Oracle Enterprise Manager Reviews

The GUI interface for monitoring and managing databases is the most valuable feature.

The automated alerts tell me when I have an issue before a user calls. They are proactive.

We use it mostly for the connection to the databases. It could be the version I'm on, but we seem a little limited on what we can do for monitoring for the middleware.

No stability issues.

So far, it has scaled well for our needs.

Most of the time, when we open a ticket, we are happy with the resolution and the timing of the response. We've had a few incidents where they immediately say, “Maybe you should upgrade.” That usually kind of sets me off. It's like, why don't you listen to the entire thing before you immediately tell me to upgrade? Overall yes, no issues with that.

We looked at Spotlight. It was just too expensive, so we stuck with Oracle.

Go to training first. We did it the other way around: We tried to figure it out, and then go to training. That’s fine, as long as there isn’t a big gap between when you're going to implement it, and when you've been trained. We probably would have saved a lot of angst and issues if we were properly trained first.

Our biggest issue is learning all the features. There are more bells and whistles than we're probably using; getting familiar with the capabilities, and then actually being able to execute them.

I'm happy with it. I think we're not leveraging it enough, but for what we use it for, it's perfect.

The monitoring and alerting capabilities and ability for corrective actions in incidents provide the most value.

Provides monitoring and alerting to know when there are issues, and the ability to address issues automatically with corrective actions. This has saved admin time, as it's saved our admins from having to get up in the middle of the night to address minor issues that corrective actions could take care of automatically.

I would like to see Oracle address the multi-data center monitoring and management in a more seamless way where management services are easily spread across the data centers like they can be today, but address the single database repository that can only exist in one data center at a time.

I have been using various versions of Enterprise Manager for over eight years.

There were no issues with the deployment.

Multi-Data Center High Availability monitoring, alerting and management is the largest challenge as there is a single repository database that is located in a single data center, therefore running across multiple data centers still ties back to a single repository database which runs from one of the data centers, but can distribute the OEM Console and Management servers in each of the data centers. All this works without issue, but the repository traffic from multiple data centers can be a challenge going back to another data center where the repository database resides.

It's been able to scale for our needs.

It's good, there are times that reaching the right technical analysts to resolve or address an issue can take time, but overall the support is responsive and good and when having a severity one in response to a down issue can be excellent.

I have not really utilized anything other than Oracle Enterprise Manager for monitoring, alerting and management of Oracle based environments.

Simple single server setups are quite simple to install and upgrade. Multi-Oracle management services with load balancers can be more of a challenge but are not overly difficult to get accomplished.

I am working for a consulting and managed services firm as a consultant and have implemented Oracle Enterprise Manager for many of our clients over several years and we have always had great success in meeting the objectives it was implemented to address.

Oracle Enterprise Manager for the base product does not have additional cost when you have an Oracle Enterprise Database licenses, however to get the most value from OEM additional packs are required and have additional costs. Those costs are at the product level and not Oracle Enterprise Manager direct cost as I understand. However, in most enterprise level environments these packs provide huge value to the monitoring, alerting and management of the environment.

It's overall capability for Oracle products is very good and offers the ability to monitor and manage many Oracle products from a single environment and is seamlessly integrated to monitor and manage those products out of the box.

If you run Oracle Products from Oracle OVM, Oracle Database, Web Logic, etc. Oracle Enterprise Manager is by far the best way to provide a single console and monitoring and alerting solution.

The most valuable feature is the way it shows me, on top in one screen, right there, my availability options. Then if I have to drill down the performance, it shows me what's running, rather than me going in and doing my own scripts. It provides AWR reports, active session reports, and things like that.

The biggest bang for our buck with Enterprise Manger is automated patching. We have at least 1000 or so databases, so automation in patching, applying security patches, and PSU's has been huge for us. We are working heavily with Oracle and their representatives to have patches written up.

We've had a lot of struggles patching automation. There's no good log file that you can debug. We have to go back to the account managers and work with Oracle internals. I'm hoping that 13c will bring something better on that front.

We've been OK deploying it within our company.

It's been stable, but the patching is the biggest pain-point right now for us.

We are not there yet with scaling it. Like I said, if you patch one single database, it works OK. If you have, on one server, ten different databases, that's where it hangs, and we don't know where it failed and when it might fail.

The initial setup was good and fairly straightforward. We didn't have a whole lot of trouble with it.

We implemented it with our in-house team.

If you're a newbie who doesn't want much hands-on in a CLI, it's a good solution.

The main usage is for monitoring performance, a major part of the software is you can define some virtualization for RAM utilization. You can set up something and then you will start getting alerts which you can do some optimizations from the information.

It is the best monitoring tool for Oracle databases. 

You have full visibility with the tool, it is a complete solution. 

The software is simple to use.

In my experience, the monitoring could be improved. 

If the solution had an auditing feature, I would not look into other software, for example, Imperva or IBM Guardium. These other solutions have an audit feature and monitoring together, this one is strictly monitoring only. Oracle does have a separate product for auditing, which is very expensive.

I have been using the solution for seven years.

It is a very stable product.

We have five administrators that are using the solution, as it is only for administrators.

We have access to the support but the product is really easy to use, we have not needed any help.

The setup was easy, we encountered no problems and it took us only three hours.

We did the implementation ourselves.

The solution is inexpensive to purchase.

I have evaluated Imperva and IBM Guardium. 

I am going to continue to use this product in the future.

I rate Oracle Enterprise Manager a nine out of ten.

On-premises

Our primary use is for monitoring and management of Oracle products. We are running several Oracle products in our environment.

The product gives us as much control as we can have by providing a complete picture of the whole set of Oracle products. We can monitor all of them.

We would like to have a single dashboard for monitoring and controlling all of our products. This would add value, for us, because as it is now, we have to go to different screens to check different products.

We have been using Oracle Enterprise Manager for about seven years, since 2013.

The Oracle Enterprise Manager is pretty stable and we haven't had any issues.

We have not had to contact technical support for this product because we haven't had any issues. However, if we need to then there is a support portal available.

This product is easy to install and we can complete the deployment in a day, including the agent.

We are satisfied with the pricing.

Overall, I am satisfied with this product. It assists us in finding issues through monitoring services.

I would rate this solution a seven out of ten.

On-premises

Some of the most valuable features are its real-time performance view/dashboard, metric history, real-time monitoring and alerts, as well as quick access to Oracle's tuning and diagnostic options.

These are valuable because it makes it much easier to investigate periods in the past (good or bad) as metrics for a period are stored in the repository. Real-time resolution of issues is made easier as wait-events can be viewed and investigated in real-time. SQL queries can also be viewed and investigated in real-time and recommendations are available if the diagnostic and tuning packs are licensed (Oracle databases).

In my experience it seems the best tool for monitoring Oracle products, ranging from software to hardware like the engineered systems (e.g. Exadata).

In my team, we have display screens dedicated to displaying the real-time wait-events of our most critical databases. Every team member can look up and tell the average health of the critical Oracle databases at a glance. If something unusual is going on, it is immediately apparent on the display.

In addition, Oracle Enterprise Manager completely and adequately handles our hardware and software alerts which are sent out by email as soon as set thresholds have been exceeded.

I feel more dashboards can be added, especially those useful to higher levels of IT management.

I feel it would be great to have improved support for other database types like MySQL and Microsoft SQL Server.

I also think additional software like the JAgent for monitoring GoldenGate installations should be integrated into Oracle Enterprise Manager itself, and not require additional installation and configuration.

About four years.

Generally, it is pretty stable. Occasionally, one may run into errors that may be tricky to resolve without in-depth knowledge of the product or the help of Oracle Support.

No, I haven't had any issues with scalability so far.

On a scale of one to 10, eight.

We previously used Dell Spotlight, but needed more in-depth administration and monitoring capabilities, as well as a web interface.

Initial setup was pretty straightforward. Most administrators with some experience in installing Oracle applications and databases shouldn't have a problem setting it up, as long as they follow the installation guide.

As with all Oracle products, care should be taken when using any features to ensure that they do not activate licensed features that have not been paid for. Oracle Enterprise Manager allows one to do so many things easily, but it is up to the administrator to be sure of the licensing implications.

Dell Spotlight was the only other option we looked into before settling on this product.

Oracle Enterprise Manager is great for monitoring and administering Oracle hardware and software. However, administrators should ensure that their actions are limited to free and licensed features only, otherwise there may be trouble at the next Oracle license review.

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.

Real-time performance monitoring

Can easily visualize bottlenecks in database performance tuning with historical graph trends; where as before it would be based upon manually tuning using scripts which are text based. Ability to get email alerts for systems in trouble; where as it would have been manual steps to obtain health-checks on all database servers.

Stability and bugs in the product. There seem to be too many.

3 years

Many problems which were fixed with patches.

Initially yes, but after patching it was stable; but with applying the latest version 12.1.0.3, we seem to be unstable again.

No

Customer Service: Appalling, raised issues with support and that take ages to respond.Technical Support: Appalling; they take far too long to understand the issue, they just simply appear to read scripts; if our problem is not on the script; then they struggle to think.

No

It was a complex installation, in that we have 2 servers as opposed to a single all in one solution; but it was nothing we could not manage.

In-house

Initial set up was approx. 5 days’ worth of DBA’s effort

No

Be prepared for a lot of heartache before it beds in. Get the latest patches for the project, and read up on most common bugs issues before implementation;