5 Application Server Management

Out-of-Box Management of Oracle Application Server Instances

When you install an Oracle Application Server instance, you automatically get the Oracle Application Server Control to manage that instance. Each installed Application Server has its own Application Server Control.

The Application Server Control is the Enterprise Manager Web-based application for managing Oracle Application Server 10g (9.0.4). The Application Server Control provides Web-based management tools designed specifically for Application Server.

From the Application Server Control, you can monitor and administer a single Oracle Application Server instance, a farm of Oracle Application Server instances, or Oracle Application Server Clusters. You can also deploy applications, monitor real-time performance, manage security, and configure the components of your Application Server.

The Application Server Control relies on various underlying technologies to discover, monitor, and administer the Oracle Application Server environment.

The Application Server Control Framework consists of the Application Server Control and its underlying technologies:

• Oracle Dynamic Monitoring Service (DMS)

• Oracle Process Management Notification (OPMN)

• Distributed Configuration Management (DCM)

• A local version of the Oracle Management Agent specifically designed to gather monitoring data for the Application Server Control.

For additional management functionality, for example, Application Performance Management, deployments, historical data collections for performance trending alerts, and so on, you can deploy Grid Control to get additional Application Server management.

Centralized Management of Oracle Application Server Instances

While Application Server Control provides standalone management for an Application Server and its components, you can centrally manage all your Application Servers through one tool rather than through several Application Server Controls by using the Grid Control (Figure 1-2). For example, say you have 10 Application Servers deployed on five hosts. By deploying a Management Agent on each host, Enterprise Manager automatically discovers the Application Server on those hosts and automatically begins monitoring them using default monitoring levels, notification rules, and so on.

Both the Application Server Control and the Grid Control have their own Application Server Home page which provides easy access to key information required by your application server administrators. The Application Server Home page on the Grid Control (Figure 5-1) provides:

• Application server status, responsiveness, and performance data

• Resource usage for the application server and its components

• A single view of all Java 2 Platform Enterprise Edition (J2EE) applications and web services

• Alerts and diagnostic drill-downs so you can identify and resolve problems quickly

• Links to Oracle Application Server component home pages

• Links to the Oracle Application Server Control for administration operations such as starting and stopping components, modifying configurations, and deploying applications

Figure 5-1 Application Server Home Page of Grid Control

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Complete Oracle Application Server Administration

The Oracle Application Server Control provides a full set of features for performing Oracle Application Server administration, with Web-based interfaces for performing operations such as:

• Starting and stopping services

• Modifying server configuration parameters

• Creating new OC4J containers and adding JVMs

• Configuring J2EE resources such as Java Database Connectivity (JDBC) data sources and Java Authentication and Authorization Service (JAAS) providers for J2EE application security

• Deploying J2EE and Web Services applications

• Managing additional application server components such as Oracle Application Server Portal and Oracle Application Server Reports Services

• Creating clusters, that are also managed with Oracle Application Server Control, that speed up the configuration and deployment of your Web applications

Many of these management operations can also be performed across Oracle Application Server clusters, which are also managed with Enterprise Manager.

Automated Oracle Application Server Monitoring and Alerts

Enterprise Manager automatically gathers and evaluates diagnostic information from Oracle Application Server systems distributed across the enterprise. As with all services managed by Enterprise Manager, an extensive array of Oracle Application Server performance metrics are automatically monitored against predefined thresholds. Alerts are generated when metrics exceed these thresholds.

For example, Enterprise Manager can automatically monitor:

• The CPU or memory consumption of the application server, including detailed monitoring of individual Java Virtual Machines (JVMs) being run by the server's Oracle Application Server Containers for J2EE (OC4J) instances

• J2EE application responsiveness from the application down through individual servlets and Enterprise JavaBeans (EJBs)

• HyperText Transfer Protocol (HTTP) Server session volumes, connection duration, and error rates

• Oracle Application Server Web Cache hit rates and volumes

When you receive an Oracle Application Server alert notification, Enterprise Manager makes it easy to investigate the problem. For example, notification of excessive CPU consumption by OC4J may lead to investigation of the applications running in that container. Using the J2EE Applications tab of the Application Server Home page (Figure 5-2), you can quickly identify the highest volume or least responsive application. You can then drill down and diagnose application's servlets, Java Server Pages (JSPs), or EJBs so you can pinpoint the bottleneck.

Figure 5-2 Monitoring the Performance of Your Deployed J2EE Applications

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Oracle Application Server Diagnostics and Historical Analysis

This section describes important management tasks, such as:

• Diagnosing Oracle Application Server Performance Issues with "Top" Reports

• Analyzing Historical Oracle Application Server Performance

Diagnosing Oracle Application Server Performance Issues with "Top" Reports

In addition to automated monitoring, Enterprise Manager provides you with easy access to flexible diagnostic data in the form of "top" reports, such as the top servlets or EJBs. These diagnostic reports can be generated based on a variety of criteria. For example, you can identify the top servlets by response time or session activity (Figure 5-3).

Figure 5-3 Displaying the Top JSPs for a J2EE Application

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