As a Database Infrastructure Administrator, you can use the Oracle Cloud Infrastructure Database Management service to monitor the External Database ecosystem, discover on-premises Oracle Database Systems (External Database Systems) and monitor and manage the databases and other components in the DB system.

An Oracle Database is dependent on components such as Oracle Automatic Storage Management (ASM) for storage and Oracle Listeners (listeners) for connectivity in order for it to be available. As these components interact and operate in synergy, they are collectively grouped into a DB system. An External Database System is an Oracle DB system located outside of Oracle Cloud Infrastructure, and using Database Management you can discover it as a single composite unit. This reduces the effort required to discover the components separately in Database Management, and also simplifies the process of monitoring them.

Using Database Management, you can register the following components (in addition to databases) as a single resource using the DB system resource-type:

• Oracle Grid Infrastructure components, namely Oracle Clusterware and ASM, which form the integrated foundation for Oracle Real Application Clusters on any major platform supported for RAC databases and Oracle RAC One Node. For a standalone server that provides system support for a single instance database, this software only includes ASM.
  • Clusterware is a set of components that enables servers to operate together as if they were one server.
  • ASM is a volume manager and a file system for database files.
• Listener is a database server process that receives client requests, establishes a connection to the database or ASM instance, and then hands over the client connection to the server process. A listener can run locally on the database server or run remotely (SCAN listener).

Here's a diagram that provides an overview of the External Database System components Database Management can discover and monitor:

For more information on these components, see Oracle Database documentation.

Database Management supports Oracle Database version 11.2.0.4 and later, and Clusterware and ASM version 12.1 and later. Database Management currently only supports DB systems on the Linux platform.

Here are some of the important tasks you can perform using Database Management for External Database Systems:

• Discover an External Database System and register and add connections to the components.
• Monitor the components in an External Database System at a glance.
• Obtain and monitor the metrics for the components.

The Database Management feature set to monitor the External Database ecosystem takes the existing capability in the Oracle Cloud Infrastructure External Database service one step further. It provides a single-pane-of-glass view of all the External Databases and other External Database System components in a compartment, in the Database Management interface. It also provides the option of registering and connecting to External Databases and enabling Database Management for the External Databases from within Database Management, and this is available as part of the existing licensing options. For information on pricing, see OCI Price List.