, including, but not limited to, the RAC databases and storage servers.

Partitioned Exadata Database Machine Racks can also be monitored and managed by Enterprise Manager Cloud Control 12c using the Exadata plugin. At the time of writing, there is no unified topology view in the case of multirack Exadata Database Machines. However, each rack can be discovered, monitored, and managed individually. Expansion racks or SPARC SuperClusters are currently not supported by the Exadata plugin.

In conclusion, Enterprise Manager Cloud Control 12c has vastly improved in the areas of discovery, monitoring...