Oracle Cloud Infrastructure Documentation

Understanding Instances

An instance is an OS installation that has registered with OS Management Hub. An instance can be a virtual machine, a bare metal server, third-party cloud instance, or OCI compute instance.

Instance Location

Instances can be located in:

Understanding the Agent

OS Management Hub uses an agent for managing and applying updates on an instance. The agent interacts with the OS content on an instance as directed by OS Management Hub and reports data and results back to the service. The agent differs between OCI and on-premises or third-party cloud.

OCI instances (Oracle Cloud Agent)

OCI instances use the Oracle Cloud Agent to interact with OS Management Hub. You enable the OS Management Hub plugin for Oracle Cloud Agent to register it with the service. See Registering an OCI Instance.

Important

OS Management Hub requires minimum Oracle Cloud Agent version 1.40. For instances using platform images released before April 2024, upgrade the Oracle Cloud Agent to 1.40 or later.

The OS Management Hub plugin provides the necessary permissions to apply updates on instances:

  • For Oracle Linux instances, the plugin uses the standard Linux permissions for a sudo administrative account for applying updates.
  • For Windows instances, the plugin creates a virtual service account OCAOSMH for applying updates. Don't remove this account.
On-premises or supported third-party cloud (Management Agent)

On-premises and third-party cloud instances use the Management Agent to interact with OS Management Hub. You must install the Management Agent on the instance, activate the OS Management Hub plugin, and register the instance with the service. See Registering a Non-OCI Instance.

Supported OS Versions

OCI instances

OS Management Hub is supported on Oracle Linux and Windows platform images for the following OS versions. You can also configure custom images for OS Management Hub by installing the required Oracle Cloud Agent and enabling the OS Management Hub Agent plugin.

  • Oracle Linux 6, 7, 8, or 9

  • Windows Server 2016, 2019, or 2022 Standard, Datacenter
Important

OS Management Hub requires minimum Oracle Cloud Agent version 1.40. For instances using platform images released before April 2024, upgrade the Oracle Cloud Agent to 1.40 or later.
On-premises or third-party cloud instances
  • Oracle Linux 7, 8, or 9

Instance Activity and Status

An instance registered with OS Management Hub checks in periodically with the service using the OS Management Hub agent plugin.

Possible status values include:

  • Active: An instance that's actively checking in with the service. An active instance checks in with the service at an interval of every 2 minutes.
  • Offline: An instance that hasn't checked in with the service for 24 hours (or longer).
  • Inactive: An instance that hasn't checked in with the service in 30 minutes (or longer).
  • Registering: An instance that's in the process of registering with the service.
  • Registration failed: An instance that failed to register with the service.
  • Unregistering: An instance that's unregistering from the service. Once unregistered, OS Management Hub will no longer manage the instance.

The status of instances is displayed on the Instances page and can be viewed in reports.