What’s New Features in OEM Applications Management Pack 13.4(.2) Released 15-JUN-2020

Per Getting Started with Oracle Application Management Pack (AMP) for Oracle E-Business Suite, Release 13.4.1.0.0 (MOS Note 2676355.1)

New Features

Certification with Oracle Enterprise Manager 13.4 Release Update 2

Certification with Oracle Database 19c (for Discovery, Monitoring, Approvals, Patch Manager, and Customization Manager, only)

Support for Oracle Real User Experience Insight 13.3.1.0.2

References

Angelo Rosado’s Oracle Blog on OEM AMS/AMP Announcements:

https://blogs.oracle.com/ebstech/oracle-application-management-pack-release-134100-is-now-available

New EBS AMS Plugin Homepage Screenshot 13c 13.1.1.1.0

Key Features (very similar to 13.1.1.1.0):

System Management

Oracle Application Management Pack provides monitoring alerts and notifications for Oracle Application Framework, Concurrent Processing, Forms services, concurrent managers and requests, Oracle Workflow services, Oracle Database, and middle tier/web servers.

Standardize monitoring settings across your Oracle E-Business Suite environments by utilizing templates to initially specify the monitoring settings and apply those to your monitored targets. You can save, edit, and apply these templates across one or more targets. A monitoring template is specified for a particular target type and can only be applied to targets of the same type.

Use the Concurrent Processing dashboard for a complete picture of concurrent processing on your Oracle E-Business Suite system of both current activities as well as usage statistics. Add concurrent programs and managers as user-defined targets and the system will collect metrics on activity and usage for them.

Configuration Management

Oracle Application Management Pack collects and stores the technology configurations of Oracle E-Business Suite to help centralize monitoring and tracking of changes to Oracle E-Business Suite technology stack configurations including host configuration, database configuration, middleware configuration, patches applied, key profile option changes, versions of technology components, and custom object changes.

Compare configurations between two or more Oracle E-Business Suite systems directly or by comparing configuration snapshots taken at different time intervals.

Configuration templates help to standardize the configuration standards across the company and reduce the configuration drift between various Oracle E-Business Suite instances.

Administrators can track changes by setting up notifications when any unauthorized changes occur to technology stack configurations.

Compliance Management

Compliance framework integration allows you to ensure your Oracle E-Business Suite is compliant with your IT audit requirements, as well as industry and regulatory requirements. Compliance Management dashboards show trends and compliance violations. Proactive, real-time compliance monitoring can significantly reduce the operational risk to business.

Change Management

Change Approval Framework

All changes made with Oracle-delivered patches or customizations in Change Management are processed through a change approval mechanism. A multi-level, hierarchical list of approvers can be set up for each Oracle E-Business Suite target. Auditors can review the change requests as welll as the approvals.

Patch Management

Patch recommendations for Oracle E-Business Suite application products and the technology stack components are made for specific Oracle E-Business target instances to help reduce or eliminate the research work by administrators. These patch recommendations help to ensure all Oracle E-Business Suite systems are current with Oracle-recommended patches. You can deploy database and WLS patches by creating Oracle Enterprise Manager patch plans directly from the patch recommendations user interface.

Using the Patch Management dashboard, you can manage all patching activities of your Oracle E-Business Suite instances and view patch worker logs. Patch Manager simplifies the online patching process and reduces human intervention to a great extent, eliminating the need for continuous monitoring of the patching process.

Patch Manager makes it easier for administrators to check for prerequisite patches and to download the patches in offline mode or directly from My Oracle Support.

Customization Management

Create and deploy custom packages across Oracle E-Business Suite instances similar to Oracle-delivered patches. Customization Manager can help ensure all customizations follow Oracle development standards and/or user-defined customization standards specific to your IT organization. Easily integrate Customization Manager with any third-party source code version control software. This feature also supports the creation of National Language Support (NLS) patches.
Customization Manager can discover customizations within your Oracle E-Business Suite systems and provide detailed reports online or in a spreadsheet format. This helps your organization keep track of the inventory of customizations and use the data for further analysis.

Cloning

Automated Cloning allows you to clone your Oracle E-Business Suite applications for testing, training, or development purposes, leveraging the Oracle Enterprise Manager Cloud Control Provisioning Framework. A step-by-step interview guides an administrator through the cloning process and facilitates scheduling of Oracle E-Business Suite instance. Administrators can modify the standard cloning procedure to include pre- or post-custom steps, seamlessly automating their cloning process from beginning to end.

Instance Administration

Administrators can use the Instance Administration user interface when adding and removing (scale in and scale out) application services, application nodes, and managed servers.

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Getting Started with OEM 13cR2 (13.2.2.0.0) Enterprise Manager

OEM13c Release 2 Enterprise Manager Summary Page

Relatively easy installation, a new learning curve to master for post-installation maintenance and patching.
The principal changes in Release 2 of 13c are the segregation of the Cloud Management Services plugins (and related functionality) to specific licensable plugin components – namely:

• Cloud Services Management – used for provisioning, allocation, and administration (think “infrastructure”) of Oracle Public Cloud-based resources (databases, development tools, middleware, etc.)
• Oracle Cloud Application – a portal punch-out to access Oracle Cloud-based applications such as hosted e-Business Suite, Cloud Content Management, Cloud SOA Suite, Cloud Identity Management, etc. (think “apps”.)
• Cloud Framework – a repackaging of the EM OMS framework components, and the only portion of the “cloud” components included in the base OEM licensing.
  Installation guide: http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/oem/grid-control/documentation/oem-091904.html

Cloud Management related plugins for OEM13cR2

This proof-of-concept testbed system was based upon the latest available installer set – Oracle Enterprise Manager Cloud Control 13c Release 2 Plug-in Update 1 (13.2.0.0) – we happen to be testing backwards-compatibility with some 10g databases before committing to the upgrade.  Direct (out-of-place) upgrades are supported for version of EM 12.1.0.4 and newer.

http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/oem/enterprise-manager/downloads

Fusion Middleware in this release is Weblogic 12.1.3
The host system is built upon Windows Server 2012 R2, single-tier, 16GB RAM, 2 cores, also hosting the OMS repository database in a 12.2.0.1.0 EE installation.  Since the DB Templates provided seemed to be specific for a 12.1.x database (and errors out in certain steps during the build), I simply created a generic database from the standard template with the pre-requisite parameter settings (e.g. _allow_insert_with_update_check=TRUE; sessions > 300; shared_pool_size (10% of SGA); etc.) , and pre-created the required tablespaces:

MGMT_AD4J_TS
MGMT_ECM_DEPOT_TS
MGMT_TABLESPACE

  During the installation, the (Oracle Universal Installer) OUI will create the following new users assigned to these tablespaces:

Open:
SYSMAN
SYSMAN_TYPES
SYSMAN_BIPLATFORM
SYSMAN_STB
SYSMAN_OPSS
SYSMAN_MDS
MGMT_VIEW

Expired & Locked:
CLOUD_ENGINE_USER
CLOUD_SWLIB_USER
EUS_ENGINE_USER
SYSMAN_RO

The standard download set includes a single executable file (.exe or .bin) and several additional ZIP archives.  These are to be staged in a single directory, and the ZIP files do NOT need to be pre-extracted.

Overall, the installation was straight-forward and as-documented (despite this being a Windows installation – which usually has its own quirks.) The portion that I feel has the steepest learning curve is post-installation maintenance, and particularly patching. The new tool in 13c, the OMSpatcher (Patchset 19999993 – think of it as a Java wrapper for opatch) was really designed for use specficially in a cloud-based environment and hasn’t been completely polished for use on-premise in smaller installations.

For example, it is designed to rely upon an active Weblogic AdminServer to instantiate it’s requests for inventory versioning information and component availability for patching. But if any of those components are actually in-use by the AdminServer itself, it will tend to fail to apply, and instead provide a lengthy step-by-step instruction set of how to accomplish all of the steps manually. Depending on the complexity of your OEM setup (e.g. the number of registered plugins and target types) this could take over an hour to get the patching utility to fail and then provide the manual steps.

The OEM-specific version of OPatch (Patchset 6880880) is quite different than its predecessors.  While the OMSPatcher uses the prior “unzip into the existing Oracle Home” installation technique, the OPatch utility itself now is a Java installer that relies on the OUI to allow updating of component versioning and inventory adjustments. Most importantly, you will need to “install” the new version of OPatch before being allowed to continue with your planned patching:

$JAVA_PATH\java -jar $PATCH_STAGE\6880880\opatch_generic.jar -silent oracle_home=$ORACLE_HOME (being updated for OPatch)

This OPatch update needs to be applied (before patching) to every Oracle Home using 13c technology (the OMS home, the Agent Home, other FMW homes at version 12.1.3 or newer, etc.)

See MOS EM 13c: How to Apply a Patch to the Enterprise Manager 13c Cloud Control OMS Oracle Home (Doc ID 2091619.1) for details about making an OMSPatcher property file, and why you want to create one.

Final steps executed:
Build general purpose 12.2.0.1.0 database with new tablespaces.
Install Oracle Enterprise Manager Cloud Control 13c Release 2 Plug-in Update 1 (13.2.0.0)
Patch 19999993: EM OMSPatcher latest version 13.8.0.0.2 (unzip to ORACLE_HOME)
Patch 6880880: EM OPatch latest version 13.9.0.0.0 (both OMS and Agent)

cd $PATCH_STAGE\<patch#>
$FMW_HOME\OMSPatcher\omspatcher apply -analyze -property_file 
$FMW_HOME\OMSPatcher\omspatcher apply -property_file  [OMS_DISABLE_HOST_CHECK=true  -- a useful option added to deal with virtual host names]

Patch 25163555: Tracking bug for Back-porting 24588124 oms side fix
Patch 25604219: MERGE REQUEST ON TOP OF 13.2.0.0.0 FOR BUGS 25497622 25497731 25506784
Patch 25387277: APR-2017 PSU OMS 13.2.0.0.170418
Patch 25162444: EM-BEACON Bundle Patch 13.2.0.0.161231 (Agent)
Patch 25580746: EM-AGENT Bundle Patch 13.2.0.0.170331 (Agent)

Other useful references:

Enterprise Manager 13.2 Master Bundle Patch List (Doc ID 2219797.1)
13.2.0.0.170418 Enterprise Manager Base Platform Patch Set Update (PSU) Readme for Oracle Management Server (OMS) (Doc ID 2246778.1)

What’s New Features in OEM AMS Applications Management Pack 13.1.1.1.0 for OEM 13c Released July 22

Per Getting Started with Oracle Application Management Pack (AMP) for Oracle E-Business Suite Release 13.1.1.1.0 (Doc ID 2045552.1)

Key Features

New EBS AMS Plugin Homepage Screenshot 13c 13.1.1.1.0

The following are brief descriptions of key features introduced in this release:

Enterprise Manager 13c Technology Uptake
Hybrid Cloud Management
System Management for Oracle E-Business Suite
Change Management for Oracle E-Business Suite

Enterprise Manager 13c Technology Uptake

Oracle Enterprise Manager 13c includes several enhancements including:

• A new Oracle Fusion Middleware technology stack
• The “Alta” user interface to enhance user experience

  

  New OEM Alta Interface 13c

• Edition Based Redefinition (EBR) support

Hybrid Cloud Managment

Oracle Application Management Suite now delivers several capabilities to monitor and manage Oracle E-Business Suite environments on Oracle Cloud and on-premises. These capabilities are delivered through the Enterprise Manager command line interface (EMCLI) for greater flexibility.

• Discovering Orchestration Virtual Machine
• Provisioning a New Oracle E-Business Suite 12.2 Instance
• Backup and Restore an Oracle E-Business Suite Instance
• Lift and Shift E-Business Suite instances from On-premise to Oracle Cloud
• Cloning E-Business Suite instances within Oracle Cloud
• Ability to run FS_Clone only option
• Apply E-Business Suite patches
• Start and Stop E-Business Suite instances on Cloud
• To create custom packages

System Managment for Oracle E-Business Suite

Discovery and Monitoring

• Real User Experience Insight (RUEI) regions integrated within the Oracle E-Business Suite Summary page
  • In this release, we have integrated five different RUEI regions within the Oracle E-Business Suite Summary page. Customers can personalize and activate one or all RUEI regions. These RUEI regions are specific to a given Oracle E-Business Suite instance and customers can view the data and drill down for detailed information.
• Auto Host Aliasing
  • Host aliasing is now automated and will attempt to match the host name in the Oracle E-Business Suite context file and the discovered host name in Oracle Enterprise Manager. If this attempt fails, you will be prompted to perform the mapping manually. Customization Manager and Patch Manager features now support host aliasing.

Change Management for Oracle E-Business Suite

Patch Manager – Oracle E-Business Suite Technology Stack Pack Deployments

• During the prior release of Application Management Suite, you had the ability to view patch recommendations for E-Business Suite applications and the technology stack. In this release, you now have the ability to deploy Database and WebLogic server patches using Enterprise Manager patch plans.

Customization Manager – Customization Discovery & Reporting

• Customization Discovery & Reporting process now includes discovery of database objects.

Cloning – Automated Cloning

• You now have the ability to save the cloning interview process as templates that can be used for future purposes for Smart Clone for R12, 12.2.x procedure.
• You can add custom parameters to the cloning procedure