Oracle Enterprise Manager Reviews

I manage a team of Customer Care and Billing Support Administrators. Earlier in our implementation when we were not quite stable we had to request assistance from our DBAs to troubleshoot performance of our databases. We eventually convinced them that it would be to their advantage to provide us with read only access to the graphs and to run AWR reports in OEM so we could troubleshoot ourselves. We actively monitor the databases and can get ahead of any issues. We are also making preparations for using OEM with Oracle Utilities Application Management which will provide application monitoring through OEM.

We definitely get ahead of issues before they become severe.

The reports are very busy. Once you understand the information it was great, but initially it was not very user friendly.

Five years.

No problems.

No issues.

None.

Good.

Good.

No.

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.

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.

We primarily use the solution for a database.

It's the most reliable database available on the market. 

The tried and tested services that Oracle provides is second to none. 

The solution offers excellent support.

The product is very mature. There are a lot of new upstarts, however, this technology has a long history of quality. While other options may not have many use cases available, Oracle certainly does. They have a wide variety of success stories users can look to.

The solution is considered expensive.

We've been using Oracle for the past five or six years. Some of our customers are on the solution.

The solution is quite stable. There aren't bugs or glitches. It's reliable. It doesn't crash.

The solution is scalable. If a company needs to increase usage, it can do so rather easily.

As we deal with many clients, the sizes of the companies vary. I'm not sure how many users each company would have on one solution. Whether they need 100 or 1,000 users, we'll design the system to meet their needs.

Oracle does provide very good technical support. They have company support models available. If you are a license holder, you can raise your ticket in the Oracle site and get support. It's my understanding that our clients are happy with the level of support available to them.

We use a variety of solutions, according to our client's needs, as we are service providers.

The solution can be both complex and straightforward to implement. If you area laptop user, it's very simple. However, when you need to configure it as a production server, then it's a complex.

Typically, it takes about one to five hours to deploy the product. It's not too long.

If you are only using a developer edition, it will take a maximum of 30 minutes to one hour to deploy. If you need to set up your entire production, then it will take at least a couple of days due to the fact that there are a lot of activities that need to be done.

One active professional can handle an Oracle setup. You don't need too many people to implement it.

We have our own in-house team that can handle deployments for our clients.

The solution is quite expensive. It's not the cheapest on the market. Companies will have to pay a fair bit for it. The pricing is core and processor-based. The overall cost largely depends on how many nodes your company needs to deploy.

We're working with the latest version of the solution.

We're on the service industry side of the business. Whatever our clients need we work to accommodate. Whether they prefer an Oracle server or a Microsoft option, we'll work with them to meet their needs. We don't exclusively deal with Oracle. We would never push our clients to use specific technologies. We just suggest options and highlight the features that best apply to their use cases. Then, we simply follow their wishes and deliver on their expectations.

I'd rate the solution nine out of ten overall. They're very competitive in the market and very good as a product overall. Our clients are happy with it. If the pricing was a bit lower I might give them a perfect ten out of ten.

The primary use case of this solution is used in our HSA Group for backup and recovery.

The most valuable feature is high availability.

The features that we are using the most are for partitioning, Armonk, and encryption. 

RMAN tools need improvement.

There are some doubts about the Oracle policy on price quotes. I have a good relationship with the customers and If I start dealing with them, and get them a discount, then that discount is available to all of the Oracle partners. I prefer the way it works with other companies, like HP, where any discount that I negotiate on behalf of a customer will be available only to me.

This solution is stable, and it's reliable.

This solution is scalable.

Technical support responds quickly. Our customers are satisfied with the availability of technical support.

The initial setup is straightforward. I have been a DBA for ten years now and I have been working with Oracle for twenty-five years.

The pricing is very high.

This solution is the best! It's perfect!

I would rate this solution a ten out of ten.

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.

You can get a healthful overview of all your targets in one snapshot in Enterprise Manager. You can see what's up or what's down and then take corrective action. It's a valuable tool for an admin like me.

Another feature of the Enterprise Manager is a plug-in, which crosses multiple teams. I've seen multiple teams coming to us and then asking for the tools to be deployed for their team. It's a cross-team effort, which streamlines a lot of things in terms of monitoring.

Also, since it's an Oracle-based product, it can talk to the Oracle-related products very well. The plug-in extension extends the functionality. I see a lot of benefits in terms of monitoring costing less effort; streamlining the monitoring has helped.

There are functional areas were you have extensions. Those extensions, or plug-ins, are one way to incorporate more products.

There are extensions that are available.

It's too early to know about stability, because right now we have 12c and we're looking to go to 13c.

We'll see what we can do in terms of scalability and operational deployment. We are still evaluating it. We're working with Oracle on that.

We're fortunate to have direct access to the product managers and the product support managers. They have been on our case for Enterprise Manager deployment.

It was already deployed to some extent when I entered into the team. I'm extending the deployment with the other team members. We did have some hiccups in working with Oracle.

At our company, we have multiple monitoring tools, so we do look at Precise as one other tool. There are a couple of other homegrown tools also. We'll be evaluating against all them next.

I didn’t choose Oracle. It was already picked for me.

PoC is a good starting point. It doesn't hurt to have a PoC and have some of the environmental test or something monitored by that environment. You learn from that. Then you take the best practices, which are already there from the various laws and Oracle published notes and you incorporate that. It's not hard.

The GUI interface for monitoring and managing databases is the most valuable feature.

The automated alerts tell me when I have an issue before a user calls. They are proactive.

We use it mostly for the connection to the databases. It could be the version I'm on, but we seem a little limited on what we can do for monitoring for the middleware.

No stability issues.

So far, it has scaled well for our needs.

Most of the time, when we open a ticket, we are happy with the resolution and the timing of the response. We've had a few incidents where they immediately say, “Maybe you should upgrade.” That usually kind of sets me off. It's like, why don't you listen to the entire thing before you immediately tell me to upgrade? Overall yes, no issues with that.

We looked at Spotlight. It was just too expensive, so we stuck with Oracle.

Go to training first. We did it the other way around: We tried to figure it out, and then go to training. That’s fine, as long as there isn’t a big gap between when you're going to implement it, and when you've been trained. We probably would have saved a lot of angst and issues if we were properly trained first.

Our biggest issue is learning all the features. There are more bells and whistles than we're probably using; getting familiar with the capabilities, and then actually being able to execute them.

I'm happy with it. I think we're not leveraging it enough, but for what we use it for, it's perfect.