Configuring Oracle Database monitoring

The Monitoring Agent for Oracle Database provides monitoring capabilities for the availability, performance, and resource usage of the Oracle database. You can configure more than one Oracle Database agent instance to monitor different Oracle databases. Remote monitoring capability is also provided by this agent.

Before you begin

  • Before you configure the Oracle Database agent, you must grant privileges to the Oracle user account that is used by the Oracle Database agent. For more information about privileges, see Granting privileges to the Oracle Database agent user.
  • If you are monitoring an Oracle database remotely, the agent must be installed on a computer with either the Oracle database software or the Oracle Instant Client installed.

About this task

The directions here are for the most current release of the agent, except as indicated. For information about how to check the version of an agent in your environment, see Agent version.

For general Oracle database performance monitoring, the Oracle Database agent provides monitoring for the availability, performance, resource usage, and activities of the Oracle database, for example:
  • Availability of instances in the monitored Oracle database.
  • Resource information such as memory, caches, segments, resource limitation, tablespace, undo (rollback), system metric, and system statistics.
  • Activity information, such as OS statistics, sessions, contention, and alert log.

The Oracle Database agent is a multiple-instance agent. You must create the first instance and start the agent manually. Additionally, each agent instance can monitor multiple databases.

The Managed System Name for the Oracle Database agent includes a database connection name that you specify, an agent instance name that you specify, and the host name of the computer where the agent is installed. For example, pc:connection_name-instance_name-host_name:SUB, where pc is your two character product code and SUB is the database type (Possible values are RDB, ASM, or DG). The Managed System Name is limited to 32 characters. The instance name that you specify is limited to 23 characters, minus the length of your host name and database connection. For example, if you specify dbconn as your database connection name, Oracle02 as your agent instance name, and your host name is Prod204a, your managed system name is RZ:dbconn-oracle02-Prod204a:RDB. This example uses 22 of the 23 characters available for the database connection name, agent instance name, and host name.
  • If you specify a long instance name, the Managed System name is truncated and the agent code does not display correctly.
  • The length of the connection_name, instance_name, and hostname_name variables are truncated when they exceed 23 characters.
  • To avoid a subnode name that is truncated, change the subnode naming convention by setting the following environment variables: KRZ_SUBNODE_INCLUDING_AGENTNAME, KRZ_SUBNODE_INCLUDING_HOSTNAME, and KRZ_MAX_SUBNODE_ID_LENGTH.
  • If you set KRZ_SUBNODE_INCLUDING_AGENTNAME to NO, the subnode ID part of the subnode name does not include the agent instance name. For example,
    • Default subnode name: DBConnection-Instance-Hostname
    • Subnode name with environment variable set to NO: DBConnection-Hostname
  • If you set KRZ_SUBNODE_INCLUDING_HOSTNAME to NO, the subnode ID part of the subnode name does not include the host name. For example,
    • Default subnode name: DBConnection-Instance-Hostname
    • Subnode name with environment variable set to NO: DBConnection-Instance

Procedure

  1. To configure the agent on Windows systems, you can use the IBM Performance Management window or the silent response file.
  2. To configure the agent on Linux® and UNIX systems, you can run the script and respond to prompts, or use the silent response file.

What to do next

For advanced configuration only, the Oracle database administrator must enable the Oracle user to run the krzgrant.sql script to access the database, see Running the krzgrant.sql script.

In the Cloud APM console, go to your Application Performance Dashboard to view the data that was collected. For information about using the Cloud APM console, see Starting the Cloud APM console.

If you are unable to view the data in the agent dashboards, first check the server connection logs and then the data provider logs. The default paths to these logs are as follows:
  • Linux or AIX/opt/ibm/apm/agent/logs
  • WindowsC:\IBM\APM\TMAITM6_x64\logs
For help with troubleshooting, see the Cloud Application Performance Management Forum.