I am currently working with Grid Control 11.1 (plus PSU October 2010) on Linux x86-64 and came across multiple issues:

• For provisioning, you need 3 specific patches as explained in MOS Note 427577.1.
• For one of those patches, you need to fix OMS_HOME/bin/PARTool.pm (MOS Note 1145125.1)
• If you are using HP-UX Itanium Agents, you need to apply agent patch Patch 9756966 (MOS Note 1214754.1)
• If you are managing 11.2 RAC databases with grid control you need Patch 10015330 (MOS Note 1183783.1)
• Some of the target databases have database time zone set differently. This results in future timestamp values in MGMT_TARGETS_LOAD_TIMES.LAST_LOAD_TIME and this in turn results in “Status Pending” for targets under specific circumstances. We did not observe this behaviour with 10.2.0.5 agents.

I am sure there will be more to come ….

I have uploaded the material of the german DOAG presentation on Oracle Data Guard 11gr2 Whats New to the “presentation” section. It also contains 6 recorded demos using Enterprise Manager Grid Control.

I have uploaded- a step-by-step Installation Guide for Oracle Enterprise Manager Grid Control 11g on RHEL 5.5 x86-32 to the papers section:

• Oracle Enterprise Manager 11g - Grid Control Installation

In MetaLink Note 853691.1: “ALERT: Important Upgrade Steps Required for Enterprise Manager Grid Control 10gR5 (10.2.0.5) Upgrades”, Oracle Support recommends to install some patches after the upgrade of OEM to 10.2.0.5.

Especially, patch bundle #8708893 solves around 20 bugs which could interfere with normal operations of Grid Control.

Today, I tried to get a nice, clean report about objects with reclaimable space from Segment Advisor. It is no problem to display the list in Enterprise Manager Grid|DB Control, but it is not so easy in SQL*Plus.

This is what i ended up with:

 SELECT
  segment_owner ,
  segment_name,
  round(allocated_space/1024/1024) ALLOC_MB ,
  round(used_space/1024/1024) USED_MB ,
  round(reclaimable_space/1024/1024) RECLAIM_MB    ,
  (1-ROUND((used_space/allocated_space),2))*100 AS reclaim_pct
   FROM TABLE(dbms_space.asa_recommendations('TRUE', 'TRUE', 'FALSE'))
  WHERE tablespace_name IN ('TS_DATA')
AND segment_type         = 'TABLE'
AND segment_owner LIKE '%'
AND segment_name LIKE '%'
AND (reclaimable_space >= 1000000
         OR (((1-ROUND((used_space/allocated_space),2))*100)) > 30)
ORDER BY reclaimable_space DESC

A while ago, I attended a one-day seminar of DOAG, the german oracle user group, which covered Oracle Enterprise Manager – Grid Control 10gR5.

There were presentations about:

• Bare-Metal Provisioning: Provisioning of Linux on top of new hardware
• Provisioning of RAC Nodes (Clusterware, ASM, RAC)
• Provisioning of RAC Databases
• Command Line Interface EMCLI
• Managing Oracle VM with Oracle Enterprise Manager
• OEM Grid Control 10gR5 – New Features

The presentation of the New Features is available (although in german) here. The other presentations are available for DOAG members at the DOAG site. Moreover, one of the presenters will install a website for OEM topics on insight-oem.com.

Finally, Oracle Enterprise Manager – Grid Control 10.2.0.5 is available for download for Win32 and Linux x86. Moreover, this is the first release to officially support 11.1.0.7 as repository database as well as the first release to officially support RHEL5 for OMS.

Relevant documents for upgrade are available on MetaLink:

• 763307.1: How to Install the 10.2.0.5.0 Grid Control Patchset on a Well Maintained OMS or Agent

• List of Bugs Fixed: http://download.oracle.com/docs/cd/B16240_01/doc/doc.102/e14226/toc.htm

• 763351.1: Documentation Reference for Grid Control 10.2.0.5.0 Installation and Upgrade

• 464674.1: Checklist for EM 10g Grid Control 10.2.x to 10.2.0.4/10.2.0.5 OMS and Repository Upgrades

To be continued….

If you are running 10.2.0.4 databases and OEM Grid Control Agent 10.2.0.4 and you see that the number of filedescriptors of emagent is constantly increasing, you are hitting Bug 7031906.

The errors in the logfile look like this:

2008-06-27 14:32:28,973 Thread-301 ERROR engine: [oracle_database,MDDB2.world,health_check] :
nmeegd_GetMetricData failed : Instance Health Check initialization failed due to one of the following causes:
the owner of the EM agent process is not same as the owner of the Oracle instance processes; the owner of the
EM agent process is not part of the dba group; or the database version is not 10g (10.1.0.2) and above.
2008-06-27 14:32:28,973 Thread-301 WARN collector: Error exit. Error message: Instance Health
Check initialization failed due to one of the following causes: the owner of the EM agent process is not same as
the owner of the Oracle instance processes; the owner of the EM agent process is not part of the dba group; or
the database version is not 10g (10.1.0.2) and above.

And if you do pmap -x on the pid of emagent, then you will see dozens of lines containing hc_.dat.

Oracle tracks this issue with Bug 7031906 and there are patches available. In case you are running an earlier version of agent or database, check MetaLink Note 602633.1.

I have realized that I have included it in the document “Oracle Enterprise Manager 10gR2 – Grid Control Installation” in the secion “papers”, but unfortunately, in german only.