This is the homepage of the MySQL Plug-in for Oracle Enterprise Manager Grid Control 10g, a development project sponsored by The Pythian Group. The plug-in extends monitoring capabilities to Grid Control so that DBAs with heterogeneous environments can monitor MySQL systems using the same tool they use for Oracle products such as Oracle Databases and Application Servers.

With this plug-in, a DBA can add a new MySQL target just as they can an Oracle database. Oracle Enterprise Manager Agent doesn’t have to be running on the same host as the monitored MySQL database. I.e., remote monitoring of the MySQL database using one or two agents is possible. This is very important as many administrators prefer to keep server software stack at bare minimum whereas Oracle Agent is often considered somewhat heavy and bulky to install.

MySQL targets behave in the same way as any other Grid Control targets, including availability monitoring, performance metrics collections, configurations management, alerts notifications, and reports.

Download

Currently, the first public beta is released, version 0.42. You can download it here: MySQL plug-in 0.42. You can leave your feedback on the 0.42 release blog post.

Installation

MySQL plug-in is distributed in a Management Plug-in Archive (MPA) — a .jar file that includes one or more Management Plug-ins (MP).

Oracle Grid Control 10g provides centralized management of MPs. Plug-ins are uploaded to the central repository using the Grid Control web console and then deployed on the agents that need to monitor these targets. After deployment, an administrator can add new targets. With the MySQL Plug-in, the agent can run on the same host as a MySQL database, or on a remote machine monitoring a number of MySQL databases.

Importing the Plug-In to the Management Server

Login to Grid Control web console as Super Administrator and use the following sequence:

1. Go to setup (top-right corner of every page).
2. Navigate to “Management Plug-ins” on the left sidebar menu.
3. Click the “Import” button; the “Import Management Plug-ins” page comes up.
4. Enter the path to the downloaded MPA .jar file (use the “Browse” button) and click the “List Archive” button; the page will reload, bringing up the list of available plug-ins in the MPA.
5. Select the version of the plug-in to import (there is usually only one), and click “OK”.

Import usually takes just a few seconds, and then you should be back to the “Management Plug-ins” screen which will look like this:

Deployment to Agents

From the “Management Plug-ins” page where you just imported the plug-in, click on the deploy button and add agents on the next screen using the “Add Agents” button. Note that the window with the list of agent doesn’t list any by default, and you need to click the “Go” button even if you leave the search condition empty.

This is the most critical part, and if it succeeds, you should see a non-zero number in the column “Deployed Agents” back on the Management Plug-ins page. Otherwise, it will contain the error message on the top of the page.

For details of the error, please refer to the Oracle Management Server (OMS) log file: $OMS_HOME/sysman/log/emoms.log.

Note that Oracle Grid Control will transparently upgrade or downgrade the plug-in if an agent has already had another version deployed unless plug-in versions are not compatible; see version release notes.

Adding MySQL targets

It’s finally the time to add your MySQL databases the Grid Control. If you were upgrading from a previous version, nothing needs to be done with the existing targets — everything will have been taken care of during the previous deployment process.

Navigate to the agent that will monitor MySQL database you are adding (one way is through “Setup” -> “Agents”). On the agent’s home page in the “Monitored Targets” section, select “MySQL Server” in the drop-down list and click the “Go” button next to it.

This will bring up the “Add MySQL Server” page, where you will need to provide the target name (unique across all targets in Grid Control) and full several instance properties:

• Hostname (required) — the IP address or hostname to connect to the MySQL database
• Port (optional) — MySQL’s port for connection if it’s not the default
• MySQL Username (optional) — the MySQL database user
• Password (optional) — the MySQL database user password

Only the hostname is a required monitoring configuration property. MySQL user and/or password can be left empty, depending on your security setup, but I strongly suggest you use them.