Our organization has decided to use Oracle’s ZDLRA, further embracing Oracle’s engineered systems to a greater extent. Oracle Sales was able to win the business over EMC Data Domain at a lower cost.  Data Domain’s DDBoost has been tedious to configure to a point that moving away is actually encouraging.

Frustrations In order to support ZDLRA on OEM, I have to get our OEM 13.3 patched. There are several frustrations worth mentioning: Even Oracle’s engineers/Sales don’t know exactly what version of OEM actually supports ZDLRA: Some have said it requires OEM 13.4, which proved to be false. Some said that it requires OEM 13.3.2, which turns out that that was the ZDLRA plugin version. Patches for OEM sometimes show 13.3.2 in the patch notes, but upon verification, that is the ZDLRA plugin version. In general, there are many components on OEM that need to be patched: OMS, webtier, agent, plugin(OMS/Agent side).  Not to mention the underlying database tier(OMR) that also needs patching.  For ZDLRA support, however, the webtier doesn’t need patching this time. In addition to #2, the target agents could be on Exadata, ODA or just custom hardware.  So you can have different plugins deployed to those agents.  But such a diverse environment would just give you a nightmare to manage.  If possible, as in my case, keep all agents configuration the same(central/targets).

Metalink Notes

Rely on applicable Metalink notes to give you the precise information regarding version compatibility and certification.

These 2 key metalink notes lead you to the correct patches.

Since the ZDLRA is just an Exadata, we need to make sure that OEM is patched to support the version of Exadata that the ZDLRA is built on.  In our case, the ZDLRA is based on Exadata X8M-2.  Then on top of that, you look to patch OEM to support ZDLRA itself.

1) Exadata System Software and Hardware Versions Supported by Oracle Enterprise Manager Plug-ins (Doc ID 1626579.1)

This row on the doc basically says, for Enterprise Manager 13c R3 13.3.0.0, and for Exadata software version 19.3.x, and for Exadata hardware generation X8M-2 and X8M-8, these are the versions of the various OEM Plugins that you need to support the ZDLRA’s underlying Exadata.

2) ZDLRA Software Versions Supported by the Oracle Enterprise Manager ZDLRA Plug-in (Doc ID 2542836.1)

This row on the doc tells me that for Enterprise Manager 13c R3 13.3.0.0, and for Exadata hardware generation X8M-2, and for ZDLRA software version of 19.2.1.1.1, you’d need the ZDLRA Plugin version 13.3.2.0.0.

Versions

These instructions are based on these specific versions:

• OMS 13.3.0.0.0
• ZDLRA Plugin 13.3.2.0.0
• ZDLRA is based on the X8M-2 Exadata hardware generation

Plugins

These are the required plug-ins to support the ZDLRA functionality on OEM:

• Oracle Exadata Plug-in
• Oracle ZDLRA Plug-in
• Oracle Systems Infrastructure Plug-in
• Oracle Database Plug-in

Key Steps

In a nutshell, these are the steps:

1. Download and apply necessary plugins through Self Update on OEM.
2. Deploy plugins through OEM to:
   1. OMS
   2. Central agents
   3. Target agents
3. Apply PSUs/patches to OMS(See section 1 below).
4. Apply PSUs/patches to Central Agents(See section 2 below).
5. Apply PSUs/patches to ZDLRA agents(See section 3 below).
6. Apply PSUs/patches to target agents(See section 4 below).

1. OMS Patches

Patch	Patch Number	Steps
OMS PSU System Patch 13.3.0.0.200414	31035765	export ORACLE_HOME=/u01/app/oracle/product/em/middleware cd /31035765 omspatcher apply -analyze emctl stop oms omspatcher apply apply_30276176.sql ALTER SESSION SET CURRENT_SCHEMA=SYSMAN_RO; /sysman/admin/emdrep/sql/ core/latest/readonly/collections_meteval_ro_user_pkgbody.sql ALTER SESSION SET CURRENT_SCHEMA=MGMT_VIEW; /sysman/admin/emdrep/sql/ core/latest/collections/collections_meteval_view_user_pkgbody.sql
OMS-Side Plug-in System 13.3.2.0.200630	31521484	export ORACLE_HOME=/u01/app/oracle/product/em/middleware cd /31521484 omspatcher apply –analyze emctl stop oms omspatcher apply Run scripts as instructed on screen.
Check patches		omspatcher lspatches
Start things back up		emctl start oms emcli login -username=sysman emcli sync

2. Central Agent Patches

Patch	Patch number	Steps
13.3 ZDLRA Plugin
Agent-side Monitoring 13.3.2.0.200229	30905854	cd /30905854 /u01/app/oracle/product/agent/13.3.0.0/agent_13.3.0.0.0/OPatch/opatch apply -oh /u01/app/oracle/product/agent/13.3.0.0/agent_13.3.0.0.0

3. ZDLRA Agent Patches

Patch	Patch Number	Steps
13.3.0 Management Agent 13.3.0.0.200630	31381127	cd /31381127 /u01/app/oracle/product/agent/13.3.0.0/agent_13.3.0.0.0/OPatch/opatch napply -oh /u01/app/oracle/product/agent/13.3.0.0/agent_13.3.0.0.0 $ORACLE_HOME/root.sh
13.3 Database Plug-in
Agent-Side Monitoring 13.3.2.0.200630	31521518	cd /31521518 /u01/app/oracle/product/agent/13.3.0.0/agent_13.3.0.0.0/OPatch/opatch apply -oh /u01/app/oracle/product/agent/13.3.0.0/agent_13.3.0.0.0
Agent-Side Discovery 13.3.2.0.191031	30435787	cd /30435787 /u01/app/oracle/product/agent/13.3.0.0/agent_13.3.0.0.0/OPatch/opatch apply -oh /u01/app/oracle/product/agent/13.3.0.0/agent_13.3.0.0.0
13.3 System Infrastructure Plugin
Agent-Side Monitoring 13.3.2.0.200430	31521524	cd /31521524 /u01/app/oracle/product/agent/13.3.0.0/agent_13.3.0.0.0/OPatch/opatch apply -oh /u01/app/oracle/product/agent/13.3.0.0/agent_13.3.0.0.0
13.3 ZDLRA Plugin
Agent-side Monitoring 13.3.2.0.200229	30905854	cd /30905854 /u01/app/oracle/product/agent/13.3.0.0/agent_13.3.0.0.0/OPatch/opatch apply -oh /u01/app/oracle/product/agent/13.3.0.0/agent_13.3.0.0.0
13.3 Exadata Plugin
Agent-Side Monitoring 13.3.2.0.20531	31376470	cd /31376470 /u01/app/oracle/product/agent/13.3.0.0/agent_13.3.0.0.0/OPatch/opatch apply -oh /u01/app/oracle/product/agent/13.3.0.0/agent_13.3.0.0.0
Agent-Side Discovery 13.3.2.0.191031	30435816	cd /30435816 /u01/app/oracle/product/agent/13.3.0.0/agent_13.3.0.0.0/OPatch/opatch apply -oh /u01/app/oracle/product/agent/13.3.0.0/agent_13.3.0.0.0
Check agent's opatch inventory		/u01/app/oracle/product/agent/13.3.0.0/agent_13.3.0.0.0/OPatch/opatch lsinventory -oh /u01/app/oracle/product/agent/13.3.0.0/agent_13.3.0.0.0

4. Target Agent Patches

Patch	Patch number	Steps
13.3 ZDLRA Plugin
Agent-side Monitoring 13.3.2.0.200229	30905854	cd /30905854 /u01/app/oracle/product/agent/13.3.0.0/agent_13.3.0.0.0/OPatch/opatch apply -oh /u01/app/oracle/product/agent/13.3.0.0/agent_13.3.0.0.0

End Result

Once all these finished perfectly, you’re then ready to discover the ZDLRA.  Also, use the Agent Gold Image feature to keep target agents updated, instead of patching each and every target agent manually!