Oracle Enterprise Manager Reviews

The most valuable feature is the performance monitoring. This is one single-point dashboard, which presents the health of the database, at a particular point in real time. It helps you see which queries are running, and the top file sessions that are running. That helps you accurately identify what is bogging down the system.

That top session, which is chewing up CPU resources and memory, helps you see if it is doing the right thing, using the right indexes, using the best EXPLAIN PLAN. If everything is all good, maybe that tells you the box’s resources is not enough. However, 90% of the time, there are bad queries, rogue queries; it provides ample opportunities to queue.

Thanks to this tool, it helps us drill down, get to the bottom of the problem really quickly. Quick identification of a problem is key. Once the problem is identified, then you have other tools to figure out how to make this query run fast.

There are nice features like the hash report and AWR codes. At the click of a button, on the fly, you can generate these reports, which tell you exactly at the time of the clicking the health of the database; how well or how bad it is running. That is what the business is looking at from the DB. DB is like a doctor. They want the cure. They want to know what is the problem for the disease. This helps us identify the health of the database in real time, fast.

The main benefit is the quickness; the speed at which you identify, diagnose and resolve problems. The old-fashioned way depends on the DBA’s manual skills. It would take him forever, if we were to go the legacy route. This is nice, like a MRI scan. That helps. It is very fast; the queries are faster, the work gets done faster, you generate the reports faster, you are able to deliver how well the company's doing faster.

You can talk about the different features in IT, but at the end of the day, what it boils down to, what matters to management when they come into the office is that they want to look at the reports. They want to see how well their business is doing. These tools help make sure these queries are done well, so that you generate more reports, more quickly, so that management knows about the health of their company early and fast. That helps them slice and dice this information, and arrive at meaningful, logical conclusions to how well they want to run their business.

As it is, this product has so many features. We have yet to explore its full potential. There is one feature that tells you how long the query has been running. It would be nice if they could introduce a GUI feature in the performance monitoring section that shows when the query will finish. We can see when it started by looking at the session history. People are looking at you to tell them when will it finish. It would be nice if there is a GUI feature that tells you the start and the finish times. That way you can set the right expectations.

The product is very stable and doesn't take up a lot of resources. We have seen products that work well in the short-term, but that cause more harm. What was supposed to be a small footprint, ends up chewing up all the box’s resources, whereas that's not the case with this product.

There are times when you have to troubleshoot during the height of a crisis, when the box is already busy, and the chances are you are inflicting more pain. Nonetheless, this product still works very well, despite how busy the box is, because of the small footprint. Meaning, it doesn't take up a lot of resources. With fewer resources, it strives to get the job done.

Technical support is excellent. They get back to us really fast, if there is an issue. Also, there are tons of material out there on the Oracle support website. 90% of the time, you can get the answers very simply, without the need to reach a physical person to guide you to resolve your issues.

We had other solutions such as Toad and Spotlight, but once we saw this, there was no going back. It was pretty good. It's a one-point destination; one umbrella. It has so much to offer. Basically, if someone were to start using this product, they will not deviate. It has so much potential, honestly.

Initial setup is very straightforward. It is very easy to install and configure. It is also easy to migrate to different platforms. It is easy to fix if it is broken. It's not rocket science. I have seen other products where, once it is broken, it is broken; you have to do it properly from scratch. That's not the case here. With simple fixes, you can be back in business and running.

We were considering going with Quest Central and couple of other vendors, but being a big Oracle shop, it made sense. Sticking with one vendor made sense, so that we can get a better offer on the pricing. Considering Oracle is the database, it is no wonder the product has more insight into the database functioning. That's why we chose this solution.

My high rating reflects its ease of use and that it contains a host of features, anything and everything a database administrator would want it to perform; all the way from creating a database to adding space, to performance monitoring, to back up and recovery, to exports and imports, and security. You name it, they have it.

Cloud is the big buzzword. The reason why companies are moving from on-prem to cloud is cost-cutting. IT companies knowingly or unknowingly have spent top dollars on IT, but the thought process is changing. It all boils down to cost-cutting. Basically, the IT companies want to continue to do the same great stuff but with low costs, so that they can pass the benefit to the investors. I would say, cost. At the end of the day, cost is the most important criteria when I am considering working with a vendor. If you can bring down the cost, there is nothing else like that.

I strongly recommend using this product. This is going to make your life easy, so that you can use whatever time you save for better things in life.

Oracle Enterprise Manager provides a single pane of control that gives you the visibility to see all Oracle products, plus the non-Oracle products; hardware, software, middleware. It covers it all.

The benefits to my organization are with administration, plus it centralizes your control.

There are a lot of plugins. I would like to see more and more plugins for different software. Most of them are third-party software. If Oracle Enterprise Manager could provide a standard web service to interface with any application, that would be ideal.

I don't think anybody can walk on water. Software is buggy and that's the nature of the beast.

Stability is excellent now; not so much, before.

Scalability is endless because you can use Oracle technology to expand the back end and also use Oracle technology to expand the front end.

Technical support is very helpful. They were efficient. Usually, Oracle support is very good.

We previously used vendor-specific monitoring or control systems to administer different type of resources; hardware, software. OEM gives me the ability to expand that by putting everything under one control console.

I was involved in the initial setup, and it was pretty straightforward. Over the years, they have even simplified a lot of processes. Before, you had to install this and that, but now it's just one single installation that does it all.

For me, choosing this solution was a no-brainer because we are an Oracle shop. From having all different types of vendors for hardware and software, we are gradually becoming an Oracle shop.

Try to understand what OEM can do for you. Exploit it and its feature set. For example, I can modify the back-end storage through OEM. I don't have to go to my ZS4 console to see how much space I have, how to administer it, or how to allocate storage space to a particular project. I can do that through OEM. That's the power of having a single pane for control.

When I’m looking at a vendor such as Oracle, support is the most important criteria. Over the years, Oracle product has improved the stability, so that the most important thing now is how fast they can provide solutions when I need their help. That's the most important thing.

I can run the database, run queries, run reports, see the whole picture, and analyze the data.

I can see the whole picture and analyze the data; I rely on that a lot. I feel like I can see the whole entire database.

It could be faster; sometimes it takes a while to make the connection. Sometimes, it's complicated, too.

It is very stable. Once in a while, I see IT involved in a ticket but I don't think it happens all the time.

I think we used to use Sybase and then we transferred to Oracle. Now they no longer use the Sybase servers. I’m not so sure why we switched from Sybase to Oracle; maybe the technology made them move from Sybase to Oracle, maybe it was more stable, more space or something like that.

I like it. I would encourage a colleague or friend looking for advice to use Oracle.

The automating diagnostic monitor (ADM) is the most valuable feature.

It will list the top findings: numbers one, two and three. Those are the areas where we have to troubleshoot. That helps my organization.

There are a lot of options; it takes time. I don't see anything like a dashboard or something similar. Adding some dashboards would possibly be a nice thing.

Stability’s good; no downtime.

Scalability’s good; it's okay.

We get good support. Tickets are resolved quickly and we are happy with the resolution. It is perfect.

I was not involved in the installation. A different team did it.

I think we are an Oracle shop; naturally we lean toward them.

It's pretty self-explanatory; just log in and explore the options. That's it.

I believe training would help. An expert can go over several options and make it easier.

The most valuable feature is that it is very easy for the novice DBA to drill down and find problems that might otherwise be difficult to find.

It has helped developers and novice DBAs drill down and find the cause for problems. There are two pieces. One, it allows people to pinpoint issues easily, and then drill down and get more details of the issue. Previously, this used to be a skillset in the hands of a very few people, but now virtually anybody can do it. Even if they can't fix the actual problem, they could filter down a lot of the issues, and get only the relevant information, which is helping us.

I probably would like to see better SQL tuning advisors that are built into the product. When you know the issue, rather than just pinpoint it, if it could also give you a solution that might work, I think that would help the product.

There are a few things on the wish list. We would hope that it makes some predictions of what we could fix and also the resources for printing that it takes. In some cases, it is not available when we need it the most.

It is mostly stable, but we have found some issues when we are having resource contention or CPU issues. It is not easy to bring up the product because it is a bit of a resource hog. Sometimes when you need it the most, that is when you find it missing, but those are rare and far between.

It is a very scalable product. No complaints there. We use it for hundreds of databases and it grows.

On a scale of 1 to 10, I would probably give Oracle tech support somewhere between a 6 and a 7. Often, when you know what the issue is, there is a lot of collecting data for root cause which we might have provided just the previous day. We find ramp up is a bit of a waste of time before we can actually get a solution.

We were covered by the Oracle enterprise license agreement and it made more sense for us to go with this product as opposed to looking for another one. They have had it for a very long time.

It is a very straightforward setup and also we had help from Oracle as part of our enterprise license agreement with my company. They helped set it up and it has been working pretty well.

It was an easy choice. The Oracle Enterprise Manager is pretty well known and I don't think anything else, an external product, matches or comes even close.

Look at the reputation and the size of the company. These products are often very expensive. It is better to go with someone who has been around for a long time and who would continue to be in business, as opposed to flavor-of-the-month products.

When I am looking at a vendor such as Oracle, the most important criteria that I am looking for from them are market reputation, the scale of the company, and the stability.

The most valuable feature is the monitoring of all of the different types of targets in our infrastructure, including not only the Oracle Database components, but the SQL Server components also, in the host.

We are able to manage larger numbers of databases with less human resources.

I would probably like to see more plug-ins to manage even more heterogeneous types of resources.

I would say 95% of the time it's up and running without any problems.

It's scaled pretty well for our needs, so far. We're planning on moving over to a server that has more resources available because we are getting to a point where, with some of the features that are available – such as dealing with monitoring compliances, security compliances – it's starting to take up more resources than what we have on that server along with these targets. We're having to move off of this server to have some more resources.

When I open a ticket with Oracle, it is resolved in a timely fashion. I’m happy with the resolution. They work. We have MOS. They work extensively with us to try to get resolutions as quick as possible.

I rate technical support 8/10.

We did have Foglight. It was providing us decent monitoring of the targets, but the OEM, specifically for managing the Oracle databases, is a lot more robust. You have more tools to work with to administer the Oracle databases.

I was involved in deploying and setting it. It was very straightforward and I set up all three of the tiers, from the web to the application to the back-end database. We have them running on just one server, but it's providing what we need out of it. We're currently managing approximately 900 targets.

It's a very robust tool. You will find there are many links and it's easy to navigate, but it might take you some time to learn where everything's at.

What makes it valuable is that we have one single pane that we can access to get all of our information and be proactive, whether it's Oracle Database, SQL Server, MySQL, or whatever, even host related.

Every release, they seem to move the navigation and you have to retrain your entire DBA staff. Maybe the user interface could be more consistent between releases. For every minor and major release, it usually jumps around all over the place.

We've been using it for quite a while, probably since 11g and a little bit before that; so, for 6, 7 years or more.

I think it’s stable. Every once in a while, it's kind of buggy, but for what it is, it's pretty good.

So far, it has been scalable. I think it's going to meet our needs moving forward.

For the most part, depending on who you get, technical support usually is good. Sometimes, it's hit or miss, but it depends on who you get those first few times.

For initial setup, you actually have to have some experience. If you don't, it can get a little tricky. I got a lot of gotchas. Even if you read the instruction manuals, the documentation, there are still things that you need to be looking out for.

I think it provides value for the money. It definitely helps us be proactive in our database administrating. We don't have to spend time reacting to everything. We can find out where the problem is before our customer even realizes they have a problem.

Look into OEM, especially if you have a lot of databases that you want to monitor, or other products. It provides a single pane of information that you can use, and drill down capabilities to find exact problems.

When I select a vendor such as Oracle to work with, I look for them to be reliable, provide value and so on.

The most valuable feature is its ability to integrate directly into S Space and move data, run business rules, run calculation scripts, and things like that.

The user interface is pretty clunky.

I have not rated it higher because it’s still new.

I have been using it for about 18 months.

It seems to be as stable as any other ETL product we use.

We're still in the development process. We haven't really put anything into production just yet.

As far as scalability, we're learning as we go on how to parameterize everything and stop hard-coding stuff. It seems to be handling what we're asking it to do.

Technical support is good. We get answers that we need within a couple of days. They are knowledgeable.

Initial setup is a little kind of hokey, but once you figure it out, it's okay.

We use also use DataStage and Informatica, outside of the Hyperion stack and the Oracle stack.

I recommend using the product for similar situations, just because it does technically integrate all the Oracle products together, especially in the EPM space.

Reputation is a big part of the decision regarding which vendor to work with. The other part is strategy: Do they have partners that can help us strategize on implementation? We don't need people on the keyboard, we need people helping us with setting up the big picture.