Oracle Enterprise Manager Reviews

We use the product to monitor applications and Oracle databases. 

Oracle Enterprise Manager triggers critical alerts. 

We have encountered performance issues when the load is huge. 

I have been using the product for more than 13 years. 

I rate the tool's stability an eight out of ten. 

I rate Oracle Enterprise Manager's scalability a seven out of ten. 

The tool's deployment was straightforward. 

If over six hundred errors are related to the database, it can lead to a crash, resulting in significant losses for any business. Using a monitoring tool helps prevent such disasters. For instance, if a high CPU consumption query is identified through the monitoring tool, it becomes a proactive way to address potential crashes. By identifying and working on problematic queries, you can notify users to terminate sessions, avoiding downtime and potential business impacts. This monitoring tool proves to be incredibly helpful for managing and overseeing applications and data.

I rate the product a nine out of ten. 

I was previously using it for my own personal use.

I didn't need much. I was using it to connect a database. I connected the database, and then the Linux host. I also wanted to test various remote hosts. Unfortunately, since I was installing on a machine that didn't have enough resources, I was not able to connect it to deploy those agents. For me to have done that, I needed a platform that had adequate resources like RAM and storage. After installing it, it just consumed everything that I had. I only have 16GB RAM. It was not enough for me to try others. I was basically using it to test how it would be able to run. I managed to run it by deploying the database that I was using it to run the EM. That is the only thing that I managed to acquire.

It's more effective to use command-line interface than using the GO setup.

One of the great things about that EM is that you are able to connect to Oracle Support. This will make your work easier due to the fact that it will help you identify if your database is to be upgraded or if you are experiencing any issues. It can help you quickly identify issues instead of having to raise them in a service report. It's much more efficient.

There are a number of different user interfaces you can choose from.

The solution is pretty interactive and user-friendly.

Sometimes the solution can be quite difficult in terms of when you want to deploy agents. 

You need to go through the Oracle documentation in order for you to be able to deploy an agent. Sometimes it just takes a long time, however, the thing is there is the overall concept of deploying. I don't think it is a problem, for the most part. 

That said, for someone who is starting to use the product, it takes quite a long while for you to get to know and understand the actions. The issue is the solution has got so many items and products for you to use. You just need to basically get to what you want.

There's a lot of documentation to go through as a new user.

It takes a while for a new user to get the hang of the product.

I've been using the solution for the past month. Previously, I used its environment (for the past 12 months or so) for opportunity yield. I hadn't been using it in a production environment. It's now installed on my machine.

When I was administering the database using that EM, it was quite amazing. However, in terms of usability and other things, I can't say much because I haven't used it yet in a production line. So far, I haven't had issues with stability, but it's still too soon to tell.

I haven't had time to really judge the scalability. It's still too early to tell. I need more experience with the product before making any assumptions.

I can't say much about technical support due to the fact that I haven't done much using the EM. Since I haven't interacted with them too much, there isn't anything really to say about how I find their service. I simply haven't used it.

The setup is quite straightforward, depending on what you want to use. I started with the GO setup or the interactive pack. I also use silent mode, whereby you just run the command, and then you see the information inside those parameters. I preferred the silent mode installation, whereby you have to make sure that you have set your parameters accordingly. 

That said, the installation I conducted wasn't difficult for me to install. The only thing that I noticed was that it's a big file. It's quite a big software or application to be deployed, so when you do, you need to deploy it where there are enough resources for you to install everything.

In my case, the deployment took about five hours to complete.

I handled the implementation on my own. I did not need the assistance of any consultants or integrators.

I'm not aware of how much the product costs, so I can't speak to the pricing.

We're just a customer. We have no relationship with the vendor.

There is a more up to date version, 18.42, however, I have not started using it yet as it requires some patching. Currently, I'm on version 18.4, which is quite stable.

I would recommend the solution to others. In fact, I've already met many people in which I have done just that. It's only been a month using the product and already I've noticed that it is quite effective.

Since I haven't done quite a lot in terms of production learning, I will just rate it at seven out of ten at this time.

This is a very good Oracle tool which enables us to incorporate all the databases throughout our environment, set up several rules and even monitor from there. We can perform a lot of operations. If you have small databases you can plug into the OEM, and you can perform any sort of operation with one click of a button. That makes it more convenient and makes life easier than logging into each database separately.

You can set the rules so that every time you have several maintenance activities you don't need to go to each database and do the same work again and again. Instead you can create jobs in the OEM and you can also create groups, like production, development, performance and environment. All these environments you can club together so that you can perform several operations based on environment-specific criteria.

When you need to perform activities like purging and archiving, this can be done easily and you can even do backups which is a tedious activity. If you have the right description monitor, just click on the buttons in the OEM so that you can fire up the backups everyday at a specific time. It can even alert us by email if by any chance the backup fails and you can just log in to a particular mission and check why it failed.

It's a very easy way of maintaining all the databases instead of wasting time on the regular day to day tasks. You can use your time productively, instead of investing time on these mundane tasks. That way it helps us a lot.

It could improve in some areas like the screen. It's not so clear for the novice, when a new person looks at the screen he/she may not really understand where to start first. They could make that process a little easier, so that even a novice who starts using it can at least have the basic idea what to do.

We've been using the product for almost six years.

It is stable of course, it's from Oracle.

It's scalable depending on the way you build it. From the base configuration itself the server capacity and the installation, you have a number of targets, say 0-10, 10-250, 250-1000. Based on your company's requirement you have to install and configure those so that it will be scalable throughout that time period. You will also require enough memory, CPU cards for supporting those targets.

I would rate the support as 8/10. Once they start responding on the tickets, they'll definitely take you to the solution.

I would recommend it. There are a lot of people who like to write scripts and stuff. If they are comfortable writing scripts then definitely they could use it. But many things can be done which cannot be done through scripting. I would recommend you give it a try. Definitely once you give it a try you will like using it.

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.

Over and above the monitoring, alerting and incident framework, all of which are excellent, I would say the Lifecycle Management Pack is of most value to us.

For a particular client, they had a large database estate with over 750 databases and it wasn't actually possible to measure their compliance position against their own security standard at any given time. They had a view of a few systems, but the collection and aggregation of data was manual intensive and time consuming.

The Lifecycle Management Pack for Enterprise Manager has allowed the organization to have an almost real-time view of security and compliance across every single database within the estate. This was also based on their own internal security standard which has been created in Oracle Enterprise Manager via pre-packaged and customized compliance rules.

I think with the documentation there could be improvements. Although the core database compliance functionality is well documented some of the other areas of compliance aren't for example the Real Time monitoring rules. Also, further information on how compliance rule data is collected from repository to agent would be helpful and would assist when digging into the Oracle Enterprise Manager repository for building BI reports using BI Publisher.

I've been using it for four years.

Understanding how to build custom compliance rules was probably the area which took most time but that was still relatively simple. Also, while using the product this area was refined in 12.1.0.4 release with Agent Side rules, we started using this feature in 12.1.0.3 with Repository Side rules.

We have had no issues with the stability.

There have been no issues scaling it.

On the whole, technical support was good. Some of the very niche questions I had regarding some of the internal workings and collection of data took a little while longer to get answers for, but, to be fair, I always managed to find an answer to those queries.

For managing estate-wide security compliance, the only previous option was a scripted solution which was costly and not scaleable.

Deployment of Oracle Enterprise Manager is straightforward as the documentation is good and the issues in deployment are rare. The challenge comes in ensuring that you configure all the relevant aspects of Enterprise Manager prior to rolling out agents and using the product in anger. This isn't necessarily an issue with the product, but rather the mindset of how sometimes it's deployed. I've assisted in a number of projects which was to retrospectively fix Oracle Enterprise Manager deployments.

Having assisted on many Oracle Enterprise Managers implementations and seen the common mistakes, I wrote an article about it for the Oracle Scene Magazine Issue 57 (http://tinyurl.com/hxe4q9n). In summary, it's about planning what you want Oracle Enterprise Manager to do in helping you manage your IT estate and then undertaking the necessary configuration. Too often, people put little thought or effort into understanding what the product can do and just start rolling out management agents and then undertake a period of protracted reconfiguration.

Don't underestimate the time you invest in deploying and managing Oracle within your wider IT estate. The Lifecycle Management Pack needs to be seen as an essential purchase with Diagnostics and Tuning Packs. You may be able to create some 'home brew' solutions for software deployment, compliance and configuration management, but it will be light years behind what the LCMP can do and it's something that will continually be developed and improved.

Oracle Enterprise Manager is an Enterprise Management tool and should be treated as such. It's not a glorified DB console. Companies should look to configure it in a way which takes away all the low-level, least value-add activities that DBAs have to do on a day-to-,day basis. As an organization look at the value the product could bring and deploy it as you would any other software asset.

We use the solution for data encryption.

The solution is easy to use and has good performance.

The tool is expensive. 

I have been using Oracle Enterprise Manager for ten years. 

I rate the solution’s stability a nine out of ten.

The solution is scalable. The solution’s scalability depends on how you manage your hardware, server type, storage and the processes needed.

We have 200,000 users using the solution. We have sufficient usage of the solution.

The initial setup of the solution is straightforward. The time of deployment depends on the database and customer. The solution needs a third-party integration that uses the database.

Deployment is the same with the wireless license. You first deployed a server to the cloud and then created a schema for all your data links. The deployment process depends on the system type you will implement.

The solution’s licence is expensive. It is a user-based solution and has a yearly subscription for upgrades.

The maintenance of the Oracle Enterprise Manager solution depends on the type of banking system you are using, the number of users, the amount of data, and whether or not you have migrated any data. Since we have not migrated any data, it is going as it is.

You should go for an open-source solution if possible.

Overall, I rate the solution a seven out of ten.

I work on whatever development projects I get with Oracle Enterprise Manager in my company.

The most valuable feature of the solution is that it is a very user-friendly tool. I find Oracle Enterprise Manager to be a complete tool because it has options like SQL Scratchpad, Oracle Migration Workbench, etc.

Oracle Enterprise Manager's scalability is an area with certain shortcomings where improvements are required.

In the future releases of Oracle Enterprise Manager, I would like to see the product offer the ability to its users to scale up the solution whenever required.

I have been using Oracle Enterprise Manager for around ten years. I work as an Oracle consultant.

It is a stable solution.

Though Oracle Enterprise Manager is a scalable product, it may not be as scalable as Oracle Big Data. You can scale up Oracle Big Data to any number, but it may be difficult to do so when it comes to Oracle Enterprise Manager.

Around 10 to 50 people in my company use Oracle Enterprise Manager.

The solution's technical support is good. I rate the technical support a nine out of ten.

Positive

The initial setup of the product is easy.

The product's installation phase may take up to a maximum of 30 minutes.

The product's installation phase can be taken care of by one person.

The solution is deployed on an on-premises model.

Usually, I use Oracle Enterprise Manager for development purposes, and I can say that the development part is very easy with Oracle.

I rate the overall tool a nine out of ten.

It basically provides a transformation for the company to go into the product line application. It gives better and faster data to the management in order to review the data quickly.

Using this product, we have improved our process for generating revenue and sending out invoices to our customers. It also enables us to track our engineers' time correctly.

We are expecting new functionality in the billing aspect. In respect to the engineering sector, there is a need to include the performance part in the management side.

Still, there are lot of improvements that need to take place. For example, we are expecting basically a vertical solution for the engineering industry in terms of federal and department transportation solutions. We are expecting this in the product. Right now, there is no such type of product with which you can generate this solution.

This product is around 80 percent stable; 20 percent we are working on enhancing the product.

I would rate the level of this product’s scalability at a 8/10.

It basically avails of a wide range of data, which it can pull together in one dashboard and present this data to the management in a quicker manner. This is the only scalable aspect in the product.

We have used Oracle Advanced Customer Service and found them to be helpful. They supported our product.

We are transmitting from one ERP to another ERP, so the people need to be supported. Basically, Oracle advised us since it is the same product.

After which, we moved to EBS for future data support. They created a custom solution since we are unable to apply the patches or anything, so then we moved to this product.

It is a complex product, in its methodology of how to pull the data together and then how to copy it. The other reason is the process as to how we need to send it to our customers, for timely invoicing without any backlogs.

The reason why we chose this vendor is because they were familiar with the product now, and they gave a better judgement of the product itself.

Oracle is more flexible and you can convert it as per your business. That is why we have this solution. Whereas in other ERP products like SAP, we cannot customize the product and we need to use what exactly they provide.

We are going to see how it is helping the organization. That is the way we are going to do research.