Preface

I would like to extend a warm welcome all readers this new book, Oracle Enterprise Manager Cloud Control 12c: Managing Data Center Chaos.

You are about to enter the exciting and wonderful world of Enterprise Manager, Oracle's premium product for management of the Oracle stack, right from the application layer down to disk level.

If you have used Enterprise Manager before and are aware of its capabilities, this will be a good primer for learning the brand new capabilities of the new version. For people who want to be introduced to Enterprise Manager for the first time, this will be a whole new world drawn from my professional experience of many years in the IT industry, written in easytounderstand English.

I have included a number of advanced topics that demonstrate how Enterprise Manager Cloud Control 12c aids in database performance anagement, onfiguration anagement, ecurity ompliance, utomated rovisioning, utomated atching and atabase hange anagement. You will also learn how Cloud Control 12c allows Exadata atabase achine onitoring and anagement, est ata anagement for subsetting of large databases, ensitive ata e-identification using ata asking. This is followed by various reallife examples and case studies of actual Oracle customers to show how they have benefited from using Oracle Enterprise Manager.

Sit back and enjoy

What this book covers

Chapter 1, Chaos at Data Centers, introduces the reader to the typical chaos in data centers and discusses the way these common issues are normally resolved, by manual labor or manual scripting using extensive human resources.

Chapter 2, Enter Oracle Cloud Control, reveals Oracle Enterprise Manager Cloud Control 12c as the suggested solution for managing the typical data center. The chapter includes recommended installation techniques and architecture practices for this latest version of Oracle Enterprise Manager.

Additional content about this chapter can be in the online chapter [italics]Installation/Upgrade Tactics and Architecture for Large Sites [/italics] at: http://www.packtpub.com/sites/default/files/downloads/4781EN_Installation_Upgrade_Tactics_and_Architecture_for_Large_Sites.pdf

Chapter 3, Ease the Chaos with Performance Management, explains how Cloud Control 12c aids in database performance management by guaranteeing performance levels proactively using various innovative techniques for diagnosis and tuning.

Chapter 4, Ease the Chaos with Configuration Management and Security Compliance, demonstrates how Cloud Control 12c aids in configuration management by automatically discovering components, collecting configuration information and allowing configuration comparisons and historical searches of changes. Configuration and security compliance is also explained.

Chapter 5, Ease the Chaos with Automated Provisioning, demonstrates how Cloud Control 12c performs automated provisioning of Oracle databases and software, enabling rovisioning esigners to use the new facility of profiles and locked-down procedures which make it easier to provision a fully configured old opy in the Oracle database and at the same time prevent rovisioning perators from deviating from corporate standards.

Chapter 6, Ease the Chaos with Automated Patching, demonstrates how Cloud Control 12c allows automated patching of Oracle databases in the data center, thus making it posible to easily apply critical patch updates or patch set updates. The Patching Designer selects from a list of recommended patches, creates a patch plan template, and publishes to the Patching perator, who then creates a patch plan to apply the patch target databases. After the initial selection, the download, validation and deployment of the patch (single or multiple) is fully automated thus enabling mass deployment of patches to multiple database homes at prescheduled times. The new feature of out-of-place patching is explained in the chapter, as is the patch plan templates.

Chapter 7 Ease the Chaos with Change Management, explains how Cloud Control 12c allows the capture of all database schema changes and comparison of databases or schemas to aid in propagation of changes across the development lifecycle, greatly assisting in the auditing process as a result. The new Change Plans and the capability of data comparisons for seed or configuration data are also covered in the chapter.

Chapter 8, Ease the Chaos with Test Data Management, Ease the Chaos with Test Data Managementexplains how Cloud Control 12c simplifies test data management by allowing subsetting of data so smaller test databases can be created from a larger production database. This leads to considerable storage cost savings in test environments.

Chapter 9, Ease the Chaos with Data Masking, explains how Cloud Control 12c can be used to discover confidential data and set up a centralized masking template library that can achieve obfuscation (de-identification) of any confidential data when copying data from production to test databases.

Chapter 10, Ease the Chaos with Exadata Management, explains how Cloud Control 12c aids in monitoring and managing the powerful Oracle Exadata system as a whole, both the hardware and software components, as well as the network infrastructure.

Chapter 11, Real-life Examples and Case Studies, and It's a Wrap – the Future is the Cloud, includes various real-life examples and case studies of actual Oracle customers to show how they have benefited from using Oracle Enterprise Manager. The final chapter explores the future of Cloud Computing and Oracle's strong standing in the cloud game, now also strengthened by the new Enterprise Manager Cloud Control 12c.

What you need for this book

This book is a practical step-by-step tutorial with screenshots for carrying out tasks show you how to manage and administer your data center with Oracle Enterprise Manager Cloud Control 12c.

It is packed with best practices and tips that will help you benefit from the author's extensive experience working with Oracle Enterprise Manager a decade, combined with his IT industry experience.

To follow the steps in this book, you need access to an Enterprise Manager Cloud Control 12c installation. You can install your own environment by following the detailed steps in the online chapter Installation/Upgrade Tactics and Architecture for Large Sites, Even if you don't have access to an environment, you can still read the book to get an idea of the capabilities of Enterprise Manager.

Who this book is for

If you are a ata enter, IT or atabase eam manager who wants to take advantage of the automation and compliance benefits of Enterprise Manager Cloud Control 12c, Oracle Enterprise Manager Cloud Control 12c: Managing Data Center Chaos is for you. CTOs will also find this book useful.

Experience Enterprise Manager is not essential as the author's experience tells you all you need to know about getting started with Enterprise Manager. More experienced readers will learn about the brand new capabilities of the Cloud Control 12c release.

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