3.2 Grid Control

   

The web-based Grid Control tool is a key part of Oracle Enterprise Manager 10 g . You can use this tool to manage and monitor multiple application servers through a single interface. This interface provides a single view of all the application servers along with links to each server's Application Server Control. Because other infrastructure components are also monitored , Grid Control gives you a way to measure and assure levels of application service that leverage multiple components.

While Application Server Control is used for administrative tasks on an individual application server or cluster, Grid Control can manage multiple application servers remotely and/or through firewalls.

As mentioned earlier, you can also use Grid Control to manage databases, Oracle Collaboration Suite, and Oracle E-Business Suite. However, the focus in this section is on its use with Oracle Application Server.


3.2.1 Grid Control Infrastructure

The Grid Control infrastructure includes the following components used to manage Oracle Application Server:


Grid Control Console

The console, sometimes called the central console , allows you to view, monitor, and manage application servers as well as other Oracle components.


Oracle Management Service

Oracle Management Service, a J2EE application deployed on Oracle Application Server, renders Oracle Enterprise Manager's HTML user interface.


Management Repository

This central repository of enterprise-wide management data includes many types of data ”for example, hardware and software configuration data leveraged in life-cycle, cloning, and patch management. It also stores historic performance and availability data used for trend analysis and reporting.


Oracle Management Agents

These agents monitor the application servers and communicate the results of this monitoring back to the Oracle Management Service. They also are responsible for running jobs for the Application Server Control tool. You deploy one Management Agent on each host. The agent will then monitor all components on that host, including all installed Oracle software and non-Oracle components using Oracle Enterprise Manager 10 g 's extensibility.

The Grid Control architecture for managing multiple application server targets is shown in Figure 3-2. The protocol used may be either HTTP or HTTPS.

Figure 3-2. Grid Control architecture
figs/oas_0302.gif

Management Agents are available for the wide variety of operating systems on which Oracle Application Server runs and are responsible for automatic service discovery, performance monitoring, and job execution. Management Agents can also send Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP) traps to performance monitors in tools such as CA Unicenter Network and Systems Management, the HP OpenView Operations console, and IBM Tivoli. Agents can also perform any generic response action, such as writing to a log file or another console's API (which allows Oracle Enterprise Manager to integrate well with other management tools and procedures).

3.2.2 Using Grid Control

This section takes a closer look at managing Oracle Application Server through Grid Control. Logging into the console brings you to the console home page. That page shows the status of all components in your environment, as well as rollups of jobs, events, critical patches, and deployments.

Figure 3-3 shows Grid Control's monitoring of an Oracle Application Server infrastructure. The pull-down Deployments Summary selected in this figure lists all the Oracle Application Server instances installed. You can also choose to view only the status of application servers by choosing only Application Servers under the View dropdown list on the upper left.

Figure 3-3. Oracle Enterprise Manager 10g's Grid Control console home page
figs/oas_0303.gif

You can quickly search for all application servers by selecting Application Servers under Target Search. This results in a list of all application server targets, including high-level statistics and status for each. Selecting a link to a particular Oracle Application Server instance brings you to the Grid Control Application Server home page for that instance (see Figure 3-4 for the top portion of how this page typically appears).

The Grid Control home page operates in a different way from the Application Server Control home page, which you can access via the Administer link in the Related Links section.

Four links are shown, enabling you to quickly navigate the interface: Home (your initial location), J2EE Applications, Web Applications, and Performance.

At the top of the console page, you will also find links to Setup (for setting up and managing additional administrators, notification methods , etc.), Preferences (for example, notification schedules), Help, and Logout.

Figure 3-4. A portion of Grid Control's Application Server Control home page
figs/oas_0304.gif


Home page

This page is designed to give you a quick view of the status of an application server and is segmented into the following areas: general characteristics (e.g., status, availability, URL, version, installation type, Oracle home, and host links), an application URL response chart, a list of components (e.g., Oracle AS Web Cache, Oracle HTTP Server), a list of current alerts (for parameters such as memory usage), a list of host alerts (for parameters such as CPU utilization), and related links. The Host link takes you to the host home page where you'll find performance and configuration information for the host, as well as a software inventory. Related links allow you to access other areas, such as the patch list, metrics, manage metrics (with thresholds), alert history, blackout history, monitoring configuration (if you have the OPERATOR TARGET privilege), and administration (a login prompt for the Application Server Control tool will appear). Of course, many of these areas also include additional drill- downs .


J2EE Applications page

This page is typically used to determine where J2EE application performance bottlenecks are. It displays a list of J2EE applications, along with their total processing time, average servlet/JSP processing time, number of servlets/JSPs processed , total servlet/JSP processing time, average EJB method execution time, number of EJB methods executed, and total EJB method execution time. Because the screen shows resource usage, you can drill down to find the source of bottlenecks.


Web Applications page

This page provides an overview of all monitored web applications and their status, as well as a summary of all outstanding availability and transaction performance alerts. Drill-downs provide ASLM tools that enable you to ensure high availability and optimal performance of web-based applications, as well as diagnose application performance problems. The availability of web applications is defined by administrator-specified criteria that determine whether your application is up. Application Service Level Management tools also let you monitor application performance through a multidimensional approach: using synthetic transaction performance monitoring, and measuring the actual application response times as experienced by your real end users. Once a performance problem is detected , you can interactively trace transactions from the client through the middle tier down to the SQL statement level, thus enabling you to quickly identify the components that may have contributed to application bottlenecks. Historically, page performance is also traced through the J2EE activity tiers, providing deep diagnostics that identify the processing time consumed at the JSP, servlet, EJB method, and SQL statement levels.


Performance page

This page graphically shows charts of parameters such as CPU usage, memory usage, OracleAS Web Cache hit rate, HTTP response and load, HTTP server process usage, active HTTP connections, servlet response and load, and number of active sessions. Refreshes can be manual or automatic at various intervals. Historical trending of various time lengths can be viewed to trends of up to 31 days. Through various links you can identify top servlets and top JSPs (servlets and JSPs can be ranked by requests processed, average processing time, or total processing time).

   


Oracle Application Server 10g Essentials
Oracle Application Server 10g Essentials
ISBN: 0596006217
EAN: 2147483647
Year: 2004
Pages: 120

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