OEM and Grid Control

First there was Oracle Enterprise Manager Database Control. This is known as OEM. It controlled a database. You view it in a singe window. It is web based. Was historically good for new Oracle features. It is easy to set up.

Next there was Oracle Enterprise Manager Grid Control. This allows you to manage many databases, application servers, and other products. The Grid Control resides on a separate server and has its own database. You can monitor Oracle infrastructure. You can also monitor non-Oracle items such as:
  • Other databases
  • Web servers
  • Application servers
  • Firewalls
  • Operating systems
Grid Control reduces your costs. It reduces complexity. There are a couple components that make up the Grid Control:
  1. Oracle Management Servive
  2. Oracle Management Agent
  3. Oracle Management Repository.
The agents run on the things being managed. There is a separate server that manages all these agents. And the information is stored in a database (repository). Grid control lets you perform system monitoring. You can view server alerts. You can set up notification rules. This allows you to detect performance problems.

To simply monitoring, you can combine single components into groups. Then you can monitor the whole group as one. You can automate administrative tasks. You can publish customized reports. These reports can be HTML based. You can manage Oracle patches. The Grid Control is extensible through management plugins.