Introduction to Middleware Management
This section introduces the use of Oracle Enterprise Manager Cloud Control to monitor
and manage middleware software, including Oracle Fusion Middleware and Oracle
WebLogic Server.
This section covers the following:
• Middleware Management with Enterprise Manager Cloud Control
• Key Oracle Fusion Middleware Management Features
• Managing Fusion Middleware with Fusion Middleware Control
Middleware Management with Enterprise Manager Cloud
Control
Middleware is the software that enables your enterprise applications to run. Managing
the underlying middleware technology can be difficult, and IT organizations often have
to rely on a variety of specialized tools. This can lead to inefficiency and may introduce
complexities and risks.
Enterprise Manager Cloud Control is the definitive tool for middleware management
and allows you to manage both Oracle applications and custom Java EE applications
that run on a combination of Oracle Fusion Middleware as well as non-Oracle
middleware software.
Oracle Enterprise Manager Cloud Control is a Web browser-based, graphical user
interface that you can use to monitor multiple Oracle Fusion Middleware environments
and Oracle WebLogic Domains. In fact, Cloud Control provides deep management
solutions for Oracle technologies including Oracle packaged applications, Oracle
Database and Oracle VM.
Enterprise Manager Cloud Control supports the discovery, monitoring and central
management of the entire family of Oracle Fusion Middleware components, including:
• Oracle WebLogic Domains, Partitions, clusters, and single server instances
• Oracle GlassFish Domains, Clusters, and Servers
• Partitioned, Clustered, and standalone Java EE applications
• Oracle HTTP Server (Collocated and Standalone)
• Oracle Traffic Director
• Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) components
• Oracle Identity Management
• Metadata Services repositories
• Oracle WebCenter
• Oracle Portal
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• Oracle Business Intelligence
• Oracle Forms Services
• Oracle Reports
• Directory Server Enterprise Edition
• Oracle Coherence
• Oracle Exalogic Elastic Cloud
• Java EE
A key benefit of Enterprise Manager Cloud Control is that unlike other Fusion
Middleware management utilities - such as Fusion Middleware Control and the
WebLogic Server Administration Console - you can monitor and manage multiple
middleware targets, such as all of your WebLogic Domains, from a single console.
You can also view real time as well as historic performance metrics collected from
middleware targets. This enables you to monitor the availability and performance of
Oracle Fusion Middleware software both in real time and from a historical perspective
for trend analysis and diagnosing availability and performance problems.
Enterprise Manager Cloud Control also enables you to manage the infrastructure upon
which the middle tier depends. You can manage underlying operating systems and
hosts on which the middleware software is installed. You can also monitor the
databases used by deployed applications, enabling you to diagnose application
performance problems and identify the true root cause of the problem and the tier
(middleware, database) on which it occurs.
The built-in topology viewer allows you to visualize and monitor your entire Oracle
Fusion Middleware environment in a graphical display. Topologies can be viewed for a
single SOA composite, an Oracle WebLogic Domain, or across multiple Oracle
WebLogic Domains.
Management of Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) components such as BPEL
processes and infrastructure components such as Oracle Service Bus, is also
supported. The infrastructure provides monitoring, fault management, configuration
management, deployment and dependency views of wiring between components.
Key Oracle Fusion Middleware Management Features
Cloud Control provides full historical monitoring across the middleware tier, from
WebLogic Server instance and the Java virtual machine (JVM) it runs within, to the
Oracle Fusion Middleware components running on the application server. It also
provides full configuration and lifecycle management of middleware components, while
the product's extensive performance monitoring and diagnostics capabilities enable
troubleshooting issues anywhere within the middleware tier.
With Oracle Enterprise Manager Cloud Control, you can:
• Centrally manage multiple Oracle Fusion Middleware Farms and WebLogic
Domains.
• Manage third party products such as IBM WebSphere Application Server, JBoss
Application Server, Apache HTTP Server, and Apache Tomcat.
• Manage non-middleware software such as underlying operating systems and
hardware on which the middleware software is installed. This allows administrators
to correlate middleware performance with its underlying host performance.
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Key Oracle Fusion Middleware Management Features
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• Manage database software and diagnose application performance problems and
identify the true root cause of the problem and the tier (middleware, database) on
which it occurs.
• Monitor the availability and performance of Oracle Fusion Middleware software in
real time and from a historical perspective for trend analysis.
• Diagnose availability and performance problems.
• Monitor and trace important end-user requests from the client to the service
endpoint across all the servers and applications associated with each transaction.
• Monitor Java applications and diagnose performance problems in production using
JVM Diagnostics.
• Define Service Level Objectives (SLOs) in terms of out-of-box system-level
metrics as well as end user experience metrics to accurately monitor and report on
Service Level Agreement (SLA) compliance.
• Perform several critical tasks like:
– Setting thresholds on performance metrics. When these thresholds are
violated, e-mail and page notifications are sent.
– Tracking configuration changes and comparing configurations between
example test environment and production environment.
• Perform critical configuration and administration operations such as the following:
– Start, stop, or restart Fusion Middleware components and processes
– Configure domain, clusters, managed servers, resources, and multitenancy
– Schedule and track execution of WLST scripts
• View Business Applications to access RUEI as well as information about the
application's supporting infrastructure.
Managing Fusion Middleware with Fusion Middleware
Control
Fusion Middleware Control organizes a wide variety of performance data and
administrative functions into distinct, Web-based home pages for the cluster, domain,
servers, components, and applications. The Fusion Middleware Control home pages
make it easy to locate the most important monitoring data and the most commonly
used administrative functions all from your Web browser.
Fusion Middleware Control is a part of the Oracle Fusion Middleware installation. With
Fusion Middleware Control, you can:
• Manage a single Oracle Fusion Middleware Farm and a single WebLogic Domain.
Unlike Cloud Control, this is current information only. There is no storage of
historical data when using Fusion Middleware Control.
• Monitor the availability and performance of Fusion Middleware software in real
time mode.
• Perform routine administration tasks such as deploying applications, configuring
parameters, and so on.
Note: In Fusion Middleware Control, you cannot analyze historical metric data, and the
real-time analysis is limited to a single domain
Chapter 1
Managing Fusion Middleware with Fusion Middleware Control
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For more details, see the Oracle Fusion Middleware Administrator's Guide 11g
Release 2 and Oracle Fusion Middleware Administering Oracle Fusion Middleware
12c.