Setting up an Oracle database monitor

Oracle is an object-relational database management system primarily designed for enterprise grid computing. It manages information, applications and provides logical data storage using tablespaces.

Monitoring its performance is essential to oversee database health and quickly identify and fix problematic servers and resource areas.

Know the memory and disk space metrics to make sure your Oracle DB processes have enough resources available.
Monitor response time and find out if there's any service suffering from bad database response times.
Know if the tablespaces are full and whether they require appropriate action to increase their capacity.
Track the number of Oracle sessions to know how busy a server is and ensure their continued functioning.

This document details the monitoring metrics to ensure continued performance and the steps to install the plugin .

Key Performance Monitoring Metrics

Session Count

The Session Count metric displays the total number of sessions.

Average Active Sessions

The Average Active Sessions metric denotes the number of sessions on the database that are either working or waiting for a resource at a specific point in time.

Logons per Sec

The Logons per Sec metric denotes the number of user logons per second during the sample period.

Shared Pool Free %

The Shared Pool Free % metrics shows the percentage of free space in the shared pool.

Buffer Cache Hit Ratio

The Buffer Cache Hit Ratio metric shows the percentage of pages found in the buffer cache without having to read from disk.

Long Running Query

The Long Running Query metric displays the count of long-running queries in the database.

To view the list of all metrics from our set of Oracle plugin integrations, visit our GitHub repository.

Get Started

Quick installation

If you're using Linux servers, use the Oracle plugin installer that checks the prerequisites and installs the plugin with a bash script. You don't need to manually set up the plugin if you're using the installer.

Execute the command below in the terminal to run the installer and follow the instructions displayed on-screen:


                  wget https://raw.githubusercontent.com/site24x7/plugins/master/oracle/installer/Site24x7OraclePluginInstaller.sh && sudo bash Site24x7OraclePluginInstaller.sh

Standard installation

Prerequisites

Download and install the Site24x7 server monitoring agent (Linux | Windows) in the server where you plan to run the plugin.
Ensure that you have Python 3.7 or a higher version installed in the server.
Install the oracledb Python module using the command below: pip3 install oracledb
Grant the following roles to the user: grant select_catalog_role to {username} grant create session to {username}

Installation

Create a folder named oracle.
Download the oracle.py and the oracle.cfg files from our Github repository and place them in the oracle folder. wget https://raw.githubusercontent.com/site24x7/plugins/master/oracle/oracle.py && sed -i "1s|^.*|#! $(which python3)|" oracle.py wget https://raw.githubusercontent.com/site24x7/plugins/master/oracle/oracle.cfg
To check if the plugin is working, execute a command with appropriate arguments and see if the script returns a valid JSON output with applicable metrics and their corresponding value. python3 oracle.py --hostname=<name of the host> --port=<port> --sid=<SID> --username=<USERNAME> --password=<PASSWORD> --oracle_home=<ORACLE_HOME>
Add the following configuration in the oracle.cfg file. [ORCL] hostname = "localhost" port = "1521" sid = "ORCL" username = "oracle_username" password = "oracle_password" tls = "false" wallet_location = "/opt/oracle/product/19c/dbhome_1/network/admin/wallets" oracle_home = "/opt/oracle/product/19c/dbhome_1/"
For Windows servers, follow the steps in this article to learn how to run the Python script on Windows. You don't need to do this for Linux.
Move the oracle folder to the Site24x7 server monitoring plugins directory.
For Linux: /opt/site24x7/monagent/plugins/

For Windows: C:\Program Files (x86)\Site24x7\WinAgent\monitoring\plugins\

The agent will automatically execute the plugin within five minutes and display performance data in Site24x7.

To view the plugin monitor and associated performance charts:

Log in to Site24x7.
Navigate to Plugins and click the required monitor.

Plugin Contribution

Feel free to contribute to our existing plugin and come up with suggestions or feedback on our Community.

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