Oracle Enterprise Manager Cloud Control Reviews

Oracle Enterprise Manager Cloud Control (EM CC) is the best product for monitoring many of the Oracle databases and other Oracle applications such as Siebel, E-Business Suite, WebLogic.

The product has a common user-friendly interface which provides simple maintenance and administration tasks.

The Oracle Enterprise Manager (EM) helps to monitor many of the different targets and resources.

It is a flexible system for metrics and for the notifications that inform the DBAs and system administrators, before the occurrance of a problem.

I think EM should be able to monitor new products from different vendors. I would like to have unified monitoring interface to monitor other software and hardware, for example: AIX operating systems, including IBM-specific features (HMC, LPAR parameters), disk and tape storages, some optical switches and other enterprise production hardware.

I have been using this solution for about a year.

We did encounter some stability issues but many of them were fixed.

I did not encounter any scalability issues.

I would give the technical support a rating of about 7/10. This estimation is true for the Oracle support in general.

I used some open-source products, like Zabbix. I moved from the open-source products over to Oracle EM because it has many embedded metrics.

This product has a simple installation. All of the steps are described in depth in the Oracle documentation and I didn't have any problems with it.

From what I know, Oracle EM CC requires the Oracle Diagnostics and Tuning Pack license if you want to monitor Oracle databases.

Oracle EM is a unique product, i.e., if you need to monitor many of the Oracle products in detail.

My opinion is that this product must be used in companies that have many Oracle databases.

The use case was the monitoring of the database, which included consumption of resources such as CPU, memory, processes, and I/O.

One of the clearest examples is the agility of discovering processes/sessions that are burdening the database environment. With this agility, the DBA can more quickly verify this type of problem, in addition to checking locked sessions and not having to do several searches in views and tables of the data dictionary. The tool already does this for you in an agile way.

We had a case where a particular DML command could not perform the required update command on a table, and in this case we saw, within a few minutes, that we had another session doing an exclusive lock on the table. It was caused by an index rebuild command without the "online" option, that marked it to be rotated daily.

I believe that one of the most valuable resources this tool has is the ability to check offending processes, which are burdening the hardware resources, and to generate advice quickly that can improve a query's performance.

Another feature is the Resource Manager, where we can manage the consumption of resources of certain queries, separately in resource groups. Depending on the characteristics of the query, queries can be placed in groups that consume less database and hardware resources. 

There are others features as well, such as AWS and ASH report which, in Enterprise Manager, are generated in a more agile way, and with a more friendly interface, helping to detect abnormalities in the database.

One of the things that can be improved is the quality of results generated by BI Publisher. They are somewhat confusing when it comes to analysis.

Another point is in the installation of the product. The installation steps are very complex and the documentation for them is very generic and does not make very clear the correct steps from the installation to the addition of the host and database.

Another point that can be improved is the agent instability in the monitored hosts, because sometimes an agent has to be resynchronized to recapture the information.

There are lot of features in this product that I like. Among them are that RMAN backup jobs can be created, and that all the database instances can be monitored from one place. Tablespaces can be monitored and data files can be added when required. Also, it's easy to generate ADDM, ASK, and AWR reports.

In my organization, the RMAN backup jobs are configured through this product. Also, we have test, prod, UAT, and QA servers. All these database instances are easy to monitor from this product.

I think the help file should include more in-depth documents for the user to collaborate with all aspects of the product even if they haven't had product training.

I have been using it for three years, and before that I used Oracle Enterprise Manager Grid Control.

Once, after migrating the server, we had an issue of not being able to start it. We wanted to restore the OEM12C to another server, but the process was so complicated and the testing was not successful. Later, we were able to continue with the previous one.

We have had no stability issues.

There have been no issues scaling it for our needs.

The level of customer service and technical support are good. I understand the product is highly technical, so sometimes issues need more investigative time.

I used Oracle Enterprise Manager Grid Control and switched because this is the updated version and it's in the cloud. There are a lot of benefits behind using the cloud, and we wanted to take advantage of using the cloud through this product.

The initial setup was straightforward since we followed the setup guide, which was easy to follow. However, in some cases we faced some issues, but they were easy to figured out.

My company implemented it through a vendor team before I joined. Since the product was new and very few people had advanced knowledge of the product at that time, they preferred to implement it through the vendor team.

The product is good for monitoring all databases, but in some cases it's not easy to maintain. For example, if the server crashes and we need to restore the monitoring system, it's very complex. This product is very good for monitoring purposes as well as for cloud databases.

The big win here is alerting - if configured sensibly (don't use the out of the box settings) with some planning this can be a real asset - alerts can also be sent to your problem management system and steered towards exactly the right group of people using target labels such as "line of business" or "department".

Alerting, patching, general monitoring. Each host to be monitored requires and agent to be installed and configured - this process is mature and works well.

It's much more than a monitoring package - sometimes when scratching beneath the surface you end up with issues . Such as agents requiring security, scan listeners moving about after fail overs, some patching processes failing - these are relatively rare though and considering the breadth of the product I would not consider this an issue.

No system works well.

IF configured correctly this product is fully scalable.

Customer Service:

8/9 out of 10 - Oracle support is generally very good - sometimes they need nudging / issues need escalating bit the support model is good.

Technical Support:

generally good - the documentation and knowledge bases are extensive - so often you can resolve your own issues.

No.

You need to install oracle middleware and an oracle repository DB back end

Install scripts are good however with proper planning/sizing there shouldn't be any issues.

In-house

OEM is invaluable in many ways, other products can replace bits of it - but the product should be used as a single point from which to view as much of your enterprise as possible.

You will probably already be an Oracle user and so will have an existing license agreement. Add-on's can be pricey though.

Nothing else was considered for Oracle database monitoring.

Its one of those products that you can, and should customise to your own requirements. Don't expect a one off install then leave it to take care of itself. Proper procedures will greatly assist, and time spent discovering features can be very rewarding. Agent deployment is straight forwards, and the agents are light weight and easily maintainable

My interaction with OEM was primarily for governing Oracle 10g/11g databases. I was particularly interested in the monitoring/alerting features, table maintenance automation, performance dash-boarding, and Active Data Guard management.

I used this with clients, but not internally. For those with larger footprints, but with an inexperienced staff, it really helped to cushion the issues brought on by skill gaps. It also provided greater visibility of database performance for administrators. This helped prompt decisions around capacity and availability.

The interface for Data Guard could use some work. We had challenges with switchover/failover testing.

I have used this solution for three years.

We have not had any stability problems.

We have not had any scalability problems. My largest installation had approximately 16 databases. We did not challenge the server's existing compute resources.

Technical support from Oracle was not required during my implementation.

There was no previous solution. The solutions deployed had a fair Oracle footprint, so it was determined that OEM would be the best fit.

The initial setup was straightforward. OEM's GUI is pretty comprehensive and user-friendly. The documentation is very clear in terms of prerequisites and steps to be executed.

The base product, including DB Control, is free. However, additional Ops Center management packs, e.g., Tuning, Lifecycle Management, must be licensed in accordance with Oracle's guidelines. It's very easy to get confused about this. We recommended a comprehensive review of the licensing documentation, or a sit-down meeting with the vendor, prior to installation.

We did not look at any alternatives.

Depending on the size of the Oracle footprint that you need to monitor, it's a good idea perhaps to pursue an Oracle Licensing Agreement with the vendor. This will allow you to implement management packs more easily. I would recommend this for larger environments of 25 or more databases.

In our experience, the two most valuable features we've found are the email notifications and the live, real-time monitoring. They really allow us to stay on top of things.

As contractors, we manage a whole bunch of different environments and servers. EM Cloud Control gives me a good way to look at everything in one snapshot and to stay on top of daily monitoring.

Another big thing is that it helps with the down time. Instead of having to wait for a user to report an issue, I get an email notification, and most times I can fix it before anybody even knows that something went down.

They're moving everything off of our currents servers into the cloud. It would be nice if there was a way to seamlessly clone the configurations onto Cloud Control and then into the new environment so that I don't have to reconfigure everything.

We've had no issues with deployment.

The stability is pretty good. Sometimes it runs slowly, but that may be due to our network. Generally, though, it's good. The downside is that there is a lot of configuration overhead to get it working the way you want.

We only have one instance of it running. We're not so big that scalability is a concern.

We've had a few issues, opened CRs, and had no trouble getting them resolved. So technical support has been good.

We were using Grid Control and we switched as we didn't have a place to have just one dashboard with everything on it.

The initial setup is not hard; it's just time-consuming.

What it does, it does well, but it's so complex. There are a lot of quirks to get it to do what you want it to do. Do blackouts before you take anything down, because if you don't, you will get a gigantic shit storm.

Our primary use case is to run Oracle databases and to monitor them. It can do everything. 

Compared to other monitoring products the user interface is very clear. It sends clear notifications. 

The on-premises installation is complex. It should be easier, especially for deploying agents that are running on a Windows machine that is running Oracle databases. It's very complex. Linux based machines aren't so complicated but it's complex for Windows. 

I have been using Oracle Enterprise Manager Cloud Control for over a year. 

I haven't had any issues with stability or scalability. 

Oracle support is always good. 

I don't handle sales but I know that it's very expensive, especially when it comes to support.

I would rate it a seven out of ten.

Not a ten because no product is a ten. It has everything that I need. It gives me some problems with the deployment. The initial deployment should be more simple. 

If you have a lot of Oracle infrastructure, I would recommend this solution. My advice would be to read a lot of documentation about the deployment. Get an expert to help with the deployment. It can be very complex with an enterprise manager. It can be a waste of time trying to figure out all of the features.