7 Ops Center

Ops Center Benefits

Ops Center simplifies complete system deployment by automating difficult provisioning tasks. It allows IT administrators to actively manage and monitor infrastructure resources from virtually anywhere on the network. Ops Center also simplifies software management of Oracle Solaris, Linux, and Windows using an advanced knowledge base accessible only through Oracle. Such a unique combination of features allows for a higher level of compliance to operational standards and guidelines.

Ops Center provides full life-cycle management of virtual guests, including resource management and mobility orchestration. It helps customers streamline operations and reduce downtime. Ops Center provides an end-to-end management solution for both physical and virtual systems. From Oracle Solaris Zones to Oracle VM Server for SPARC, Ops Center offers the right combination of granular control and workload abstraction for a complete hardware and software solution.

Ops Center offers the depth of features at the hardware layer that Enterprise Manager customers are used to experiencing at the business service layers in operations. Oracle is committed to providing the best business-driven IT management solution across all layer of operations.

Ops Center Feature Packs

Ops Center is licensed by two feature packs:

• Oracle Enterprise Manager Ops Center Provisioning and Patch Automation Pack

• Oracle Enterprise Manager Ops Center Virtualization Management Pack

The Provisioning and Patch Automation Pack is a prerequisite for the Virtualization Management Pack. Please ensure the Provisioning and Patch Automation Pack is entitled before utilizing the Virtualization Management Pack.

Ops Center Provisioning and Patch Automation Pack Features

The Provisioning and Patch Automation Pack covers the core functionality of the framework, and the hardware and OS management features of the product offering. This pack facilitates the best way to leverage the infrastructure and operating systems in Oracle business service solutions.

Ops Center is designed to access and manage certain other software components and related data. In order to receive and use such software components or related updates, upgrades, and maintenance through Ops Center, you are always required during the term of your Ops Center license to have a valid license for such software components, and to comply with the terms of such license.

The Ops Center Provisioning and Patch Automation Pack includes the features described below.

Asset Management

Manage distributed assets from the same console. Leverage logical grouping and automated group assignment based on customizable attribute criteria. New hardware asset reporting down to the field replaceable unit (FRU) part numbers allows for quick searches. Automated correlation of server serial numbers to My Oracle Support contracts when connected to Oracle. New 2-D topology graphs with application awareness through Enterprise Manger Grid Control and network intelligence.

Enterprise Scalability

Architected and designed to take advantage of load balancing, complex network topologies, and large Agent environments.

Context-Driven User Interface

Feature-rich internet application that progresses the user through content-specific actions and workflow wizards.

Role Based Access Control

Roles that control a user's access to the feature set can be granted universally or for specific groups of assets.

Disconnected Mode

Choice of the operator to remain connected to Oracle in order to receive the highest level of knowledge transfer automation and protection, or to run in disconnected mode from Oracle wherein the operator is responsible for uploading content into the Enterprise Controller.

Compliance Automation

Reporting capabilities to schedule tests against target nodes, point-in- time comparisons, operational policies, or self-made software profiles. Version control over deployed files and a real-time connection to a U.S. government approved vulnerability repository for compliance checking.

Audit Reporting

Track software and configuration changes made with Ops Center through easily read reports.

Firmware Provisioning

Automatically download firmware from Oracle for servers and storage appliances. Coverage includes Service Processor (ILOM/ELOM/ALOM/XSCF), RAID HBA cards, and drive firmware. Ops Center automatically facilitates the remote network booting of the server off a mini-boot image in order to patch the drives.

RAID Device Configuration

Pre OS installation, and configure the RAID device that ships on many of Oracle's X-series and T-series volume servers.

Bare Metal OS Provisioning

Automate Kickstart, Jumpstart, YAST, and DHCP configuration for the remote light-out provisioning of servers. Create profiles to capture finish scripts and customization, and drive operational consistency. Leverage modules from Jumpstart Enterprise ToolKit (JET). Handle both ISO images and Oracle Solaris Flash Archive (FLAR).

Enhanced OS Patching

Leverage an enhanced dependency knowledge tree from Oracle across the four major operating systems: Red Hat, SuSE, Oracle Linux, and Oracle Solaris. Minimize downtime originating from software life cycles activities. Built-in awareness of Oracle Solaris Live Upgrade and alternate boot environments.

Remote Management

Leverage network protocols and the single system interfaces at the enterprise layer, where actions can be against many targets, rather than one for most of the exposed features.

Historical Monitoring

The ability to view past trends in monitored performance attributes.

Alarm Management

Alert correlation and aggregation under problems. Problems can be assigned to users left unassigned, closed, or acknowledged. Any problem in the product's Message Center can be used to open a Service Request with My Oracle Support from within Ops Center. Attach site-specific annotations to alert types. Offer time/duration awareness to alerts as to not be alarmed on short resource spikes. Attach pre-defined operational plans and actions to alerts. Impose deactivation periods for maintenance windows.

Windows Support

Windows patching using an out-of-box integration with Microsoft System Center Configuration Manager. Ops Center provides the same user interface and similar capabilities for patching to Oracle Solaris, Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL), SUSE Linux Enterprise Server (SLES), and Oracle Linux. For Windows, Ops center offloads patching to Configuration Manager through an API. For other OS distributions, Ops Center patches them natively. Ops Center offers Windows comprehensive compliance reports and high-level performance monitoring with an agentless WMI connection.

Complex Plan Management

Ops Center offers the ability to create in-depth workflow plans by nesting server provisioning tasks into a comprehensive string of events. Formerly very distinct and separate tasks are now consolidated into a single plan. This increases consistency and allows for a greater level of abstraction, allowing more focus on the business service.

Oracle Solaris Cluster Support

Discover an Oracle Solaris Cluster environment and render its relationships to nodes properly in a new smart group. Full coverage of Oracle Solaris Cluster software in the Ops Center knowledge repository. This enables Ops Center to deploy and upgrade a Oracle Solaris Cluster. Higher level of automation of patching tasks once an Oracle Solaris Cluster is identified. Any Oracle Solaris patch job executed on a Cluster node will do what must be done in terms of the rolling patch upgrades across Cluster nodes. Full alarm integration with the Cluster framework. Display of configuration information such as resource groups, quorom devices, global file systems, disk groups, memberships, and so forth in the Ops Center topology. In-context link and launch of Oracle Solaris Cluster Manager.

Network Fabric Monitoring

Discover and map Oracle 10GBe and Infiniband Switches, NEMs, and HBA devices from the server point of view. See switch and port configuration information. Monitor port quality of service. Full alarm integration with the Oracle Fabric Manager and lights-out management ports on the devices. In-context link and launch of Oracle Fabric Manager.

Oracle Sun ZFS Storage Appliances

Discover Oracle Sun ZFS Storage Appliances properly in the topology. Observe configuration and service information of the device. Full hardware fault coverage and alarm integration. Discover new shared storage dynamically and present it automatically as location choices in the Oracle Solaris container and Oracle VM Server for SPARC creation wizards. In-context link and launch of appliance Analytics Dashboard.

Hardware Management

Increased level of hardware monitoring across the Oracle T-series, M-series, X-series, Network Appliances, and Storage Appliances. Granular information such as serial and part number for capable FRU components within the servers or devices. Deeper fault coverage from both the service processor and an improved on host agent so that a telemetry source is possible from both network location. Integration with Oracle Solaris FMA. Increased configuration possibilities on the various Oracle service processors.

M-series Dynamic Domains

Create provisioning plans that control the configuration of dynamic hardware domains. Choose UNI or quad configurations for processor boards. Select memory mirroring. Assignment of hardware resources is simplified. Offline or Online boards post provisioning. Remotely install Oracle Solaris on the resulting configuration. Save configurations and provision multiple M-series at the same time.

My Oracle Support Integration

As mentioned in the alarm management section, any problem discovered in Ops Center can be used to open a My Oracle Support Service Request automatically. Leveraging the serial number and Oracle Configuration Manager (OCM) configuration information, Ops Center is able to automatically validate the asset for support. Ops Center then exposes a way to enter in My Oracle Support users and their Customer Support Identifier (CSI) user names so that administrators can choose which identification information they want to include in the Service Request. From within Ops Center, you can observe the Service Request status as it is worked from within Oracle. See summaries on Service Request per user or per asset.

OS Performance Monitoring

Increased level of Oracle Solaris and Linux OS performance monitoring. Both real-time status of attributes and historical charting.

Operational Plans

Set alarm thresholds on any attribute in the product and house them in a monitoring profile that can be provisioned across multiple boxes. Allow for ad-hoc actions and scripts to be run and their output captured.

Energy Awareness

View historical and real-time energy consumption of individual servers or groups of servers in both WATT and KwH in terms of cost. View CPU utilization, temperature, and fan RPM trending in order to increase diagnostics of heat situations. View CPU affinity calculations. Observe the top and bottom energy consumers in the datacenter. Set the energy consumption policy on the server or groups of servers between Performance and Elastic modes.

Grid Control Integration

Experience a bi-directional integration between Enterprise Manager Grid Control and Ops Center. Discover targets as defined in Grid Control within the Ops Center topology. View the alarm information for those targets from within Ops Center. Protect against an operator taking action against a server or virtual machine that is running a production application workload. View hardware, OS, and virtualization information from Ops Center within Grid Control. From within Grid Control, execute Ops Center OS patching jobs against defined profiles. Experience the highest level of software and configuration compliance possible across the application and OS layers. Protect against an operator troubleshooting a performance issue as an application problem when it is clearly a hardware issue. In-context link and launch in both products to each other.

Licensed Links for Ops Center Provisioning and Patch Automation Pack

The following information describes the Enterprise Manager Ops Center browser user interface sections that require licensing of the Provisioning and Patch Automation Pack.

• Under the main Navigation section on the left-hand side, the following tabs are licensed under this pack:

  • Message Center

    • All telemetry except Oracle Solaris Zones and Oracle VM Server for SPARC

  • Assets

    • All views except Oracle Solaris Zones and Oracle VM Server for SPARC

  • Plan Management

    • All selections except Oracle VM Server for SPARC configuration plans, Oracle Solaris Zones alert monitoring profiles, and Oracle VM Server for SPARC alert monitoring profiles

  • Libraries

    • All sections except Fibre Channel Storage and NAS Storage for Oracle Solaris Zones and Oracle VM Server for SPARC

  • Reports

  • Managed Networks

    • All views except Oracle Solaris Zones and Oracle VM Server for SPARC

  • Administration

• Configuration wizard at first login

• All Discovery functionality

• Create/Destroy action for logical and smart groups

• Within the Assets pull-down, all selectable items except “Virtual Pools”

• Within an asset's home page, all tabs except the Oracle Solaris 10 Summary page for the global zone and an Oracle VM Server for SPARC hypervisor child node are licensed. All actions except those related to Oracle Solaris Zones and Oracle VM Server for SPARC are licensed under this pack.

Within a asset's home page, all tabs except the Oracle Solaris 10 Summary page for the global zone and a Oracle VM Server for SPARC hypervisor child node. All actions except those related to Oracle Solaris Zones and Oracle VM Server for SPARC are licensed under this pack.

Oracle Enterprise Manager Ops Center Virtualization Management Pack Features

Ops Center Virtualization Pack is the best solution for Oracle VM Server for SPARC and Oracle Solaris Zones. Derive the fullest from the compute assets in terms of utilization and consolidation by leveraging these technologies. Ops Center can be used to gain control and operational awareness in environments that are rapidly growing to become larger and more complex.

The Ops Center Virtualization Management Pack includes the features described below.

Oracle Solaris Container Management

Full life-cycle management, including discovery, create, delete, configure, boot, shutdown, and monitor. Migration and mobility capabilities, including cold migration, clone, and update on attach.

Oracle VM Server for SPARC

Full life-cycle management, including discovery, create, delete, configure, boot, shutdown, and monitor. Migration and mobility capabilities, including warm migration and virtual pools.

Resource Virtual Pools

Ability to construct a grouping of T-series servers wherein Ops Center manages the network configuration, facilitates the movement and assignment of shared storage, keeps the members of the group compatible in terms of hypervisor requirements, and auto-balances workload based on virtual machines across the members so that load is distributed equally across the physical resource in the pool. View historical aggregations of performance metrics based on the entirety of the pool. When a new virtual machine is needed, allow Ops Center to find the best physical server in the pool at the time to house the workload based on a least load policy or least VM (in terms of quantity) policy.

Hypervisor/OS Provisioning

Default templates for the creation of Oracle VM Server for SPARC controlling domain configuration. Ensure compatibility between embedded hypervisor components in the firmware and the bare metal OS layers above. In one consistent flow, move from creating the construct of the virtual machine to installing an operating system into it.

Storage Orchestration

Check-in shared fiber, network, and local storage into Ops Center. Ops Center then keeps track of OS images and running or stopped virtual machines from the storage device's perspective. Ops Center automatically facilitates the usage of Oracle Sun ZFS Storage Appliances in the Oracle Solaris Container and Oracle VM Server for SPARC environments. The product keeps track of which physical asset is using a VM image at any given time, and protects against locking contention and damage. It moves the storage as needed between the owning members of the library. When migration of a virtual machine is desired, Ops Center shows only those candidates that share the same storage as selectable candidates.

Dynamic Resource Allocation

Leveraging the latest in Oracle Solaris Container and Oracle VM Server for SPARC technology, Ops Center allows for the real time changing of allocated resources.

Controlling/Service Domain

Configure Oracle VM Server for SPARC controlling or service domain attributes and monitor resource consumption. Manipulate vdisk allocation to VMs post-creation.

Oracle Solaris Global Zone

Configure global zone resource allocation and monitor resource consumption.

Network Configuration

Leverage more complex network topology in VM creation wizards that result in more redundant configurations based on IP multi-pathing and VLAN tagging.

Technology Abstraction Layer

Leverage and train staff based on one product and be able to use M-series dynamic hardware domains, T-series Oracle VM Server for SPARC, and Oracle Solaris Zones. Create complex operational plans that contain nested tasks based on provisioning a server and creating virtual machines for each distinct virtualization technology and name it after a business service. Regardless of which new server arrives, a single named plan brings it online, leveraging the best virtualization technology for that server.

Historical Trending

View historical workload trends for Oracle Solaris Zones against one another on a central graph in order to analyze resource utilization.

Oracle Solaris Container Management

Experience a full range of provisioning option from sparse, whole root, or branded zones. Declare resource allocations based on fair share schedule or dedicated resources. Control attributes such as semaphores and share memory.

Oracle Solaris Zones and Patch Management

Facilitate “update on attach” actions from Ops Center as zones are migrated around to different global zones. Enable Ops Center to perform appropriately when patching local zones in concert with global targets.

Monitoring Profiles for V12N

Out-of-box monitoring attributes selected for issues more commonly associated to Oracle VM Server for SPARC and Oracle Solaris Container environments.

Dynamic Topology

Regardless of which order assets are discovered, created, or destroyed, Ops Center keeps true the child-to-parent relationship between the service processor, hypervisor, global zone, control domain, and virtual machine.

Image Library Management

Allow Ops Center to house all of your ISO and Oracle Solaris Flash Archive (FLAR) images for both physical and virtual provisioning.

Licensed Links for Ops Center Virtualization Management Pack

The following information describes the Enterprise Manager Ops Center browser user interface sections that require licensing of the Virtualization Management Pack.

• Under the main Navigation section on the left-hand side, the following tabs are licensed under this pack:

  • Assets

    • Only the Oracle Solaris Zones and Oracle VM Server for SPARC views and actions

  • Plan Management

    • Only the Oracle VM Server for SPARC configuration plans, Oracle Solaris Zones, and Oracle VM Server for SPARC alert monitoring profiles

  • Libraries

    • Only the Fibre Channel Storage and NAS Storage for Oracle Solaris Zones, and Oracle VM Server for SPARC

  • Managed Networks

    • Only the Oracle Solaris Zones and Oracle VM Server for SPARC views

• Within the Assets pull down, only the “Virtual Pools”

• Within an asset's home page, only the Oracle Solaris 10 Summary page for the global zone and an Oracle VM Server for SPARC hypervisor child node. Only the actions related to Oracle Solaris Zones and Oracle VM Server for SPARC are licensed under this pack.