Application Performance Monitoring in Oracle EBS via OMC

This blog post is the next in the series of end-to-end monitoring of Oracle EBS application via Oracle Management Cloud. Please refer to the below links for the previous posts detailing the prerequisite steps to be performed before application performance monitoring can be enabled for Oracle EBS.

• Prerequisites and host (O.S.) monitoring
• Database monitoring

Configure APM for EBS

Once the database is successfully configured for monitoring, the next step would be to download and install the APM agent specifically for Oracle EBS.

To download the agent, log in to the OMC console and navigate to Administration –> Agents, click on the hamburger menu on the top-right corner, and click on “Download Agents”.

On the next page, select “APM Agent” as “Agent Type” from the dropdown menu. There are four types of APM agents available for download (Java, .Net, Ruby, and Node.JS). For this post, we will be working with the Java agent. Please also note the “Registration Key” as we will need it in later steps.

Transfer the APM agent to the application node, unzip the contents, and provision the java agent. Below are the commands you could use:

# mkdir -p /tmp/omc_apm_agent
# cp <Path to download dir>/1.56_APM_226.zip /tmp/omc_apm_agent/
# chown applmgr:dba /tmp/omc_apm_agent/1.56_APM_226.zip
# sudo su - applmgr
$ cd /tmp/omc_apm_agent
$ unzip 1.56_APM_226.zip
Archive:  1.56_APM_226.zip
  inflating: agent_software_build.xml
  inflating: ApmAgent-1.56.zip
  inflating: ProvisionApmJavaAsAgent.sh
  inflating: ApmAgent-1.56.dat
  inflating: ProvisionApmJavaAsAgent.cmd
   creating: rootCertificates/
  inflating: rootCertificates/DigiCertGlobalRootCA.cer
  inflating: rootCertificates/trustCertRootCA.cer
   creating: install/
   creating: install/libs/
  inflating: install/libs/ApmAgentInstall.jar
  inflating: AgentConfig.info
   creating: certificates/
  inflating: certificates/emaas.cer
$ chmod +x ProvisionApmJavaAsAgent.sh
$ ./ProvisionApmJavaAsAgent.sh -d <Path to non-editioned file-system e.g. /u01/app/ebs/fs_ne> -no-wallet
INFO: -no-wallet is now deprecated
INFO: Starting APM Java agent installer using the following parameters: -d /u01/app/ebs/fs_ne -no-wallet
INFO: Your install directory is /u01/app/ebs/fs_ne
WARNING: /u01/app/ebs/fs_ne does not appear to be the home directory of WebLogic, Tomcat, JBoss, WebSphere or Jetty
INFO: Please enter the registration key or q to quit
<Provide_Registration_Key>
INFO: Agent configuration downloaded successfully
INFO: Running APM java agent installer
INFO: Your settings are as follows:

INFO:               Agent Version = 1.56
INFO:               Tenant ID = <Your Tenant ID>
INFO:               Hostname = <will be determined automatically at Agent startup>
INFO:               Destination = /u01/app/ebs/fs_ne
INFO:               Registration Key = <Provided_Registration_Key>
INFO: Do you wish to proceed with these values? (y/n)
y
INFO: Start Checking IDCS Reachable
INFO: End Check IDCS Reachable
INFO: Performing full installation
*******************************************************************************
 You can get agent property files in the following location:
/u01/app/ebs/fs_ne/apmagent/config

 You can get log files in the following location:
/u01/app/ebs/fs_ne/apmagent/logs

*******************************************************************************
So far, so good! 

Enable APM agent in Weblogic Managed Servers

Please note that the output will have a lot of instruction on next steps. You can safely ignore these instructions and proceed with enabling APM java agent in EBS WebLogic managed servers by following the below steps:

• Log in to the WebLogic console.
• From the left-pane, click on “Servers” to display a list of configured managed servers.
• Click on “Lock and Edit” to modify items.
• On each of the managed servers that you want to be monitored for performance, click on the “Server Start” tab and update the “Arguments” with the below parameter, and click “Save”. Note that this is not required for “Admin” server.

-javaagent:<PATH_TO_fs_ne e.g. /u01/app/ebs/fs_ne>/apmagent/lib/system/ApmAgentInstrumentation.jar

• Once all the managed servers are updated, click on “Activate Changes” to activate the changes we just made.
• Now, restart all the managed servers.

Discover EBS Entity in OMC

To discover the EBS application and its components, let us log in to the OMC console, navigate to Administration –> Discovery –> Add Entity. On the “Add Entity” page, select “EBS” as entity type from the dropdown menu, provide a unique “Entity Name“, “Database Host Name” (it can be either one of the node in case of RAC) and “Database Port“.

Under “Database Service Name“, please provide a service name that connects to the PDB or, simply provide the PDB name. Please note that providing the CDB service name results into numerous errors related to insufficient permissions and non-existent objects from APPS schema.

The official documentation for OMC suggests to select “true” for “Discover database” however, in my personal experience if the database is already discovered/ added in OMC in the previous post, it can safely be set to “false” and the database entity can be associated with the EBS stack in later steps. No matter how many times I tried, I always encountered insufficient permissions errors in adding EBS entity with “Discover Database” set to true.

Under “Cloud Agent“, you should select the cloud agent running on one of the EBS application nodes, preferably the one where weglogic server is running.

Under “Monitoring Credentials“, select EBS 12.1 or, EBS 12.2.

Provide the database credentials. In case of EBS 12.2, you must also provide the Weblogic server credentials. Select the appropriate OMC “License Edition”. If you enable “Associate Logs”, OMC will automatically associate appropriate logs with the EBS entity during log collection. Once done, click on “Add Entity“.

Associate Database Entities

Navigate to Administration –> Discovery –> “Entity Associations” and select the EBS entity you just discovered. This will display all the current entities.

Click on “Add Associations”, select “Contains” as “Association Type”, click on “Add Destination Entities” and select the “Database Entity” you previously discovered. Click on Save.

That is it. Please continue to the “End-to-End Monitoring of Oracle E-Business Suite (EBS) via Oracle Management Cloud” for next and consolidated steps.