SCOM R2/OM12: Monitoring Oracle

Oracle isn’t just a database solution. There is way much more to it and today many businesses rely on Oracle databases for many business critical solutions. So SCOM needs to monitor those databases as well. 

For a long time there was only ONE solution available for it, delivered by EXC. Later acquired by Quest. However, these EXC MPs are a nightmare. They are really bad so I stay away from solutions like that.

Sometime ago a new player entered the market, Bridgeways. They offer an Oracle MP as well. However, a key customer of mine tested that MP and soon we discovered it has some issues. For instance in the beginning there was no good support for multi listeners, which is the equivalent of a single server running multiple SQL server instances. Later on that support was added, but still there were other issues at hand as well. Like configuring the MP itself and the support we got. IMO, the total experience of a MP consists out of many aspects, among them the support a customer gets.

So this key customer of mine decided to run some synthetic transactions instead and to delete the Oracle MP since it added more work than it added value. Back to square one.

Therefore it’s good news that TWO new MPs for monitoring Oracle will see the light. When? Just contact these two companies and they’ll tell you more:

1. NiCe Management Solutions: Oracle MP, go here.
   
2. OpsLogix: Oracle MP, go here.

Don’t ask me what MP is better. As stated before the TOTAL quality of a MP is based on many aspects, like these ones:

1. Availability of the MP;
2. Support on the MP;
   1. When you contact support, how long does it take before you get a valid answer?
3. Usage:
   1. Does the MP deliver what’s expected from it?
   2. Is the MP easy to handle (import, configuration) or is it rocket science?
   3. Does the MP deliver good reports?
4. Visualization:
   1. Is the information shown in a proper way in the SCOM Console?
   2. Is  there a good State View?
   3. Is there a good Event View?
   4. Is there a good component overview, enabling good event analyses?
5. Release cycles:
   1. How many times is the MP updated (for bugs or monitoring new releases of the monitored product/service)?
   2. How RTM is the MP? Does it contain bugs which are bad or annoying?
6. Pricing.

As you can see, the price is important but not the most important component. A MP which comes cheap but doesn’t deliver any added value or even worse, floods your SCOM environment with false Alerts or wrecks your databases because of too short discovery cycles, broken cook down, or config churn, you pay a HIGH price.

My advice:
Test these MPs against the scenario’s your Oracle DBA’s have set out. You’ll see that for every MP there are some downsides to note. Choose the MP which is the best fit for you.