Implementing ORAchk in Oracle Enterprise Manager 13c

Heard about it at Oracle OpenWorld 2015: A new feature in Oracle Enterprise Manager 13c is the possibility to incorporate ORAchk, the healthcheck tool for databases, RAC and Engineered Systems.

This post is about downloading (and importing), deploying and provisioning the ORAchk-plugin. Spoiler-alert: there’s downtime involved of the OMS.

There are two ways for downloading and deploying : offline-patching and on-line, which means whether OEM is connected to My Oracle Support or not. In this post I will describe both methods ( every method by the way with varying success). And of course you can choose between using the command-line EMCLI and the graphical user interface. It’s Enterprise Manager, so mainly using the gui, but sometimes  forced to use the command-line.

Starting point: the documentation.

Prerequisites

According to the documentation the following prerequisites must be met before you can deploy the plug-in:

• Verify that your Engineered Systems hardware and software are at the supported level as described inSupported Hardware and Software Versions.
• All Engineered System plug-ins should be deployed.
• InfiniBand switches and storage cells should be an Enterprise Manager-managed target for the respective engineered system.
• Expect package should be installed on the hosts.

I’m using ORAchk for regular databases so I’m ignoring this for the moment.

According to the documentation about downloading of the plugin there are two ways to download the plugin: in offline mode and online mode.

First I chose the method of ‘Downloading Plugins in Offline Mode’ as I don’t want internet connection with my OEM. But: I will describe this very briefly, because I didn’t get it to work via off-line mode! Still describing the steps because I think it’s a nasty bug (it’s never me of course ) which will soon be solved.

Downloading and importing in offline mode.

Downloaded the plugin. This is a zip file with constantly the same name, so you can’t see which version you are using…. A bit peculiar.

Copied this file to the OEM-(virtual) host.  Set Enterprise Manager Cloud Control to Offline Mode: Setup –> Provisioning and Patching –> select Offline Patching.

When selecting ‘check for updates you get the following message:

Import the archive through EMCLI:

# cd  /u01/app/oracle/product/mw/bin

# ./emcli login –username=sysman

# ./emcli sync (don’t know for sure if it’s necessary)

# ./emcli import_update_catalog –file=home/oracle/p9348486_112000_Generic.zip –omslocal

In the self-update page you can see the status when clicking on ‘Plugin’): Downloaded.

In emcli you can see this via :

# emcli get_plugin_deployment_status –plugin_id=oracle.sysman.orhc

Trying to deploy the plugin:

 

In the next screens adding the plugin and clicking ‘Next’ to deploy: error.

 

 

EM-4084: The current state of ORAchk Healthchecks does not qualify for further operation.  So… no issues with prerequisites or what so ever, the file is successfully imported, but not usable for some reason.

Nothing in log-files. Trying to deploy the file through EMCLI:

Same result. Deleted the plugin, downloaded and imported again. Also deployed the prerequisites plugins of engineered system and installed the linux package ‘Expect’. No success. No bugs or documentation found in My Oracle Support.

Allright, switching to deploying the ORAchk in Online mode (yes, this works!).

Deploying the plugin, online through GUI and EMCLI.

Choose Setup –> Extensibility –> Self Update –> Online mode.

You may have to fill in the credentials for My Oracle Support in between.

When clicking the ‘Check updates’, OEM will check on updates and ‘Oracle ORAchk healthcheck will be visible in the plugin-page:

 

Select the plugin, and download:

When downloaded, going to deploy the plug-in.

Plugin page:

Deploying the plugin the same way as in off-line mode: now we’re getting somewhere.

Next:

After the review and confirmation: deploying which will automatically restart the OMS !

Provisioning ORAchk

Choose Enterprise –>Provisioning and Patching—>Procedure Library

Launch through clicking ‘Go’.

Specifying root passwords.

 

Clicking show status:

Managing the ORAchk plugin

Choose Enterprise—>  Provisioning and Patching—> Procedure Library

Choose ‘Manage ORAchk/Exachk and click ‘go’.

Mainly you have the opportunity to stop the daemon which is running at that moment.

Output

Got it working. Where’s the output?

Here’s the documentation about using this plugin.

Choose Enterprise –> Compliancy –> Results

The OEM-repository had a score of 97%:

Unfortunately, when clicking on db_block_checksum, there are no ‘recommended actions’ on this page. It’s incompliant, that’s it. Clicking further you will get the standards.

All together it’s quite simple to implement ORAchk when you’re Enterprise Manager Environment is in online mode. And that’s compliant to the policy of Oracle…

And probably / hopefully there will be patches of the ORAchk plugin in short notice.

Resources

General documentation: http://docs.oracle.com/cd/E63000_01/PICHK/ch1_overview.htm#PICHK117

Documentation about downloading plugin: http://docs.oracle.com/cd/E24628_01/doc.121/e24473/plugin_mngr.htm#CJGBEAHJ

Download page plugin: https://updates.oracle.com/Orion/Download/download_patch/p9348486_112000_Generic.zip

Using the plugin: http://docs.oracle.com/cd/E63000_01/PICHK/ch3_accessing.htm#PICHK161