Chapter 5. Ease the Chaos with Automated Provisioning

Large corporates typically have tens of thousands of systems, including databases, database servers, and middleware application servers. In such a complex environment, the operating systems used may be different, and database versions may also vary considerably. For example, there may be a database firm using the Oracle Database Enterprise Edition (EE) 10g version on Linux servers, and another firm with Oracle 11g databases on Solaris. Middleware application servers may also vary considerably. You may have WebLogic servers or other application servers, and these may also use different Operating Systems with several versions.

Typically, manual methods would have been used to create the myriad of systems in such an environment. The various operating systems would be manually installed by a dedicated team of system administrators, who would need specialized knowledge of each operating system. So there would be a Linux team, a Solaris team...

Lifecycle management

Oracle Enterprise Manager's DBLM Pack includes the powerful capability of provisioning and patch automation. This is in addition to the configuration management capabilities we looked at in the previous chapter. We will now discuss the provisioning features, and move to patch automation in the next chapter.

In a nutshell, the provisioning capabilities of Enterprise Manager allow you to create gold copies of different operating systems, different database versions, or middleware software. You can then use these gold copies to automate the deployment of the OS, database software, or middleware servers in a controlled and highly efficient manner. The actual work is performed out of the box or by customized deployment procedures in Enterprise Manager, which are a series of steps that automate the provisioning of the software. This allows the administrator's labor and effort to be drastically reduced, and quality of service to be increased.

Consider the example of a central...

First steps: Software Library

We decide to take a quick look at database provisioning. From the Enterprise Manager Cloud Control 12c menu, we go to Enterprise | Provisioning and Patching | Database Provisioning. The very first screen that comes up tells us that the Software Library setup is Not Done, as shown in the following screenshot:

Click on the Not Done link. This takes us to the Software Library: Administration page (which can also be accessed by going to Setup | Provisioning and Patching | Software Library). This page displays a warning that the Software Library does not have an upload file location configured. This is one of the two options for file storage that can be used by the Software Library. The other option is Referenced File Location, which we will look into later on. Right now, specifying an upload file location is the very first step that needs to be done:

The Upload File Locations tab is used to upload the files that will go into the Software Library. The Storage Type...

Provisioning library

Navigate to Enterprise | Provisioning and Patching | Procedure Library. This opens the library of deployment procedures that are supplied out of the box with Enterprise Manager Cloud Control 12c. A deployment procedure is an advanced piece of automation that can be fully responsible for the entire process of provisioning or patching, and is also customizable. The library of deployment procedures is shown in the following screenshot:

On this page, we have conducted an advanced search to display only the procedures with the word database in the text description. As we can see, there are a number of deployment procedures for provisioning as well as patching databases.

We can select the appropriate procedure to provision either single-instance or RAC databases, or procedures to scale-up or scale-down the RAC cluster (add or delete RAC nodes). There is also a new type of procedure to create an Oracle database (single-instance or RAC), or to upgrade an existing Oracle database...

Provisioning profiles

We can now test out the actual provisioning of databases. Go to Enterprise | Provisioning and Patching | Database Provisioning. This brings up the Database Provisioning screen as shown in the following screenshot:

Notice that as you are logged in as SYSMAN, you have the rights of a designer. This is shown on the left-hand side corner of this page.

You can create new administrators and assign to them the rights of a Provisioning Designer or Provisioning Operator – this is done by allocating the Enterprise Manager administrator roles EM_PROVISIONING_DESIGNER and EM_PROVISIONING_OPERATOR respectively.

You can create Provisioning Operators directly from the Database Provisioning page by clicking on the Create/Grant link. There are other useful links on this page, such as Credentials, Privilege Delegation, Incident Manager, and Self Update, as well as links to online help on various topics (Key Concepts and Common Tasks).

The table at the top lists the database provisioning...

Deployment procedures

We now proceed to the next step, which is the creation of the customized and locked-down deployment procedure. Move to the Database Provisioning page, select the existing Provision Oracle Database procedure and click on the Create Like... button, as shown in the following screenshot:

On the Create Like Procedure page, rename the new procedure as Sainath Customized Procedure For Provisioning of Oracle Database on the General Information tab, as shown in the following screenshot:

Move to the Procedure Steps tab, this shows the actual sequence of steps as executed by the deployment procedure. You can delete, insert, and edit any step, or you can enable or disable the step. You can also change Error Handling Mode to either Stop On Error, Continue On Error, or Skip Target. In the following screenshot, one of the steps has been successfully edited to Continue On Error:

Customization

This helps you to customize any deployment procedure as per your company's requirements. As...

Summary

In large and complex environments, the provisioning process if performed manually can easily take up to 50 percent of an administrator's time. There are many disparate pieces of hardware and software that need to be provisioned using different procedures. During the course of this chapter, we have seen how a great deal of the provisioning process can be automated by Enterprise Manager Cloud Control 12c, using the powerful gold images, provisioning profiles, and deployment procedures. This will greatly reduce the provisioning effort and save the valuable time of the administrator.

A Provisioning Designer, normally a Senior DBA in the database engineering department, can create a locked-down procedure that can be published to the Provisioning Operator, who may be the Junior DBA. The Provisioning Operator can then seamlessly perform the actual action of provisioning without being able to change the locked-down inputs, and new databases can thus be provisioned as almost exact replicas...