Enterprise Manager allows you to manage and monitor targets on hosts where the Oracle Management Agent is installed and running.
You can also use Enterprise Manager to simplify the patching of Oracle software on any host where the Management Agent is running, and to provide critical patch advisories.
Enterprise Manager simplifies the process of patching Oracle software with these features:
Critical Patch Advisories also provides support for Remedies, in that you can now select an advisory, and view the calculated remedies from the context of that Advisory, as well as the affected Oracle homes.
Online Patching: This feature allows you to connect to OracleMetaLink via Enterprise Manager, perform a search and download the required patches/patchsets, and apply.
Offline Patching: This feature allows you to perform all the patching activities from the Patch Cache. That is, even when the OMS is not connected to OracleMetaLink via Internet, you can perform a search, download and apply a patch/patchset. See Viewing Patch Cache Information, and Offline Patching Settings for more information.
Lets you search for an Oracle patch (or patchset) that interests you at the OracleMetaLink Web site.
Note: If you are accessing a proxy server to get to the OracleMetaLink site, you will require proper authentication, and must provide appropriate credentials. Oracle supports "basic proxy server authentication".
Stage and Apply: This step in the patching wizard helps you to stage the patches/patchsets, and apply them on the required Oracle homes. It also helps customize your patching operation, by allowing you to specify custom pre/post-patching scripts that you may want to execute.
Standalone Database Patching: When patching standalone database by targets, the Stage and Apply step in the patching wizard provides additional options wherein you can choose to shutdown the database, apply SQL scripts (and start the database in Upgrade mode), and startup the database again.
The Reporting Framework in Enterprise Manager generates all the Patching reports, facilitating better analysis. See Report Definitions for more information.
Shared Agent Patching: This feature automates the application of patches on shared Agents when they are NFS mounted. During a Shared Agent patching, the Patching wizard will patch the central location where the Agent is installed, shut down and start the shared Agents, and execute any pre/post-patching scripts (if specified).
Patch Validation: This feature helps you to view the status (Valid/Invalid) of all the available Patches and Patchsets. It also allows you to Validate or Invalidate a particular Patch/Patchset.
Oracle Home Credentials: The Enterprise Manager Patching wizard allows you to override the preferred credentials, required to access the selected Oracle homes. When overriding the preferred credentials, you can choose to either specify one set of credentials for all Oracle homes, or specify different credentials for each home.
For some types of patches, Enterprise Manager maps a given patch to the targets in your enterprise to which the selected patch can be staged and applied. For these types of patches, Enterprise Manager identifies the targets to which the patch has already been applied.
For other types of patches that Enterprise Manager cannot automatically map to targets in your enterprise, Enterprise Manager allows you to specify the affected Oracle homes, hosts, and directories on which you want to stage the patch.
Installs a patch on the selected targets, using the Enterprise Manager job system
Provides the status of patch application at each target, through Enterprise Manager job status information.
Helps you to manually add patches to the patch cache if you will be staging or applying patches when you do not have access to OracleMetaLink.
Helps you to specify the maximum size of the patch cache and automatically performs purge operations when the maximum size is exceeded.
Helps you to manually remove patches from the patch cache.
Helps you to view patch cache information (for example, view details or read the Readme for the patches and patch sets in the patch cache)
Helps you to update the Oracle Management Repository with the latest OracleMetaLink patch selection criteria.
Important: To enable Enterprise Manager to search for patches at OracleMetaLink and to provide critical patch advisories, you must specify valid OracleMetaLink credentials and set up the RefreshFromMetalink job, as explained in Specifying Patching Credentials.
Related Topics
Specifying Patching Credentials
About Critical Patch Advisories
Manually Adding a Patch to the Patch Cache
Specifying the Maximum Size of the Patch Cache
Removing a Patch from the Patch Cache
Viewing Patch Cache Information
Metalink and Patching Settings
Viewing Oracle Software Patching Reports
Updating the Management Repository with Current Patch Selection Criteria
Enterprise Manager Information Roadmap
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