Discover multiple WebLogic Domains on Kubernetes with Oracle Enterprise Manager

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For decades Oracle Enterprise Manager (OEM) has been a central configuration management and governance tool for many enterprises. In this era of containerization, we’re moving our Fusion Middleware/WebLogic environments to Kubernetes. Most organizations do not run just one FMW environment: environments for different use cases, different departments and through lifecycle stages (development, test, acceptance, production). In a complex landscape of multiple databases and Fusion Middleware environments, OEM can help monitor all those targets. However, due to the architecture, OEM requires agents to have connectivity to each environment it monitors.

The blog Monitor WebLogic on Kubernetes using Oracle Enterprise Manager describes a setup to expose a WebLogic domain on Kubernetes that is managed by the WebLogic Kubernetes operator so that it can be discovered by Oracle Enterprise Manager. It suggests creating Kubernetes services of a load-balancer type for every WebLogic server. This is workable for a single domain on Kubernetes. It implies a separate service load-balancer for each WebLogic server in the domain. However, you often incur charges for each service load balancer, and each WebLogic server-load balancer pair requires a separate external IP address. Therefore, this setup may not be ideal.

To mitigate the number of load-balancer services, here are some options:

  • Have an OEM Agent running in a VM in the same service network as the FMW domains. This can be done using Kubevirt, that enables running a VM in a Kubernetes environment. This is complex and resource intensive.
  • Create just one load-balancer service with multiple ports and route each port to a specific WebLogic server. This is hard to manage, because of the opening and closing of ports upon creation and decommissioning of environments. This setup is complex to manage using automation code.
  • Use Istio to route T3 traffic to specific WebLogic Servers from one service load-balancer. Since this is highly configurable, this is the preferred solution. But, since Istio does not know the proprietary application protocols, we need some other technology that Istio can use to route the traffic.

In our current solution, we use Istio to route HTTP traffic to the consoles and end-user applications based on host name. To do so, the Istio Ingress Gateway performs the decryption, also known as TLS off-loading. Then with HTTP traffic, Istio VirtualServices define the hostname as a matching rule. For plain TCP traffic this is not possible, Istio can only do matching on the port.

Please read the complete article by Martien van den Akker

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Extend Enterprise Manager Monitoring Using Plug-ins, Connectors, and Notification Methods

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As organizations increasingly adopt diverse technology stacks, effective monitoring of all components is essential for ensuring optimal performance and quick issue resolution. Oracle’s Enterprise Manager is a powerful tool for managing and monitoring Oracle environments, but many enterprises also utilize other technologies like SQL Server, Apache Tomcat, and more. This is where Enterprise Manager’s extensibility shines, allowing administrators to broaden their monitoring capabilities to other technologies.

Join this Observability Insights session Extend Enterprise Manager Monitoring Using Plug-ins, Connectors, and Notification Methods on July 15, 2025, 9 am PT. 

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Oracle Enterprise Manager 24ai Release 1 Update 2 (24.1.0.2) is now available

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Oracle Enterprise Manager 24.1.0.2 Download Available on My Oracle Support

As we shared recently, the new AI-rich Enterprise Manager 24.1 management technologies allow you to fully manage Oracle Database, Engineered Systems and related components across your data centers and cloud. We continue to enhance this set on a periodic basis.

If you are familiar with EM releases, you know that we introduce new features and fixes through Release Updates (RUs). RUs are our agile strategy to ensure you have regular software updates, eliminating the need to wait for a major release. Each RU is uniquely versioned with a trailing digit, indicating its specific version. What’s more, RUs are cumulative, meaning the latest RU incorporates all the functionality from previous release updates. As such, our general recommendation is to apply the most up-to-date RU as soon as it becomes available.

The second RU of EM 24ai is now available! Download this latest RU from My Oracle Support: 

Read the complete article by Daniela Hansell

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Introducing Zero Downtime Patching with Enterprise Manager 24ai

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Oracle Enterprise Manager (EM) is a vital tool for monitoring, diagnostics, and lifecycle automation of mission-critical databases, middleware, packaged applications, and engineered systems. However, staying current with the latest Release Updates (RUs) while meeting Service Level Agreements (SLAs) and avoiding disruption to monitoring can be challenging for administrators.

To address this, we’re excited to introduce the Zero Downtime (ZDT) Patching feature enabling RUs to be applied while EM remains fully operational. This ensures that monitoring and alerting for critical targets continue uninterrupted, even during planned maintenance windows. Refer to the blog on how ZDT Monitoring Service in EM24ai provides continuous monitoring during ZDT patching.

In this blog, we’ll walk through how ZDT Patching works in EM24ai, and how it helps maintain continuous monitoring with minimal operational impact.

Please see the complete article by Sumesh Balakrishnan

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Oracle Enterprise Manager 24ai Release 1 Update 1 (24.1.0.1) is now available

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Oracle Enterprise Manager 24.1.0.1 Download Available on My Oracle Support

Last year we introduced Oracle Enterprise Manager 24ai, a major new version of our premier, on-premises enterprise management system.  The new AI-enhanced management technologies allow you to fully manage Oracle Database, Engineered Systems and related components across your data centers and cloud.

If you are familiar with EM releases, you know that we introduce new features and fixes through Release Updates (RUs). RUs are our agile strategy to ensure you have regular software updates, eliminating the need to wait for a major release. Each RU is uniquely versioned with a trailing digit, indicating its specific version. What’s more, RUs are cumulative, meaning the latest RU incorporates all the functionality from previous release updates. As such, our general recommendation is to apply the most up-to-date RU as soon as it becomes available.

The very first RU of EM 24ai is now available! Download this latest RU from My Oracle Support: 

Read the complete article by Daniela Hansell

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Introducing Remote Agent with Enterprise Manager 24ai

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Many businesses rely on Oracle Enterprise Manager (EM) for monitoring their mission-critical databases and applications. EM uses agents to discover these databases and applications (called targets) to allow them to be monitored and managed. Traditionally, this requires installing an agent on the same host where the target runs. Businesses with large environments end up having a very large number of agents installed, and over time, managing the lifecycle of all these agents could be a time-consuming endeavor. These challenges highlight the need for a streamlined and efficient approach to agent lifecycle management. In Enterprise Manager 24ai, we’re happy to introduce the Remote Agent.  The Remote Agent remotely monitors and manages targets thereby eliminating the need to deploy an agent on every target host.

Remote Agent Reduces Overall Footprint

A Remote Agent is a new type of agent that can remotely monitor and manage targets.  Remote Agents are installed on hosts dedicated to the remote agent. These agents use remote protocols for monitoring the host as well as databases and if needed, use SSH to run commands on the target host. No need to deploy and manage an agent on every single host. The diagram below shows the topology of remote agent monitoring targets.

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New: Oracle Enterprise Manager 24ai image on the Oracle Cloud Marketplace

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Oracle Enterprise Manager (EM) 24ai (24.1.0.0) is now available as an app on Oracle Cloud Marketplace and it’s available in all regions.  This enables EM customers to try out this version without having to install it on their on-premises hardware.  Start working with a fully configured, EM instance with minimal configuration effort.

Try the latest Oracle Enterprise Manager 24ai (24.1.0.0) capabilities without installing and configuring

Oracle Enterprise Manager is a well-known on-premises-based solution for providing application-to-disk management for the Oracle stack, especially Oracle Database environments. Over the years, customers have requested an easier way to try out a new release without having to initiate an IT project on their premises. The new Oracle Enterprise Manager app provides a simple, easy-to-use “test drive” environment.  Oracle EM 24ai (24.1.0.0) makes it possible to quickly deploy test and production application environments with just a few clicks.

Oracle Enterprise Manager 24ai (24.1.0.0) image includes:

  •  Oracle Resource Manager Stack version 3.0
  •  The Oracle Management Repository (OMR) uses Database 19c Release Update 26
  •  TDE (Transparent Data Encryption) is enabled out-of-box, ensuring data safety on the Cloud
  •  Data Guard support for repository database
  •  WebLogic Server 12.2.1.4 with October 2024 CPU
  •  Java Development Kit (JDK) 8 Update 431
  •  Operating System: Oracle Linux (OL) 9
  •  Opatch updated to version 13.9.4.2.17 version
  •  Supports both single-node (collapsed install) and multi-node configurations using an Oracle Cloud Infrastructure Resource   Manager Stack
  •  Enterprise Manager Diagnostics Kit version: December 2024 Version

Read the complete article by Sumesh Balakrishnan

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Managing Alarms at Scale with Monitoring Templates in OCI Stack Monitoring

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Managing Alarms at Scale with Monitoring Templates in OCI Stack Monitoring

Managing individual alarms across an enterprise can be time-consuming and error prone. OCI Stack Monitoring simplifies this process with Monitoring Templates, allowing you to holistically monitor a complete application stack such as E-Business Suite or an entire fleet of hosts within a single UI. These templates save time and ensure consistency across large-scale environments. Monitoring Templates automatically apply to newly created resources, this reduces manual steps that can easily be missed.

Create Alarm Rules at scale with an Easy-to-Use UI

Traditionally, setting up of alarm rules is done on a per metric basis.  Over time, it may become a challenge to manage all the individual alarm rules across different metrics across different resource types.  It’s hard to answer the basic question – what alarm thresholds do I have set up for my hosts? Or for my DB systems? Or E-Business Suite (EBS) application? etc. It’s hard to answer this question because you must look at individual alarm rules since there isn’t a way to see these alarm conditions collectively.

Monitoring Templates address these questions by providing a resource-oriented approach to setting up alarms. Begin by specifying the resources, for example, EBS and its components, WebLogic, database, hosts, load balancers, and more. Next, specify all the alarm conditions for these resources, including custom metrics created using Metric Extensions. This provides a one-stop-shop to understand exactly what alarm thresholds have been defined across your app and infrastructure. If alarm settings need to be reviewed or thresholds changed for an EBS application, there’s a single place to do so using this template. Once a Monitoring Template has been defined and applied, Stack Monitoring will take care of creating the necessary alarm rules that OCI Monitoring will use to evaluate and generate alarms.

Read the complete article by Aaron Rimel

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Observability Insights: Guard Oracle Database 23ai upgrade against SQL performance regressions

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The replay is available for the Observability Insights session on SQL Performance Watch – Guard your Oracle Database 23ai upgrade against SQL performance regressions. 

This informative session demonstrated SQL Performance Watch as the valuable tool in the Database Management cloud service that helps protect Oracle Database 23ai upgrades from potential SQL performance regressions.

See the complete article by Kathryn Jennings and Anusha Vojjola

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Introducing DBSAT 3.1 integration with Enterprise Manager

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Security and compliance are top priorities for databases. To streamline security assessments and reduce the risk of a data breach, Oracle’s Database Security Assessment Tool version 3.1 (DBSAT) is now fully integrated with Oracle Enterprise Manager (EM). This new integration enables you to automate and perform fleet-wide automated security assessments with EM and obtain real-time visibility into database vulnerabilities and compliance risks. The Sensitive Data Assessment feature further enhances data classification and helps you strengthen your privacy protection.

Simplify Assessments across entire fleet of databases

Database security assessments are often performed manually by database making it difficult to maintain a consistent security posture across multiple environments. It is a tedious time-consuming job DBAs think the security team should do and the security team thinks DBAs should do.

Using EM with DBSAT 3.1 integration enables security teams and database administrators to:

  1. Automate and perform database security assessments at scale – conduct continuous vulnerability assessments across your entire database estate from a single dashboard
  2. Evaluate databases against security best practices and compliance frameworks, validate and attest compliance to the latest security best practices
  3. Protect sensitive data using the Leverage Sensitive Data Assessment report
  4. Enhance operational efficiency and control – simplify daily database security operations, respond faster to executive or audit requests and help eliminate the risk of manual human error or malicious employee insider

Read the complete article by Shiva Prasad

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