Oracle Enterprise Manager Cloud Control Reviews

I use the solution for troubleshooting. 

It is sometimes difficult to create configurations in Oracle Enterprise Manager Cloud Control. 

I have been working with the product for four years. 

I rate Oracle Enterprise Manager Cloud Control's stability a nine out of ten. 

My company has more than 300 users. 

The tool's deployment is very fast. 

Oracle Enterprise Manager Cloud Control is a little expensive. 

I rate the solution a nine out of ten. 

Our primary use is to administer the different databases we have, development, UATs, and production databases. We use it to have a central environment so we can make policies for all users; whether the passwords have expired or not.

The reason we have this is because before, let’s say I had 10 to 12 databases. I had to go to each server and log in to the enterprise manager, and do this job on each server. Another of our concerns that this helps us address is to get notifications regarding if the space is, let’s say, 80% used. In that case, I need it to send me a notification so I can maintain; or on the host level where our systems are, to have alert notifications regarding space or CPUs.

Our main use of Enterprise Manager is on the database level.

Using Enterprise Manager, I was able to create user profiles for all the instances that have the same profile. Secondly, it's easier to manage performance, to automate the AWR reports to run every half an hour, or hour. Then, if you have a performance issue you just open the report and you can see what was running the last one hour, the SQL statements, or what was causing the performance issues. And, of course, the alerts.

The most important, of course, is the monitoring feature, because we want to monitor the host and the databases. 

Of course, that you can manage and create the backup strategies from a central environment for all your environments, so you don’t have to do so on each database. You can set up the policy you want for each database, but you do it from a central environment. 

And, of course, the notifications, if the backup succeeded or not.

Because all our banking infrastructure is based on Oracle, I’ve tried to register Enterprise Manager on the middleware level, let's say, WebLogic applications. But I cannot say that I can do all the administration from Enterprise Manager, that I can do from the WebLogic Admin Console. So, I think here it needs some improvement: Things that you can do on the WebLogic Admin Console, you should be able to do them on the Enterprise Manager, so you don’t have to log into the Admin Console.

No issues with stability, really. 

Sometimes the alerts are coming a bit late, for example, an alert for the CPU. It depends on the threshold that you have, how long you want to check the CPU of the machine. I got some faulty alerts with Data Guard. I had stopped a synchronization for maintenance and then I re-synchronized Oracle Data Guard. It took some time to appear in Enterprise Manager and send me the right notification that Data Guard was up and running and synchronizing. I realized this because I went directly into the database to check the status of Data Guard, and it was telling me that it was running okay. But in Enterprise Manager, it needed some more time to update the interface. It doesn’t happen really often, that I get faulty alerts or late alerts.

Another example is when the database is down and then you start the database, it needs some time to load everything from the database. I don’t know if some maintenance can be done on the agent side that is installed on the database server. But the lack that I'm seeing might be from 20 seconds to two minutes. It depends.

I cannot think of any scalability issues.

In general, we have experience with Oracle support. For some things they are giving us solutions quickly. For some other cases they need more time, but for Enterprise Manager specifically, I have never used Oracle support.

I used Oracle Grid Control 10 a few years ago, as a consultant, and it was very useful. So when I came here and we started having more and more environments, I said, “Okay, the only way to manage all these environments is to have Oracle Enterprise Manager." And it’s impressive how much better Oracle 13c is, how much improved it is over Oracle Grid Control 10.

The installation, I think is, straightforward. It's not very, very complex.

You need some background on the order, what you have to install first and what second, and you need to check which versions of support that will be your back-end or WebLogic. But if you have a bit of background and you go through the main Oracle Database to get the versions that you need, I think there's no issue with installation.

We are using the free version. We are not using any licensed packages of Enterprise Manager, so I’m not quite sure how much each package is. As I understand it, there are different plug-ins that you need to buy for Enterprise Manager, but I’m not sure how much they cost.

The only solution I could think of was Oral Enterprise Manager because our infrastructure is based on Oracle.

To implement, you need to have a good server with a reasonable CPU, and good RAM on the server. You need to check the configurations that need to be done on each database where you want to install the Oracle agent, so it will be automatic; you need to make some changes on the host, the host that you want to register. I don’t think there is anything else complex in order to do this.

I would rate this product an eight out of 10.  To be a 10 it needs to be more viable for using it for middleware software.

Managing deliveries is our primary use case: Oracle servers, Oracle networking, delivery receipts, applications, Tomcat/Apache, host machines, and checking the host data center.

Oracle Enterprise Manager Cloud Control has improved our organization in many ways:

• Before implementing this solution, the patching was done manually. Now, we do the same task with patching management. 
• Before, we used to monitor every server every day. Now, we don't have to monitor it, because we have an in-place solution. 

We get alerts from Oracle Enterprise Manager Cloud Control. We can proactively monitor every server before a problem happens on it.

The accuracy is the most valuable feature for us. Oracle Enterprise Manager Cloud Control gives us diverse monitoring tools, monitoring capability that can be extremely powerful, security patching, database consolidation, etc. all in one packaged distribution.

The product does have room for improvement in patch management. It is complex, but since the documentation is very much elaborated, we followed the documentation. 

We were able to implement it by ourselves. We didn't have to ask the third-party implementers to come and implement it for us.

The deployment took around two days. The whole deployment, all the production servers (we have around three hundred servers), took around three months.

I would like to see more security features in Oracle Enterprise Manager Cloud Control like application data integrity.

The solution is pretty good. This is very powerful. Oracle Cloud Control has the capability of not only managing Oracle products, but also Microsoft, IBM products, SharePoint, etc. Lots of solutions and applications come in this domain. 

Oracle is managing all the different procedures of applications, deliveries, storage, network, and load-balancing. It is a complete data-center solution.

Right now we have a cluster node with two servers clustered. It has a database. This database is on a two-node server. We can scale it up to as many as we want. 

Civil administrators, supervising administrators, network administrators, auditing administrators, managers, supervisors, security consultants, etc. are all using it.

We have in the Cloud Control every person assigned to a role. We have assigned a particular role to them: indoors administration, SharePoint administration, Exchange, etc.

Some are for the main controller. Some are Oracle admins, BI publishers, BI reporting tools, managers, etc. Every person has his/her role.

I would evaluate the solution's technical support with a 7 out of 10. They are lacking. Sometimes I feel the engineers on Oracle support don't know as much as we know. 

Maybe because we are using their product heavily or they're engineers who are working in Oracle support, but they don't have much breadth of knowledge in the product. What I've witnessed sometimes has surprised me. They don't know the product as much as we do. When the support goes through and the support call goes to the US, they are professional. When it comes through India, it's just terrible.

We switched due to the ease of control in managing productivity and administration. We were not using that solution as heavily as we are using Oracle Control now. It was the mobile Microsoft SCOM security package.

The initial setup is complex but since the documentation is very much elaborated, we followed the documentation. We were able to implement it by ourselves. We didn't have to ask the third-party implementers to come and implement it for us. 

The deployment took around two days for all the production servers. We have around three hundred servers, so it took around three months.

I did the setup myself. We didn't have any integrator. We followed all of the documentation and I was the one who implemented all the solutions. 

We have saved a lot of money on costs like wages, overtime, and manpower. The required hours were too high to maintain the servers previously. 

We had lots of people maintaining the servers. Now, there are not many people needed. The company is saving a lot of money.

We had some indicators. We studied our environment. We have most of our production systems and applications on Oracle. Consequently, the Oracle Enterprise Manager Cloud Control distro was well suited for us. 

We use Oracle's product line. We know that it also supports the other products that we're using like Microsoft Exchange, SharePoint, web-controllers, Apache servers, etc. 

We found Oracle Enterprise Manager Cloud Control much more suitable for us than other products for storage, switches, net logs, F-5, etc.

If people know their environment, they will know what product suits their business department and needs. If they are happier using Oracle applications or customer applications based in Java and Oracle products. Cloud Control is much better for us.

I would rate it an eight out of ten because I found it very helpful, proactive, and easy to manage I didn't give it 10, because of the support. I don't find the support very professional. 

Real-time SQL, performance monitoring and SQL Tuning Advisor are the features that I use the most. These features are very effective to find problems and to resolve them.

Besides these, setting alert mechanism, getting AWR reports and monitoring the Exadata hardware are the most useful features.

Also, adding clients remotely from the Oracle Cloud Control 12c screen makes this version different from the earlier ones.

There are still doubts as of how to use this tool for administration issues such as storage or replication operations. DBAs still prefer to administer databases by manual commands. They rather use this tool to monitor databases and alert mechanisms.

To be more specific, most DBAs (that I've met) prefer to use “Sqlplus”, “putty”, “secureCRT” command line tools or “Toad” tool to manage replication or to manage storage(tablespace, control file etc) instead of using EM Cloud Control.

They do not feel relaxed using EM Cloud Control for those subjects. Oracle may emphasize on those subject on the trainings. Or Oracle Support Engineers can motivate the customers about using those features if they are really stable.

I have used this solution for more than four years. Before this, I was using earlier versions of the product, i.e, Oracle Enterprise Manager 11g.

With the earlier release, we did encounter stability issues. But, now I use version 12.1.0.4.0. and I do not see any stability problems.

I have used the earlier version (i.e version 11g) and also, I have used dbconsole (i.e., the Oracle Enterprise Manager Console dedicated to one server). I switched to this version so as to administer my database and the Exadata hardware from one point.

The setup is not complex. Everyone can do it by using its official documents as well as the tutorials that can be found from the web easily.

If you plan to use OEM Cloud Control 12c for a corporate company, it will be better to get the Diagnostics and Tuning Pack or the Management license based on your needs. This tool will be your most important assistant. But for smaller goals, you can use the base OEM functions for free (http://docs.oracle.com/cd/E246...).

If you use Oracle, you do not have many options. This product is the best for a DBA. But, if you have license limitations, then you can use it with the base functions or you can use Oracle Enterprise Manager Console (dbconsole).

Implementing this version is so much easier than the earlier ones. You do not need to install agents into the client one by one. You can install the agent from one point (i.e., from the OEM Cloud Control 12c screen). You just need some firewall actions before installing the agents. Implementation is easy, there is no need for a lot of engineering.

We are a solution provider and this is one of the products that we implement for our clients. Our primary use case was to change the infrastructure for one of our clients. They were moving SAP from an on-premise deployment to this one.

SAP is a high-performance application, and we are able to use Oracle Enterprise Manager Cloud Control to monitor and prevent bottlenecks.

The dashboard and reporting help us to do preventative AI and analytics to detect performance bottlenecks.

The only negative thing about this product is that it doesn't support all environments or all applications. It does support most but there are limitations around applications and monitoring.

I would like to see an expansion of the functionality into other products. This includes smaller products, like monitoring applications for MySQL or even smaller Oracle databases. It does support Oracle very well but in the smaller databases, they should increase functionality. Improving the detail of the databases that it can monitor would also be helpful.

We first implemented Oracle Enterprise Manager Cloud Control approximately a year ago.

This is a very stable solution

This product is very much scalable.

The technical support from Oracle is very good.

The initial setup is easy because you just have to deploy an agent. However, I did not install it myself.

The hardware is installed on-premises but it is a cloud device. This is what's called a Cloud@Customer. It's a private cloud infrastructure but can also join up with the public cloud.

It took us approximately one month to deploy.

We deployed this product with our in-house team, although it was a collaboration with Oracle. We dealt with Oracle telephonically because our team was in South Africa.

Only one person from our team was required for deployment. Also for maintenance, only one person is needed.

Our customer uses Oracle Universal Credits to pay for their license on an annual basis. The price is definitely affordable.

Overall, this is a good product but of course, there is room for improvement.

I would rate this solution a seven out of ten.

We are very dependent on the product, since it eases Oracle database administration. Mostly, if you have a lot of databases in your DC.

It has helped us in the manner of productivity, since it enables us to monitor and manage a lot of databases in a centralized web portal.

Patching multiple databases

Performance monitoring

Management and optimization

Database administration

Alerts and thresholds

Stability and performance of the tool itself. Might be better used with more hardware. Normally the specifications from the docs are enough.

Yes, there are some bugs. Some of the screens sometimes do not load data, and sometimes the portal hangs.

It has the ability to scale out the database and the OEM to more than one server.

It is under the Oracle support agreement. I would rate it a nine out of 10.

Yes, we evaluated Spotlight from Dell (Quest), but we chose OEMCC, since it has more features and requires no direct licensing.

I think it is a bit complex. You have to install and create an Oracle Database with a template for OEM, then you have to install and configure the OEM.

We did it by ourselves.

OEM requires no licensing, but if you want to use features like the performance monitoring page in your database, you must have the Diagnostic Pack license. If you want the tuning advisor, you have to license the Tuning Pack. The license you need is not for OEM, but for the Oracle Database.

We evaluated Spotlight from Dell (Quest).

If you have a considerable number of Oracle Databases and they are very critical, I suggest you use this product. It eases administration, mainly regarding performance management and troubleshooting.

I use the solution for monitoring purposes. So, by running the agents, we can connect to our client, extract data from the database, and facilitate work component integration within the enterprise.

The solution helps database tuning through query ID and SQL ID; we can fine-tune skill parameters and gather information to enhance operational analysis and performance.

Oracle Enterprise Manager Cloud Control needs to improve its GUI. 

I have been using the product for a year. 

I rate the solution's stability a seven out of ten.

I rate the tool's scalability a seven out of ten. 

Oracle Enterprise Manager Cloud Control's deployment was straightforward. 

The solution's pricing is fine. 

I rate the tool a seven out of ten. 

The solution is being used as a monitoring tool. 

The report feature is very useful. 

The configuration is not straightforward for web continuity.  It needs some improvement and the deployment is expensive. 

I have experience with Oracle Enterprise Manager Cloud Control.

It is a stable product. I rate the stability a nine out of ten. 

It is a scalable solution. I rate the scalability a nine out of ten. 

The initial setup is okay. For the deployment a step by step documentation needs to be followed. 

The deployment can be done in-house.

I have seen Return on Investment. 

One has to pay for the enterprise version. 

I recommend using the solution. I rate the overall solution a nine out of ten.