Using Foglight for Oracle Database

Foglight for Oracle monitors the Oracle database activity by connecting to and querying the Oracle database. The agents provided monitor the Oracle database system. The dashboards included with the cartridge provide a visual representation of the status of the major components of the Oracle agents. They allow you to determine any potential bottleneck in database performance. This section provides agent configuration instructions and information on investigating Oracle database performance. It covers the entire monitoring process, starting with the discovery of the database instances and the connection with these instances, and proceeding with the use of the various drilldowns and the Global Administration options.

This section covers the following key areas:

Viewing the Databases Dashboard

This section describes the various components of the Databases dashboard. For more information, refer to Viewing Databases Dashboard.

Creating User-defined Database Groups

Use the Databases area of the navigation pane to create, edit, and remove groups of database instances. Click Edit Group to add or remove database instances from the sub-group.

To create a database group:

  1. Select the parent database instance group, Database Group, under Databases in the navigation pane.
  2. Click the + button. The Add Group dialog box opens.

    The Add Group dialog box displays the name of the parent group in the Parent field. Before proceeding, ensure that the sub-group is added to the requested group.

  3. Type a name for the group in the Name field.
  4. Type a description for the group (optional).
  5. Select an instance in the Available column, and click [>] to move the instance to the Selected column. Alternatively, click [»] to move all of the databases to the Selected column.
  6. Click OK. The group name appears in the Database Groups list. The database instances are listed in the Databases pane. After adding one or more user-defined groups, it is possible to add sub-groups to these groups.

To add sub-groups to a selected group:

  1. Position the cursor on the requested group’s name.
  2. Repeat Step 2 to Step 6 described in To create a database group.

To remove a database group:

  1. Select the group to be removed.
  2. Click the button. The Remove Groups dialog box appears, asking approval to remove the selected group with all its sub groups.
  3. Click Remove. The group is removed from the Database Groups list.

To edit a database sub-group:

  1. Select the requested group.
  2. Click the Edit button. The Edit Group dialog box opens.
  3. To add an instance to the group, select the requested instance in the Available column and click [>] to move the selected instance to the Selected column.
  4. To remove an instance from the sub-group, select the requested instance in the Selected column, and click [<]. The selected instance moves to the Available column.
  5. Click OK.

Components Shared by All Foglight for Oracle Screens

The Customizer button of the table and the In-context action buttons are common to all Foglight for Oracle screens. The Customizer button — use this button, which is found on the upper right corner of each table, to create a custom filter for the table. The filter is created by clicking Customizer and specifying the criteria that the various values should meet in order to be displayed in the table (having a specific name, exceeding a certain size, and so on).

In-context actions buttons — found on the upper right corner of all screens:

  • Refresh — clicking this button retrieves the data acquired using the most recent sampling.
  • Agent Settings — when using panels whose configuration is set using the Databases Administration dashboard, clicking this button opens the relevant screen in the Databases Administration dashboard (for example, clicking this button from within the Databases > Locks panel opens the Locks screen).
  • Useful links — used for carrying out further investigation using the following external sources:
  • What’s New? — provides information about new features implemented and issues resolved in the current release.
  • Release Notes — provides a link to the Foglight for Oracle Release Notes.
  • Deployment Guide — provides a link to the Foglight for Databases Deployment Guide.
  • Topology Mapping — opens the Oracle_Topology_Mapping.csv file.
  • Ask Foglight Community — provides a link to the forum for Foglight products.
  • Contact Support — central knowledge base about all of Quest Software’s products.
  • About — provides information regarding the product version.

Using the Currently Selected Database Group Table

The currently selected database group table displays the following columns.

Name Description
Instance
Sev The highest severity alarm of the Oracle database (whether a database instance, RAC or RAC node), which determines the database’s health state
Name The name of the Oracle instance, RAC or RAC node. In addition, this row includes the Go to Home Page button.
Version The version number of the Oracle database instance.
Up Since The date and time that the Oracle database instance (or, in a RAC, the instance that was the earliest to restart) was last restarted.
Workload The workload (average active sessions) for the Oracle database instance or RAC. When holding the cursor over the workload graph, the dwell displays a chart that shows the workload history over the specified time range.
DB Alarms The number of warning, critical, and fatal alarms for the Oracle database instance/RAC. When holding the cursor over one of the alarm counts, the dwell displays the most recent alarms invoked for this database, sorted by severity. Clicking this field displays the Alarms list, which is listed by severity order. See the Foglight Online Help, Monitoring System-Wide Alarms for details on the alarm information
System Utilization
Host The name of the computer that is hosting the database instance or RAC.
CPU Load (%) The overall operating system CPU usage by all processes (including CPU usage by the database).
Memory (%) The percentage, within the total memory, of memory consumed by all operating system processes (including the database). This value includes both RAM resident memory and swapped memory.
Disk (% Busy) The percentage of time the busiest device spent serving system-wide input/output requests. This metric serves as a measure for the system I/O load.
Monitoring Status
Agent The operational status of the monitoring agent. When the agent instance is running, the State icon is green, and holding the cursor over the icon displays the message Collecting Data. When the agent instance is running but not collecting data, holding the cursor over the icon displays one of the following status messages listed below. -
Starting
Stopped
Stopping
Unknown
When SQL PI is configured the SQL PI icon is displayed.
OS The status of the OS data retrieval.
Note: While the Foglight for Oracle agent retrieves OS data, several OS metrics cannot be retrieved without the Infrastructure cartridge agent. IF OS monitoring was disabled during the creation of the Foglight for Oracle agent through the Oracle Monitoring Installer wizard, the wizard cannot automatically create the Infrastructure cartridge agent; However, this agent can be created manually using the Dashboards > Hosts > Hosts dashboard.
Note: If the Infrastructure agent was created, but OS database is collected only by the Foglight for Oracle agent, click the OS status to OS data collection through the Infrastructure agent.

Foglight for Oracle Overview Dashboard

The Foglight for Oracle Overview dashboard provides various detailed views that are accessible using the toolbar. The Overview dashboard contents depends on whether a RAC (Real Application Cluster) or an Oracle database instance is selected.

Breakdown and Baseline Chart Formats

Several charts can display information in either of the following formats:

  • Baseline format — where a selected individual metric is displayed as a single line.
  • Breakdown format — a representation of actual activity of a metric or a set of metrics, compared with the typical behavior of these metrics for the selected time range. A breakdown display can also present a single metric divided into various components. For example, space utilization is broken down by the various components that occupy the space.

Home Page Toolbar

The Foglight for Oracle Overview dashboard provides the following toolbar buttons.

Name Description
Overview Opens the Overview view.
Advisories Opens the Advisories view.
SQL PI Opens the SQL Performance Investigator (SQL PI) drilldown, which displays performance-related data at the following levels:
High-level data — available for all instances.
In-depth data, delivered by means of the Cluster view or Instance view tree — available only for instances or RACs that have Performance Analysis installed and configured.
Activity Opens the Reviewing Instance Usability, which contains the following panels:
Real-Time — refer to Viewing the Foglight for Oracle Real-time Summary.
Usability — refer to Reviewing Instance Usability and Reviewing Cluster Usability.
Locks — refer to Reviewing Locks Activity at the Cluster Level and Reviewing Locks Activity at the Instance Level.
Sessions — refer to Viewing Detailed Sessions Data.
Overall Datafiles I/O — refer to Viewing Datafiles I/O Activity at the Cluster Level and Viewing Datafiles I/O Activity at the Instance Level.
User-defined Collections — refer to Viewing User-Defined Collections
Pluggable Databases Oracle pluggable database only — Opens the Pluggable Databases Drilldown, which contains the following components:
Pluggable Databases List table — refer to Pluggable Databases List table.
Overview tab — refer to Overview tab.
Activity within Instance — shows the selected pluggable databases’ activity as part of the entire instance activity.
For details, refer to Activity within Instance/Cluster tab
Storage Opens the Storage Drilldown, which contains the following panels:
Tablespaces and Datafiles — refer to Tablespaces and Datafiles Panel.
Redo Logs — refer to Redo Logs Panel.
Archive Logs — refer to Archive Logs Panel.
Invalid Objects — refer to Invalid Objects Panel.
Database Backup — refer to Database Backup Panel.
The Storage panels are common for both RAC and all of the instances
Configuration Opens the Configuration drilldown, which contains the panels listed below.
GA — refer to Reviewing SGA Settings at the RAC Level
Initialization Parameters — refer to Reviewing the Initialization Parameters.
Alert Log Opens the Alerts drilldown, which contains the following panels:
Error Log — refer to Reviewing the Alert Log.
Alert log — refer to Reviewing the Alert Log

Overview view

The upper section of the view includes general information on the monitored database:

  • Oracle server version
  • Host. For clustered host, the active host is displayed.
  • OS Version
  • Configuration
  • Archive Mode Each tile is constructed of a title that state the name of the monitored issue and an aggregation of the alarms relevant to that issue.

The tiles are organized by priority:

  • Availability — Shows information and alarms about the availability of the database. Also includes the monitoring state for that database.
  • HA/DR — High Availability (HA) and Disaster Recovery (DR) state of the database. Displays the state of the resources used for availability. For example, Always On, Cluster, Replication, Mirroring, Log Shipping.
  • Storage — Shows the space utilization level for all Data and Log file groups.
  • Infrastructure — Provides general information collected from the server:
    • CPU— Oracle CPU utilization compared to the general host CPU utilization.
    • Memory — Amount of memory Oracle uses compared to other processes and the total memory on the server.
    • Busiest Disk — Utilization of the busiest disk on the monitored server
  • Operational — Displays the following information:
    • Alarms on failed jobs.
    • Alarms on invalid objects.
    • Alarms on the alert log.
  • Performance — Summarizes general information collected from the SQL PI dashboard. The pie chart displays the average workload divided by resources over time. The graphs display the total workload trend over time.
    The Instance Performance tile also displays the following issues:
    • Throughput issues (for example, execution, logons, and transactions per second)
    • Current sessions state (for example, Active, Inactive, and Blocked)

The right panel is used to display either alarms or Top 10 SQLs:

  • Alarms

    Only the three resources would directly be displayed, according to the importance. The state of backup’s alarms is also displayed.

    • Display all active alarms for the underlined database.
    • Enable sorting by creation time or severity.
  • Top 10 SQLs — Displays the 10 SQLs with the longest duration.

Advisories view

The Advisories view is provided to continually analyze application performance to identify performance inefficiencies, to guide you through problem resolution strategies, and to deliver a step-by-step action plan for maximizing database performance. The upper section of the Advisories view includes general information on the monitored instance:

  • Oracle server version
  • Host. For clustered host, the active host is displayed.
  • OS Version
  • Configuration
  • Archive Mode

The lower section of the Advisories view contains the following two elements:

  • Action Plan: Summarizes available advisories that present opportunities to increase the overall performance of your database.
  • Advisories: Lists advisories, action types, and the relevant descriptions. Click each advisory to view detailed analysis results, a complete description of the recommended action to be taken, and the background information of this tuning area.

    Advisories are listed in the order of their priority that considers the severity of the detected deviation and the type of advisory.

Refer to the table below for the Lists of advisories and short descriptions of their purpose:

Advisory Name Description
Instance Total Memory Helps to indicate when a defined total memory size is not optimal and provides recommendations on how to tune it.
SGA Size Helps to indicate when a defined SGA size is not optimal and provides recommendations on how to tune it.
PGA Size Helps to indicate when a defined PGA size is not optimal and provides recommendations on how to tune it.
Unbalanced Cluster
Workload Distribution		 Indicates when a workload is not distributed equally across all nodes and provides more details for further investigation.
Undo Size Helps to indicate that undo size should be tuned and provides some recommendations on how to do it.
Bind Variables Candidates Helps to indicate a high percentage of hard parsing and find potential SQL statements for using bind variables.
Oracle Workload Deviation Indicates when the overall workload consumption exceeded the baseline. Deviations outside the baseline range suggest abnormal or unexpected activity and should be investigated to determine whether they suggest a performance problem.
CPU Usage Deviation Indicates when the total instance CPU usage exceeded the baseline. Deviations outside the baseline range suggest abnormal or unexpected activity and should be investigated to determine whether they suggest a performance problem.
User I/O Usage Deviation Indicates when the total instance wait for user I/O usage exceeded the baseline. Deviations outside the baseline range suggest abnormal or unexpected activity and should be investigated to determine whether they suggest a performance problem.
Network Wait Deviation Indicates when the total instance wait for network exceeded the baseline. Deviations outside the baseline range suggest abnormal or unexpected activity and should be investigated to determine whether they suggest a performance problem.
Commit Wait Deviation Indicates when the total instance wait for commit exceeded the baseline. Deviations outside the baseline range suggest abnormal or unexpected activity and should be investigated to determine whether they suggest a performance problem.
Concurrency Wait Deviation Indicates when the total instance wait for concurrency exceeded the baseline. Deviations outside the baseline range suggest abnormal or unexpected activity and should be investigated to determine whether they suggest a performance problem.
Application Wait Deviation Indicates when the total instance wait for application exceeded the baseline. Deviations outside the baseline range suggest abnormal or unexpected activity and should be investigated to determine whether they suggest a performance problem.
Other Wait Deviation Indicates when the total instance categorized as “Other” wait for application exceeded the baseline. Deviations outside the baseline range suggest abnormal or unexpected activity and should be investigated to determine whether they suggest a performance problem.
Cluster Wait Deviation Indicates when the overall cluster wait consumption exceeded the baseline. Deviations outside the baseline range suggest abnormal or unexpected activity and should be investigated to determine whether they suggest a performance problem.

SQL Performance Investigator (SQL PI)

The SQL PI view provides the ability to investigate the activity and resource consumption of a selected instance. There are two levels of metrics available:

  • Without SQL PI configured — basic History, lock analysis data, and activity highlights.
  • With SQL PI configured — The ability to perform a more in-depth analysis and investigation of the Instance activity and resource consumption by adding a dimension view of the activity, change tracking analysis, execution plan analysis and compare toll.

Performance Tree

The performance tree provides iterative (up to three levels) access to any of the key dimensions associated with Oracle Database activity, based on the OLAP multidimensional model and an database view of the database activity. Domain nodes offer a hierarchical view of all types of Oracle Database activity characteristics. Selecting a dimension from the tree determines what subset of activity is displayed. Iterative drill-down into domains of interest provides increasingly refined focus and diagnosis.

For example, to begin the investigation by first identifying the most active User, follow the steps described below:

  1. Select the Users node, to display the most active database users in the selected time range. That is, the database users who consumed the highest amount of the selected resource.
  2. Select the first user, to focus the entire window on that user’s activity.
  3. Identify the most demanding SQL statement that this specific user has executed, by expanding the user node and then selecting the SQL statement dimension node. This displays the most active SQL statements executed by this user.
  4. Select a specific SQL statement to focus the entire window on the selected statement’s activity.
  5. Select Machines under the selected SQL Statement, to view the computers on which the statement was run. In a similar manner, such iterative drilldowns can be carried out into any Oracle Database dimension of interest, to gain a complete understanding of the causes of its behavior.

The default Oracle dimensions are as follows:

  • SQL Statements — the executed SQL queries
  • PL/SQL Blocks — the blocks that comprise the PL/SQL code used
  • Programs — names of the programs that connected to Oracle and executed the SQL statements
  • OS Users — Operating system users running the client program.
  • DB Users — Oracle login names used for logging in to Oracle.
  • Machines — The machines on which the client executable (connected to Oracle) is running.
  • Actions — the name of the currently executing action, as set by calling the DBMS_APPLICATION_INFO.SET_ACTION procedure
  • Modules — the name of the currently executing module as set by calling the DBMS_APPLICATION_INFO.SET_MODULE procedure
  • Client Info — displays the information set by the DBMS_APPLICATION_INFO.SET_CLIENT_INFO procedure.
  • Command Types — Executed SQL command type (for example, INSERT and SELECT).
  • Services — displays Oracle’s internal services
  • Consumer Groups — displays a collection of users with similar requirements for resource consumption
  • Sessions — Presents the top sessions which consumed the highest active time during the selected time frame.
  • Client PIDs — displays the operating system client process ID.
  • Locked Objects — Displays the objects that experienced locks, the duration of the lock and the type of the lock. The object view can be sorted by selecting a dimension in the performance tree, for example: by selecting a database name only the locked object that occurred on that database will be displayed.
  • Files — displays the Data/Temp files which consumed the highest I/O Wait time during the selected time frame.
  • Disks — displays the disks which were associated with the highest I/O Wait time during the selected time frame.
  • Object I/O — displays the objects (e.g. Tables/Indexes) which were associated with the highest I/O Wait time during the selected time frame.

Viewing Historical Metrics

The History section view is divided into two sections that are correlated to each other:

  • Resource consumption charts — This section displays data in five different charts:
    • Workload chart — Displays the database resource activity over the selected time frame by emphasizing the resources by colors.
    • Baseline chart — Displays the database workload compared to the baseline over time.
    • Breakdown chart — Activity of the database by second.
    • Resource Breakdown Pie chart — Displays the resource breakdown usage by % of the total database activity.
    • All wait events pop up — Displays details of the wait events that the database is waiting on during the selected time range.
  • Overview section- Displays a graphical representation of the metrics highlighted in the Workload related Metrics table below.
    • Workload related Metrics - A table that displays a variety of resource consumption metrics which can give an in-depth of the database activity, each resource holds its default metrics.

Selecting each dimension in the performance tree together with a specific resource effects the data displayed for each Level.

  • For example, by selecting the Lock resource the Database view dimension will present only locks related data, the SQL Statements dimension will present only the statements that were experiencing locks and DB users the were experiencing locks and so on through all the dimensions and resources.

Blocking History

The Lock Analysis displays all locks that took place within the selected time range. The lock analysis feature is integrated as part of the performance tree and it displays all the lock trees including further details for both the blocker and the blocked session including:

  • Lock event start date
  • Session Identifier – [Sid,SERIAL#]
  • Session Identifier of the blocker
  • Locked Object Name
  • Status
  • Lock Duration
  • Program
  • DB User
  • SQL Text
  • Client Machine

Activity Highlights

The Activity Highlights are provided for fast performance analysis and allow users focus on the most significant dimensions that are relevant for the resource selected in the selected time range.

This pane comprises the following elements:

  • Summary — Summarizes the instance consumption time by % of the total instance activity.
  • Activity Highlights table — Displays the activity highlights, resource breakdown usage, and the top wait event that the instance is waiting on within the selected time range.

Viewing Change Tracking

The change tracking tool is an integrated monitoring mechanism. It periodically tracks changes in environments and activity that can potentially influence system performance and enables the user to view correlation between occurrences of changes and Oracle’s activity and behavior patterns. Use the Categories filter mechanism to refine the set of displayed change tracking occurrences. These categories are displayed on the right hand side of the pane and include:

  • Execution plan — SQL statements whose execution plans have changed. Unsuitable execution plans can result in SQL performance degradation.
  • Oracle configuration — instance-level configuration, such as init.ora parameters, location of files (data, log, and control), size and status
  • Oracle schema — any schema object, such as tables and indexes and their partitions, clusters, constraints, views, and materialized views.
  • System configuration — hardware and operating system configuration, such as OS global parameters, amount of RAM, and number of CPU units.
  • User-defined — used for documenting changes inserted manually by the user, which can affect performance. Recording this activity can assist in determining whether a change in performance can be directly associated with this event.

Viewing Execution Plans

This view presents the execution plan of a selected SQL and the cost of it. A Historical execution plan can be generated and will present any two views of the execution plan. There are two ways to access the Execution Plan History dialog:

  • From a Change Tracking pane by clicking on a row that displays Execution Plan change.
  • From History by selecting the statement or batch and by clicking Analyze in the top of the table. The execution plan dashboard displays the following content.

Top Bar

  • Resolving Date — Displays all the execution date and time of the selected statement.
  • Type — Displays the type of the execution plan.
  • Plan Hash Value — Displays the plan hash value of the execution plan

Plan analysis section

The execution plan contains 3 tabs:

  • Plan details — Displays details of each operation in the execution plan.
  • Operation Analysis — Displays statistics aggregated per each operation in the execution plan.
  • Object Analysis - Displays statistics aggregated per each object in the execution plan. Each object is clickable and displays a popup with important performance-related information.

By clicking the Generate Plan button the execution plan is generated and can be viewed. By clicking on the Compare Plan button a pop up will appear that allows comparing all available execution plans of the selected SQL statement.

Comparing Performance

Use the SQL PI Compare where differences in period activity illustrate underlying performance and monitoring issues. It helps you determine whether a comparison occurrence is an isolated incident or a sign of a potentially significant performance problem. Compare can be accessed from the Performance tree. The comparison can be of whole instances or selected dimension breakdowns (such as user or SQL). Use Compare to address questions such as:

  • What caused a specific activity?
  • What were the resource and load demands of today’s instance activity compared with that of a previous day?
  • Is an instance imposing different load levels now than previously?
  • How do we explain the difference in a SQL performance compared with a previous period?
  • What are the differences in program characteristics over two periods that caused different performance?
  • After identifying the different resource usage, you can use compare to identify what caused this difference: Usage pattern? Different SQL behavior? Environmental problem?

The upper panes graphically displays the Workload or any other selected resource. The middle Activity section displays the dimensions which were significant elements of the difference. Expanding the individual lines displays the dimension members which caused the difference and the composing metrics whose differences exceed the specified threshold. Use the set of performance related metrics (defined by the chosen resource) to help you explain the difference in resource consumption; for example, a rise in I/O Wait might be explained by a rise in the quantity of physical reads. Use the Comparison Parameters section in order to enter all the desired information for the cooperation. For example, time range, instance, dimension, time frames, resource.

Oracle Activity Drilldown

Use the Oracle Activity drilldown to carry out the operations described in the following topics:

Viewing the Foglight for Oracle Real-time Summary Page

The following image displays the main elements of the Foglight for Oracle real-time summary page. The table that follows the image identifies each element, and provides a link to display more information, corresponding to the logical dataflow within Foglight for Oracle Instance Homepage. The main groups (panes) of gathered icons and gauges, which represent the main activity areas in the Oracle connection process, are as follows:

  • Instance identification — used for identifying the instance, its type, and its properties. Refer to Identifying the Instance.
  • Components representing instance data flow — the main activity area in the Foglight for Oracle Instance Homepage includes several panes and flows that represent the data flow in the Oracle operation. The dataflow is represented in a top-down design, that is, from the session to the physical disk storage.

Identifying the Instance

Use the Instance identification indicators to identify the instance, its type and its operation period. These indicators are:

  • Instance name — identifies the instance.
  • Specified time range — indicates the period of time for which data is being displayed (by default: last 60 minutes).
  • Instance pane — contains the following indicators:
    • DB Type — identifies whether the monitored database’s type is SQL Server, Sybase, DB2, or Oracle.
    • DB Version — identifies the Oracle version number, along with the most recently installed service packs.
    • Up Since — identifies the date and time when the instance was last started.

      The initial view of the pane only shows the date; to display the time as well, hover the mouse or click the date text.

  • OS Type — identifies the operating system’s version number, along with the most recently installed builds and service packs.

    The initial view of the pane only shows the OS name; to display the build and service packs as well, hover the mouse or click the OS name.

Monitoring the Instance

The indicators included in the Instance pane provide various details about the instance. All of the indicators display real-time behavior, color-coded for severity.

Clicking the Response Time, CPU (%) and Memory (%) indicators displays a popup that shows the value of the metric, plotted over time.

  • Response Time — the time (in milliseconds) that elapses from the moment a query, which is supposed to represent the general workload, is submitted, until the application indicates that the query was executed. As the response time is usually the starting point for investigation, the Response parameter leads to the SQL Instance Summary panel in the SQL Activity drilldown,
  • CPU (%) and Memory (%) — the average CPU load and memory consumption (percentage), during the specified time range, of all CPU units that host the Oracle instance. This indicator displays the share of Oracle-incurred CPU load and memory consumption within the total figure. Clicking the number on both icons displays a popup that shows the total CPU usage or memory consumption on the host, plotted over time.
  • Number of CPUs — the number of CPU units on the instance’s host.
  • Total RAM — the total amount (in megabytes) of the host’s physical memory.
  • Free RAM — the total amount (in megabytes) of physical memory available to the applications

Monitoring General Sessions’ Statistics

The Sessions pane monitors all session types, that is: system, user, and Oracle sessions. Use this pane to view the response time compared with the number of sessions and the instance’s level of activity. A high response time value may result from a long queue, that is: an overly high percentage of active users. Long queues can indicate one of the following issues:

  • A massive workload — the system handles more users than it was initially designed to do.
  • A bottleneck — lack of system resources prevents users from carrying out their transactions, resulting in wait events and an increasing number of sessions that remain active for prolonged periods.

The Sessions pane displays the total number of sessions, distributed according to the following distinctions:

  • Active vs. inactive sessions
  • System (background) vs. User (foreground) sessions The parameters in this pane lead to the Activity > Sessions panel. For details, refer to Viewing Detailed Sessions Data. The Client applications represented graphically in the Sessions pane communicate with Oracle by sending and receiving network packets and by submitting SQL statements for execution by Oracle. The flows, described in the following table, help indicate performance issues if their values are too low.
Flow Description
Executions The rate per second of calls (both user and recursive) that executed SQL statements.
Received packets The rate at which network packets are being received by Oracle from Client applications. When this color is yellow, clicking it displays text that describes the deviations that triggered this display, along with a representation of the rate at which Oracle is encountering network packet errors.
Sent packets The rate at which network packets are being sent from Oracle to Client applications.
When this icon’s color is yellow, clicking it displays text that describes the deviations that triggered this display, along with a representation of the rate at which Oracle is encountering network packet errors.

Monitoring the Data Guard Service

Use the Data Guard section for monitoring Oracle Data Guard on primary databases. This section displays the gap between the last archive log on the primary database and last applied archive log on the standby database. Oracle Data Guard can be configured as either physical or logical standby. For details about the preparations required for monitoring each of these setups, refer to Monitoring the Data Guard physical standby and Working with logical standby (SQL Apply). As Oracle Data Guard supports physical standby databases that use Redo Apply technology, use this section to monitor the rate of applying redo log files on standby database instance.

The Data Guard section displays data only if the Data Guard service is configured.

Starting from Oracle 11g, Oracle provides the Active Data Guard option, which allows the standby to be read-only mode and at the same time to receive changes received from the primary node.

Monitoring the Data Guard physical standby

To prepare the physical standby:

  1. Ensure that the Standby Database is in receiving mode.
  2. Use sqlplus to connect to the Primary Database as SYS user.
  3. Create the standby Foglight schema owner.
  4. Run the privileges granting script for granting privileges to the created standby user, still from primary database. This script can be downloaded from the Connection Details screen. If the Data Guard mode being used is Active Data Guard, proceed to Step 6. Otherwise proceed to the next step.
  5. Switch to read-only mode on the standby database.

    Switching to read-only is only for the standby user availability check; there is no need to stay in that mode after the checkup.

  6. Ensure that the Foglight schema owner is available on the standby database.
  7. Open a browser and run the Oracle Monitoring Installer wizard.
  8. Select Add a New Instance.
  9. Specify the standby database credentials and connection details (the user that was created in Step 4).
  10. Click Verify Connectivity. After connectivity verification is completed successfully, start monitoring the physical standby database.

Working with logical standby (SQL Apply)

To prepare the logical standby:

  1. Use sqlplus to connect to the Logical standby as SYS user.
  2. Create the standby Foglight schema owner.
  3. Open a browser and run the Oracle Monitoring Installer wizard.
  4. Continue the Oracle Monitoring Installer process as usual, using the Logical standby user credentials and connection details. After connectivity verification is completed successfully, start monitoring the logical standby database.

Monitoring the Workload

The Workload chart displays the workload of the average active sessions, plotted over time. The workload can be plotted as either:

  • Baseline — workload plotted over time.
  • Breakdown — the amount of time the database spent waiting for various wait events, plotted over time. To display the wait events breakdown, click the arrow to the right of the Breakdown link.

Monitoring Process Activity

The Process Activity pane enables the monitoring of the processes ran by the Oracle instance, using performance indicators such as the total number of blocked processes and the rate per second of parses that are carried out during the most recent sample. The Process Activity pane displays the following parameters.

Parameter Description
Recent Executions The number of statements executed during the most recent sample.
Blocked Processes The average number of blocked processes that were collected during the specified time range. Blocked processes are processes that are waiting for another process to release a resource that the process is currently locking. Such processes can sometimes result in bottlenecks. The Blocked Process indicator changes its color when one or more processes become blocked.
Parses Total number of parse calls. This figure is the total of both hard parse calls (calls that require loading the SQL source code into RAM for parsing) and soft parse calls.
Concurrent Transactions The number of currently running transactions.

To communicate with the Oracle memory, the Oracle processes use logical reads and soft and hard parses, represented as flows in the homepage.

Monitoring Memory Activity

The Memory Activity session provides a view on the memory utilization of an Oracle instance, as described in the following table.

Section Metric Description
SGA Total (MB)
Buffer Cache (MB)
Shared Pool (MB)
Buffer Cache Hit (%)		 The actual size currently allocated to the System Global Area (SGA) memory.
The amount of memory currently allocated to the buffer cache. The buffer cache, which is used for caching frequently accessed data blocks, is normally the largest memory cache used by Oracle.
The size of the shared pool. The shared pool caches SQL statements, PL/SQL programs, object definitions, and session memory for MTS sessions. Performance can improve when the shared pool is sized properly, thereby avoiding re-parsing and reloading.
The percentage of block requests, which found the block in the buffer cache, out of the entire block requests (including requests that required disk reads).
Library Cache Hit (%) The effectiveness of the library cache, computed by comparing the number of queries submitted to Oracle server for execution, which found the parsed execution plan in the library cache (soft parsing), with the entire number of queries submitted during the specified time range (including queries that required the parsing of a new statement, also known as “hard parsing”).
PGA Total (MB)
PGA Hit (%)		 The actual size currently allocated to the Program Global Area (PGA) memory
The percentage PGA cache hit ratio. When the value of this metric is 100%, it indicates that all work areas executed by the system processed the entire input data using exclusively the PGA memory, thereby making optimal use of this memory. Any lower value indicates that at least one work area required one or more extra passes over the input data.

Monitoring Disk Storage

The Storage pane contains the components listed below, which display storage status. The information shown in this pane is aggregated to the RAC level.

Datafiles-related Indicators

  • Cylinder — displays the total amount of used and free datafile storage. Click the cylinder to drill down. A popup appears, displaying the total space usage by the database, plotted over time. This popup can also be used for further investigation by means of the Tablespace Storage drilldown.
  • Total — displays the total amount of datafile storage available (used and free), in megabytes.
  • Free — displays the amount of free RAC storage, in percent.
  • Autoextensible — indicates if at least one datafile in the database is autoextensible:
    • No — all of the datafiles in the database are not autoextensible.
    • Yes — at least one datafile in the database is autoextensible.

Archive Destinations-related Indicators

If archiving is configured, the following indicators display storage-related information about the most critical archive destination, that is: the archive destination with shortest time to failure. This section contains the following indicators:

  • Cylinder — shows the amount of used archive destination memory.
  • Time to Failure (hours) — indicates the estimated time to failure in hours, based upon the rate of archiving.

Indicators of Storage-related ASM Information If storage is managed using Automatic Storage Management (ASM), and the ASM instance is installed and configured, the following indicators display storage-related information about ASM:

  • Cylinder — displays the total amount of allocated and free ASM storage memory.
  • Allocated (megabytes) — the total amount of ASM memory available (allocated and free), in megabytes.
  • Free (percent) — the amount of free RAC ASM storage memory, in percent.

Monitoring Disk Activity

The Disk Activity section displays the following indicators:

  • Unarchived — if archiving is configured, indicates the amount of Redo Logs waiting to be archived, in percent. The popup that appears when clicking the Unarchived flow can also be used for drilling down further to investigate, using the “Redo Logs” drilldown.
  • ASM I/O — a textual indication of the rate of ASM memory I/O operations. If storage is managed using Automatic Storage Management (ASM), and the ASM instance is installed and configured, this field displays real-time behavior, color-coded for severity.

Tracking Physical I/O Activity The real-time summary page contains flows and graphic images that are used for tracking physical I/O activity, as listed below. All of the indicators display real-time behavior, color-coded for severity. Clicking each indicator displays a popup, which shows the metric’s value, plotted over time.

  • Physical Writes — displays the rate per second of physical writes, that is: the rate at which modified blocks are written from the SGA to disk by the DBWR processes.
  • Physical Reads — displays the rate per second at which data blocks are read from disk, when a connection requests a page that does not already exist in the buffer cache.
  • Redo Writes — displays the rate per second of redo writes, that is: the rate at which redo log entries are written to the redo log files by the LGWR processes.

Reviewing Instance Usability

The Instance Usability panel displays aggregated information regarding the instance’s usability and availability. This panel supports the following tasks:

  • Identifying instances. For details, refer to The Instance Pane.
  • Viewing usability-related alarms. For details, refer to The Alarms Pane.
  • Tracking the instance’s availability, plotted over the defined time range. For details, refer to The Instance Availability Section.
  • Tracking the listener’s availability, plotted over the defined time range. For details, refer tp The Listener Availability Section.
  • Tracking the instance’s connection time, plotted over the defined time range. For details, refer to Connection Time Section.
  • Tracking the instance’s response time, plotted over the defined time range. For details, refer to The Response Time Section.

The Instance Pane

The Instance pane contains the following indicators:

  • DB Type — identifies monitored database’s type (for example: SQL Server or Oracle).
  • Oracle Version — identifies the Oracle version number, along with the most recently installed patches.
  • Up Since — identifies the date and time when the instance was last started. If the database is not running this area reads “Database is down”, and a popup is available, displaying the database status.

The Alarms Pane

The Alarms pane displays the usability-related outstanding alarms. These alarms alert the following issues per instance: response time, instance availability, instance connection availability, OS connection availability, instance connection time, and Listener status.

The Instance Availability Section

The Instance Availability section displays the instance availability in percentages, plotted over the time range. If the instance was unavailable once or more during this time, the relevant message describing the last occurrence of unavailability appears in the Error Message box.

The Listener Availability Section

The Listener Availability section displays the availability of all listeners configured for the instance, in percentages, plotted over the time range. If one or more of the listeners were unavailable during this time, a message describing this issue appears under the Listener Errors section.

The Connection Time Section

The Connection Time section displays the instance’s connection time, in seconds, plotted over the time range.

The Response Time Section

The Response Time section displays the instance’s response time, in milliseconds, plotted over the time range.

Reviewing Cluster Usability

Use the Cluster Usability panel to compare between the various RAC nodes, regarding the following indicators:

  • Availability — measured in percentages

    The Availability section also displays the listener’s availability during the specified time range.

  • Connection Time — measured in milliseconds
  • Response Time — measured in milliseconds

To investigate a single instance, select the requested instance from the list at the top of the panel. The display switches to instance usability.

Reviewing Locks Activity at the Cluster Level

The Activity Locks panel for a RAC comprises the following panes:

  • Locks Activity
  • Lock Tree (Current)
  • Locks Historical Tree

Locks Activity

The Locks Activity pane displays a breakdown of all lock types and their general properties.

Name Description
Lock Name The name of the lock.
Gets The total number of enqueue requests or enqueue conversions for this type of enqueue.
Gets Rate The rate of lock gets.
Gets (percent) The percentage of lock gets for this type of lock within the total number of locks
Enqueue Waits The total number of times an enqueue request or conversion resulted in a wait event.
Waits Rate The number of wait events per second.
Wait (percent) The percentage of wait events for this type of lock within the total number of locks
Lock Wait The total amount of time spent waiting for the enqueue or enqueue conversion.
Average Lock Duration The average length of time for a lock, in milliseconds.
Lock Efficiency The percentage of lock requests that did not escalate to a blocking lock.
Alarms The number of warning, critical, and fatal alarms that were invoked for this Oracle database instance. Holding the cursor over each alarm type displays a dwell that shows the most recent alarms invoked for this database instance, sorted by severity. Click each alarm type to drill down and manage the alarms.

Lock Tree (Current)

The Lock Tree (Current) pane displays current data, which is available only in real-time mode. Clicking any locking or locked session table row displays a popup that is used for viewing further details.

Name Description
PDB In multitenant architectures, the name of the pluggable database where the lock took place.
Session The identifier for a session that holds or acquires the lock.
Serial The session’s serial number. The combination of SID and serial number provides a unique identification of the session.
DB User The database user name.
Object Wanted The object requested for lock.
Lock Type The type of user or system lock. The locks on the user types are obtained by user applications. Any process that is blocking others is likely to be holding one of these locks. The user type locks are:
TM — DML enqueue
TX — Transaction enqueue
UL — User supplied
Lock Mode The lock mode in which the session holds the lock. This row can have one of the following values:
None
Null
Row-S (SS)
Row-X (SX)
Share
S/Row-X (SSX)
Exclusive
Lock Request Mode The lock mode in which the process requests the lock. This row can have one of the values listed below.
None
Null
Row-S (SS)
Row-X (SX)
Share
S/Row-X (SSX)
Exclusive
Lock Duration The duration of the lock in seconds.
Cross Instance Defines whether the lock is between different cluster nodes:
YES — for global locks
NO — for single node locks
Instance The name of the instance to which the blocking or blocked session belongs.
Kill Session Used for terminating the selected session, by means of the Kill Session dialog box that is displayed upon clicking this column.
Note: Killing a session requires having specific privileges. Provide an Oracle user with these privileges. Alternatively, select the check box Log-in as SYSDBA to provide the credentials of a SYSDBA user.

Session Details Popup

Name Description
SID The session identifier
Session The identifier for a session that holds or acquires the lock.
Serial The session’s serial number. The combination of SID and serial number provides a unique identification of the session.
DB User The database user name.
OS The operating system name
Program The name of the program that is processing the SQL statements
Client The Client computer identifier
Host The host computer identifier
Current SQL The SQL text of the SQL statement that is currently being processed in this session

Locks Historical Tree

The Locks Historical Tree pane displays the overall locks activity that took place within the selected time range, as well as locks that exceeded a predefined threshold. This pane comprises the following sections:

  • Lock Wait Events — a chart that displays all of the lock wait events, plotted over time. This chart can be viewed in either of the following views:
    • Baseline — displaying only lock wait events.
    • Breakdown — displaying both lock and non-lock wait events.
  • Locks Exceeding a predefined threshold — displays locks that reached or exceeded the minimal duration, in seconds, which a lock should reach or exceed in order to be collected.

    The minimal duration’s length is defined using the Locks pane of the Collection Settings view.

Reviewing Locks Activity at the Instance Level

The Activity Locks panel, which displays lock summary information for an Oracle instance, comprises the following panes:

  • Locks Wait Events chart — The content of this pane is similar to that of the chart displayed under the Activity > Locks > Locks Historical Tree pane at the Whole Cluster mode.
  • Locks Activity pane — identical to the Locks Activity pane in the Whole Cluster mode.
  • Locks Tree (Current) pane — identical to the Locks Tree (Current) pane in the Whole Cluster mode.
  • Locks Historical Tree

Locks Historical Tree

The Locks Historical Tree pane displays the locks activity and the locks tree summary, plotted over time. This pane includes the sections listed below. Locks Activity — this section, which is identical to the Locks Activity section in the Locks Overview pane, displays the lock wait (average active sessions), which can be plotted as either:

  • Baseline — lock wait time plotted over time.
  • Breakdown — lock wait and non-lock wait plotted over time.
  • Locks Exceeding a predefined threshold — displays locks that reached or exceeded the minimal duration, in seconds, which a lock should reach or exceed in order to be collected. The minimal duration’s length is defined using the Locks pane of the Collection Settings view.

Viewing Detailed Sessions Data

The Sessions screen allows you to trace the activity of all currently connected sessions, as well as their resource consumption.

The refresh rate of the data displayed on the Sessions panel can be set by selecting a value from the Refresh interval drop-down list, which appears on the panel’s upper right side.

This panel can also be used to carry out the tasks described in the following sections:

  • Sessions Summary
  • Sessions Details
  • Session Drill Down

Sessions Summary

The Current section in the top of the screen allows you to view current Key Performance Indicators of the monitored instance:

  • Sessions - Displays the distribution of the currently connected sessions between active (sessions that are currently running a SQL statement) and inactive sessions.
  • Throughput — Divided into 4 metrics which represent the throughput of the monitored instance:
    • Logons/s — The rate per second of sessions that were initiated during the current sampling period.
    • Executions/s — The rate per second of statements executions during the current sampling period.
    • Commits/s — The rate per second of commits during the current sampling period.
    • Rollbacks/s — The rate per second of rollbacks during the current sampling period.
  • Locks — Displays the total number of blocked sessions during the current sampling period.
  • Host CPU Utilization — The host CPU utilization % during the current sampling period.

The Last 1 hour trend presents the activity on the instance during the last 1 Hour by presenting:

  • Workload — Displays the general workload (average active sessions) during the specified time range.
  • Breakdown — Displays the workload, distributed by the various wait event categories. The colors of the categories match the colors of the various resources displayed in the Resource Breakdown section.

By clicking the Top Wait Events link at the upper right corner of the section, The Active Wait Events popup appears, with the Resource drop-down list unfiltered and displaying the entire list of wait events.

Sessions Details

The current sessions table allows you to monitor the currently running sessions and their individual resource consumption. The Session List section contains a table that lists all currently running sessions, displaying each session in a separate row. The Sessions view in the table can be filtered by the Active only and Foreground Only check boxes:

  • Active only — selected by default, presenting only the active sessions that are currently running, by clearing the check box, all inactive sessions will be presented as well.
  • Foreground only — selected by default, presenting only the user sessions, by clearing the check box, the background sessions will be presented as well.

Session Drill Down

The various sections of the Session Drill Down page provide detailed information about the selected session upon selecting a specific session in the table.

Session Details Section

The left section of the screen displays several parameters that provide general information about the selected session, as follows:

  • SID — Session identifier.

    Clicking on the Session ID enables you to switch sessions from a popup list of current sessions.

  • Serial# — Session serial number.
  • Logon Time — The time when the user logged on to the session.
  • Status — Indicates whether the session is active or inactive.
  • DB User — The Oracle login name for this session.
  • OS User — The OS login name for this session.
  • Program — The name of the program the user is running to access Oracle
  • Machine — The name of the host the session is running from. Waiting On — The current wait event on which the session is waiting.

Reviewing Workload Details

The Workload chart displays the selected session workload (Average Active Sessions) during the specified time range (default 1 hour). The breakdown displays the workload, distributed by the various wait event categories. The colors of the categories match the colors of the various resources displayed in the Resource Breakdown section. By clicking the Top Wait Events link at the upper right corner of the section, The Active Wait Events popup appears, with the Resource drop-down list unfiltered and displaying the entire list of wait events.

Reviewing SQL Summary

This tab provides details about the SQL statements that were executed by the selected session during the selected time range (up to 1 hour).

Reviewing Sessions Statistics

Additional statistics are displayed in the Session Statistics tab.

Reviewing Session Blocks

The Session Blocks pane displays all blocks held or requested by the selected session.

Viewing Datafiles I/O Activity at the Cluster Level

The Overall Datafiles I/O panel displays the I/O activity of all datafiles on the cluster. This panel includes the following sections:

  • Total Physical I/O chart
  • Datafiles I/O Summary table

Physical I/O chart

The Physical I/O chart displays the physical I/O activity within the cluster’s datafiles, in either of the following methods:

Baseline and Breakdown are not available at the cluster level.

  • Baseline — displays the physical I/O activity along with the allowed range of typical observed behavior. Use the chart, in its baseline form, to display either a specific metric or all of the metrics.Metric values and typical behavior are plotted over time.
  • Breakdown — provides a color-coded display of the physical activity of all instances within the RAC. Select whether to display the total physical I/O, only physical reads or only physical writes. Click the arrow to the right of the Physical I/O title to display data for the total physical activity, or only for physical reads or writes.

Datafiles I/O Summary Table

The Datafiles I/O Summary table displays all of the I/O activity details of all datafiles on the cluster. Clicking the datafile’s name displays the Physical I/O Activity page, which presents the datafile’s physical read and writes, plotted over the time range, along with the overall physical reads and writes.

To view the specific datafile’s storage data, click the link Datafile Storage, on the upper right side of the Physical I/O Activity page.

Viewing Datafiles I/O Activity at the Instance Level

The Overall Datafiles I/O Activity panel displays the I/O activity of all datafiles on the instance. This panel includes the following sections:

  • Total Physical I/O Chart
  • Datafiles I/O Summary Table

Total Physical I/O Chart

The Total physical I/O chart provides a graphic representation of the physical I/O activity within the instance’s datafiles. This representation is displayed in either of the following methods:

  • Baseline — displays the total physical I/O activity, including both physical reads and writes.
  • Breakdown — displays the physical activity, divided by physical reads and physical writes.

Datafiles I/O Summary Table

The Datafiles I/O Summary table displays all of the I/O activity details of all datafiles on the instance. Clicking the datafile’s name displays the Physical I/O Activity page, which presents the datafile’s physical read and writes, plotted over the selected time range, along with the instance physical reads and writes. In multi-tenant architectures, the PDB column identifies the pluggable databases that use the datafiles.

To view the specific datafile’s storage data, click the link Datafile Storage, on the upper right side of the Physical I/O Activity page.

Viewing User-Defined Collections

Use the User-defined Collections panel to see customized collections, which were created using the User-defined Collections view in the Databases Administration dashboard, either during the most recent sample (Last Sample) or plotted over the specified time range (Selected Period). This panel comprises the following sections:

  • The Collections column, on the left of the panel — displays all of the names of the existing user-defined collections.
  • SQL text grid — displays the text of the user-defined SQL query. By default, this grid displays the query’s short text. To display the query’s full text, click View full text (a toggle).
  • The collection details table — displays all of the fields contained in the query. Each of the table’s columns shows the field’s display name, while each row represents the records taken at each sample.

Pluggable Databases Drilldown

The Pluggable Databases drilldown contains the Pluggable Databases pane, which displays a table of all pluggable databases (PDB), as well as the container databases (CDB), which are monitored in the instance. Selecting a row in the table displays the details of the selected container in the following panes:

  • Overview — shows general details about the selected database, such as name, availability, and workload.
  • Activity within Instance/RAC — shows the activity of the instance as part of the overall instance or RAC activity.

Pluggable Databases List table

The Pluggable Databases List table includes the following columns:

  • Sev — indicates the pluggable database maximum severity level
  • Name — the pluggable database name
  • ID — the ID number of the pluggable database
  • Up Since — displays the date and time when the pluggable database was last started
  • Workload (% of Instance) — the percentage the pluggable database’s workload constitutes within the entire instance/RAC
  • CPU (% of Instance) — the percentage the pluggable database’s CPU consumption constitutes within the entire instance/RAC
  • I/O (% of Instance) — the percentage the pluggable database’s I/O activity constitutes within the entire instance/RAC
  • Shares — the portion of the system’s CPU resources that is allocated to the selected pluggable database

Overview tab

The Overview tab contains the following sections, which display general information about the pluggable database selected in the Pluggable Databases List table:

  • Name — the name of the pluggable database
  • Open mode — the pluggable database’s state; the possible values are: mount, read-write, read-only, and migrate
  • Created on — the day on which the pluggable database was created
  • Cloned from — if this pluggable database was cloned, the name of the originating pluggable database
  • Availability — displays the selected pluggable database’s availability within the selected time range
  • Storage — displays the pluggable database’s storage compared with the storage of the entire instance or RAC
  • Workload — displays the pluggable database’s workload during the specified time range
  • Workload Across Cluster — if the selected pluggable database is part of a RAC, displays the balance between the various pluggable databases within the RAC

Activity within Instance/Cluster tab

The Activity within Instance tab contains the following sections, which display information about the pluggable database selected in the Pluggable Databases List table:

  • Workload-related Metrics — displays a list of metrics for the pluggable database
  • Workload — displays the pluggable database’s workload compared with the workload of the entire instance or RAC
  • Selected metric — displays the activity of the metric selected in the Metric table, compared with the workload of the entire instance or RAC

Storage Drilldown

The Storage drilldown comprises the panels described in the following topics:

Tablespaces and Datafiles Panel

The Tablespaces and Datafiles panel comprises the sections described in the following topics:

  • Tablespaces page — displayed by default. When switching to other sections of this panel, accessible by clicking the link View all tablespaces on the upper right side of the screen. For details, refer to Tablespaces page.
  • Datafiles grid — accessed by clicking the link View all datafiles on the upper right side of the screen. For details, refer to Datafiles Grid.
  • Tablespace-Specific page — accessed by clicking the name of the requested tablespace on the Tablespaces Summary table. For details, refer to Tablespace-specific page.
  • Datafile-Specific page — accessed in either of the following methods:
    • Clicking the name of the requested datafile from the Tablespace Details > Datafiles pane, under the tablespace-specific page.
    • Clicking the name of the requested datafile from the Datafiles grid.

For details, refer to Datafile-specific Page.

Tablespaces page

The Tablespaces page displays the database individual tablespace information, sorted by either percent of space usage or size.

By default, all types of tablespaces are monitored.

The Tablespaces page contains the following components:

  • Top 10 Tablespaces chart — a representation of the sizes of the tablespaces that have the highest used value, displayed according to the selected sort method.
  • Tablespaces Summary table — a full list of the tablespaces, with general parameters and individual alarms.

Top 10 Tablespaces Chart

The Top 10 Tablespaces bar chart displays the tablespaces that have the highest used value, sorted by:

  • Size
  • Percentage of space usage
Name Description
Show top Use the Show top options to select which metric the vertical axis displays for the top 10 tablespaces:
Size — size in megabytes.
% Space Usage — percent.
Percent (chart vertical axis) The percentage of the database tablespace pages currently being utilized.
Megabytes (chart vertical axis) The database tablespace utilized size in megabytes.
Tablespaces (chart horizontal axis) The names of the top 10 most utilized tablespaces.
Tablespace bar The bar chart representation of the utilized tablespaces. Click a specific tablespace representation to drill down further to the Tablespace-specific page.

Tablespaces Summary Table

The Tablespaces Summary table shows the status for all of the database tablespaces. To view details on a specific tablespace, click the tablespace.

Name Description
PDB In multitenant architectures, identifies the pluggable database that uses the tablespace shown in the Tablespace column.
Tablespace The name of the tablespace. Click the tablespace name to drill down further to the Tablespace-specific page.
Total Size The total amount of allocated space (in megabytes) in this tablespace.
% Space Usage The percentage of used allocated space in this tablespace.
Contents The type of tablespaces content:
PERMANENT
TEMPORARY
UNDO
Number of Datafiles The number of datafiles in the selected tablespace. To view a list of all datafiles of which the tablespace consists, and possibly drill-down to a datafile-specific page, click the tablespace name to access the Tablespace Details > Datafiles pane.
Estimated Until Full Estimated number of days until tablespace is full.
If the tablespace used space did not grow during the selected period, this field shows the indication no growth.
Autoextensible Datafiles The sum of the Autoextensible OS Datafiles and Autoextensible ASM Datafiles metrics.
Alarms The number of warning, critical, and fatal alarms for this Oracle database tablespace.

Datafiles Grid

The Datafiles grid displays a list, sorted by usage, of all datafiles used by the database.

Name Description
PDB In multitenant architectures, identifies the pluggable database that uses the datafile shown in the File Name column.
File Name The file name of the datafile, including the full directory path. Click the file name to drill down further to the Datafile-specific panel.
Tablespace The name of the tablespace that contains the selected datafile
Size The current size of the datafile in megabytes.
Use The current used megabytes associated to the datafile, as a percentage of datafile’s allocated size.
Autoextend Indicates whether the datafile is auto-extensible.

Tablespace-specific page

The Tablespace-specific page charts used and free space, as well as the fragmentation level of the tablespace (to determine how much space can yet be utilized). The datafiles that make up the individual tablespace appear on the bottom pane of the dashboard. This page comprises the following sections:

  • Tablespace Properties section
  • Tablespace Properties alarms
  • Tablespace Properties table
  • Space Utilization chart
  • Tablespace Details section
    • Datafiles table
    • All Metrics table
    • Extent map

Tablespace Properties Section

The tablespace properties are provided using the following panes:

  • Tablespace properties alarms
  • Tablespace properties table

Tablespace Properties Alarms

Name Description
Alarms The number of warning, critical, and fatal alarms for the selected tablespace.

Tablespace Properties Table

Name Description
Status Indicates the current status of the tablespace — Online or Offline.
PDB In multitenant architectures, shows the pluggable database that was listed beside the selected tablespace in the Tablespaces Summary table.
Extent Management Indicates the method used for managing extents in this tablespace:
DICTIONARY — within the Oracle data dictionary
LOCAL — within the tablespace itself
Allocation Type The type of extent allocation to be used for this tablespace.
USER — allocates extents as per the storage clause provided with the object or defaulted at tablespace level.
UNIFORM — allocates the uniform sizes for the extents.
SYSTEM — automatically allocates system-generated extent sizes.
Force Logging Indicates if the tablespace is in Force Logging mode, which logs all changes to all objects in the tablespace, except changes to temporary segments. The possible values are Yes and No
Logging Indicates if a redo log is to be generated for the tablespace. The possible values are Logging and No.
Segment Space Management Indicates how free and used segments are managed.
MANUAL — using free lists
AUTOMATIC — using bitmaps
Default Table Compression Indicates the status of default table compression; either Enabled or Disabled.
Retention Indicates if unexpired undo blocks are retained in the tablespace.
NOT APPLY — used for tablespaces other than the undo tablespace.
GUARANTEE — applies only to undo tablespaces.
NOGUARANTEE — applies only to undo tablespaces
Big File Indicates if the tablespace is a BIGFILE tablespace (Yes) or a small file tablespace (No). BIGFILE tablespaces are supported only for locally managed tablespaces with automatic segment-space management.
Block Size The size of the memory block used by this tablespace in megabytes.
Encrypted Indicates whether the tablespace data is encrypted (Yes) or not (No).

Space Utilization chart

Name Description
Total Total amount of available memory for this tablespace, plotted over time.
Used Amount of available memory that is used for this tablespace, plotted over time.

Tablespace Details Section

The tablespace details are provided using the following panes:

  • Datafiles table
  • All Metrics table

Datafiles Table

Name Description
Datafile name The datafile name, including the full directory path. Click the datafile name to drill down further to the Datafile-specific panel.
Size The current size of the datafile in megabytes.
Filesystem Free Available space on the file system as a percentage of file system size, rounded up to one decimal. If the filesystem resides on an Automatic Storage Management (ASM) disk, retrieving this information requires having the ASM instance installed and configured.
Alarms The number of warning, critical, and fatal alarms for this Oracle database tablespace.

All Metrics Table

This table provides the following information for tablespace metrics.

  • Metric — the metric name; can have one of the values listed in the table below.
  • Value — current value
Metric Name Description
Total The total amount of space in the selected tablespace.
Free Space The total amount of free space in the selected tablespace.
Used The amount of space used in the selected tablespace.
Allocated Space Used Percentage The percentage of used space for non auto-extensible files in the selected tablespace.
Free Space Percentage The percentage of free space.
Minimum Fragment Size The size of the smallest fragment in the selected tablespace.
Maximum Fragment Size The size of the largest fragment in the selected tablespace.
Average Fragment Size The average size of fragments in the selected tablespace.
Recycle Free (MB) The total amount of space used by the recycle bin within the allocated free space of the tablespace.
Recycle Free (%) The percentage of recycle bin space which occupies the allocated free space of the tablespace.
Estimated Until Full Estimated number of days until tablespace is full. If the tablespace used space did not grow during the selected period, this field shows the indication no growth.
Autoextensible OS Datafiles Number of autoextensible OS datafiles (DF).
Autoextensible ASM Datafiles If storage is managed using Automatic Storage Management (ASM), and the ASM instance is installed and configured, displays the number of autoextensible ASM datafiles (DF).
Manual OS Datafiles Number of manual OS datafiles (DF).
Manual ASM Datafiles If storage is managed using Automatic Storage Management (ASM), and the ASM instance is installed and configured, displays the number of manual ASM datafiles (DF).

Datafile-specific Page

The individual Datafile properties panel displays general properties of the selected datafile, as well as a representation of the used and free space that make up the specific datafile. The Oracle database datafile-specific panel comprises the sections listed below.

  • Datafile Properties
  • Space Usage
  • Fragmentation

Datafile Properties

Name Description
Alarms The number of warning, critical, and fatal alarms for the selected datafile

Property Label Property Description
Datafile The name of the datafile, including the full directory path
Tablespace The name of the tablespace to which the datafile belongs.
PDB In multitenant architectures, the name of the pluggable database.
Size The size of the datafile in megabytes.
Used The used size of the datafile in megabytes.
% Used The percentage of the datafile used.
Status Indicates whether the datafile is available:
AVAILABLE
INVALID
Autoextend Indicates whether the datafile is auto-extensible.

Space Usage

Details are provided for:

  • File Space Usage
  • Filesystem Space Usage

For datafiles managed by ASM, the filesystem space usage cylinder is available only if the ASM instance is installed and configured. For autoextensible datafiles, the file space usage cylinder is not available.

Name Description
Used (percent) The percentage of the datafile being used.
Used (megabytes) The number of megabytes being used.
Total (megabytes) The total number of megabytes available.

Fragmentation

Use the Fragmentation section to view the file fragmentation status of used and free extents, using a fragmentation analysis triggered by clicking Analyze Fragmentation.

Fragmentation analysis is a resource-consuming operation. Carrying out this operation is strongly discouraged in production environment with heavy resource contention.

Name Description
Fully Usable The amount of memory that is not being used by a datafile and is viable; represented by the blue portion of the horizontal memory bar. This bar displays the file fragmentation snapshot of used and free extents.
Partly Usable The amount of datafile memory that is partly usable; represented by the violet portion of the horizontal memory bar.
Unusable The amount of tablespace memory that is unusable; represented by the pink portion of the horizontal memory bar.
Used The amount of tablespace memory that is used; represented by the orange portion of the horizontal memory bar.

Redo Logs Panel

The Redo Logs panel, which displays details regarding all redo logs, either for the Oracle instance or for all nodes of an Oracle RAC, comprises the following sections:

  • Redo Logs Storage Groups table — click on a group list row to see the list of members in that group.
  • Members of Group [n] table

Redo Logs Storage Groups Table The redo log records all changes made in datafiles.

Name Description
Group # The redo log group number.
Group Status The status of the redo logs indicates which logs are in use and whether there are any odd status codes, such as stale log indications or indications of corrupt redo logs.
The log files can have one of the following status values:

USED — indicates either that a log had just been added (never used), or that a RESETLOGS command has been issued.

CURRENT — indicates a valid log that is in use.
ACTIVE — indicates a valid log file that is not currently in use.

CLEARING — indicates a log is being re-created as an empty log due to database administrator action.

CLEARING CURRENT — indicates that a current log is being cleared of a closed thread. If a log stays in this status, it could indicate there is some failure in the log switch.

INACTIVE — indicates that the log is no longer needed for instance recovery but may be needed for media recovery.
Archived Indicates if the redo logs are being archived.
Sequence # The number assigned by Oracle to each redo log file whenever a log switch occurs and LGWR begins writing to the log file. When redo log files are archived, the archived log retains its log sequence number.
Size The size of the log in megabytes.
First Change # A system-allocated number (SCN), which identifies the first time a change was recorded in this log.
First Time The time when the first SCN in the log was recorded.
Alarms The number of warning, critical, and fatal alarms for the selected Oracle database tablespace.

Members of Group [n] Table

Name Description
Member Name The redo log group member name.
Member Status The redo log group member status. This status can have one of the following values:
INVALID — indicates that Oracle cannot access the redo log file.
STALE — indicates a log file that is either corrupt or incomplete. If the log file’s group becomes the active group, the file becomes valid again.
DELETED — indicates an online redo log file that has been dropped from the database and deleted from the disk.
IN USE — identifies the currently active redo log file.

Fast Recovery Area Panel

The Fast Recovery Area panel, which displays details regarding the allocated space for fast recovery area and its usage in the Oracle database, comprises the following sections:

If the fast recovery area is not configured in the database, the Fast Recover Area panel is blank, and displays the message: “The Fast Recovery Area is not configured in the database.”

  • Current Usage details — shows details about the current usage of allocated space for fast recovery area.
  • Usage Breakdown pie chart — provides a representation of the current size of each component that occupies within the fast recovery area of a database.

    The pie chart displays only components which size is greater than zero.

  • Usage Space Distribution chart — shows the distribution among reclaimable and non-reclaimable parts of fast recovery area’s used space.
  • Usage Details table — shows more detailed information about the space usage of the fast recovery area’s components.

    This table displays only components which size is greater than zero.

  • Flashback Database details — shows details about the oldest point in time to which is possible to flashback the database.
  • Flashback Data Size chart — shows the comparison among estimated size and current size of flashback data.

Archive Logs Panel

The Oracle database archive logs panel comprises the following sections:

  • Archive Log Destinations table
  • Archive Writes chart — displays the amount (in megabytes) of disk space being used per second for the archive log.

    If the instance is configured not to archive, the Archive Logs panel is blank, displaying only the message “The database is not archiving”.

Archive Log Destinations Table

When monitoring a RAC, the contents of the Archive Log Destinations table vary between Whole Cluster and Instance/RAC node view, as in whole cluster view the table also includes the column Instance Name, as described below.

Name Description
Instance Name Indicates which of the RAC nodes uses the specified destination archive file.
Note: The Instance Name column is displayed only in whole cluster view. From the Archive Destination column and forwards, the two tables are identical.
Archive Destination The name of the destination archive file.
Destination Directory The name of the destination directory.
Destination Status The current status of the destination in v$archive_dest. This destination can have one of the following values:
VALID — destination was initialized and is available
INACTIVE — no destination information exists
DEFERRED — destination was manually disabled by the user
ERROR — an error occurred during open or copy
DISABLED — disabled after error
BAD PARAM — parameter has errors
ALTERNATE — the destination is in an alternate state
FULL — the destination’s quota size has been exceeded
Destination Total The total size of the archive destination target.
Destination Free Space The total amount of free space available for the archive destination target.
Destination Usable The total amount of usable space available for the archive destination target.
Note: The Destination Total, Destination Free Space, and Destination Usable columns display information only if the archive is managed using ASM and the ASM instance is installed and configured.
Time to Failure The amount of time before the archive log destination becomes full.
Binding The binding setting, which describes whether successful archival is required:
MANDATORY
OPTIONAL
Destination Type The type of archived log destination — either PUBLIC or PRIVATE.
Transmit Mode The mode in which data is transmitted across the network:
SYNCHRONOUS
ASYNCHRONOUS, or
PARALLELSYNC
Valid Type The Redo log type or types that are valid for the destination:
ONLINE_LOGFILE
STANDBY_LOGFILE
ALL_LOGFILES

Invalid Objects Panel

The Invalid Objects panel displays all of the database’s schema and the invalid objects detected in each schema, as well as their distribution per schema. This panel comprises the following sections:

  • Invalid Objects Table
  • Invalid Objects Distribution chart

Invalid Objects Table

The Invalid Objects table displays each schema in a separate row, together with invalid objects of the following types:

  • Functions
  • Packages
  • Package bodies
  • Procedures
  • Types
  • Views
  • Materialized Views
  • Other type objects

In addition, the table displays the total number of invalid objects and the alarms invoked as a result of the invalid objects detected in the schema.

By default, all of the schemas are monitored by the Invalid Objects collection. A schema with no invalid objects is displayed with a zero value in all of its columns. To exclude specific schemas from being monitored, use the Exclude List pane under the Collection Settings view in the Databases Administration dashboard.

For each object type (for example, Procedures) whose metric value contains data, that is: a number greater than zero, clicking the metric value displays a popup with a detailed list of all invalid objects for the specific object type in the selected schema.

Invalid Objects Distribution for the selected schema

The invalid objects distribution chart displays the distribution of the invalid objects for the schema selected in the Invalid Objects table.

Database Backup Panel

The Database Backup panel displays various details regarding the backup of the Oracle database and datafile. This panel contains the sections listed below.

  • Last Successful Backup — the exact time and date when the most recent full backup of the datafile and database took place. A warning icon appears to the left of this section’s title if the time that elapsed from the last successful backup date exceeds a predefined threshold (by default, seven days).

    The threshold for the number of days that elapsed since the last successful full backup of a specific database can be configured by modifying the settings of the Days Since Full Backup alarm, in the Threshold section of the Alarms view in the Databases Administration dashboard.

  • Configuration Parameters — user-defined parameters that configure the backup operation, such as the device type and the backup jobs parallelism.
  • Backup Jobs — a list of the backup operations that took place during the selected time range.

A backup operation can have one of the following statuses:

  • Completed
  • Failed
  • Completed with errors
  • Completed with warnings

Operations with a Completed status are indicated with a green check mark icon, while a warning icon appears near each operation whose status is other than Completed. Each backup job is identified by both the Start Time column, which indicates whether the backup was carried on a database or a datafile, and the Job ID column. Clicking the row displays a popup with the details of the backup job in the selected row.

Reviewing Configuration Settings

Use the Configuration drilldown to review the current configuration settings of the Oracle agent, as well as tracking the modifications made to these settings.

This drilldown comprises the following panels:

  • SGA — displays the settings and utilization of the SGA memory, using different display for the RAC and instance levels.
  • Initialization parameters — displayed at both the instance and the RAC levels.

Reviewing SGA Settings at the RAC Level

In Whole Cluster view, use the Memory drilldown to carry out the following operations:

  • Reviewing SGA Settings
  • Reviewing SGA Utilization
  • Reviewing the SGA’s Breakdown
  • Reviewing the free space reserved for the various SGA pools

Reviewing SGA Settings

Use the SGA management section to review the current SGA settings for the entire RAC, using a row that contains the following indicators:

  • Automatic SGA — indicates whether the SGA memory’s automatic memory management is turned on or off.
  • Max SGA Size — displays the maximum amount available for the SGA memory.
  • SGA Utilization — displays the average amount of SGA memory, in megabytes, which was consumed during the selected time range
  • Memory Target — displays the target amount of SGA memory, in megabytes

Reviewing SGA Utilization

The SGA Utilization section contains a chart that displays SGA-related information in a breakdown format, which provides a representation of the size the following components occupy within the SGA memory:

  • ASM Buffer Cache (data is available only if the ASM instance is installed and configured)
  • Buffer Cache
  • Java Pool
  • Large Pool
  • Shared Pool
  • Stream Pool

Reviewing the SGA’s Breakdown

Use the SGA Size section to review the breakdown of the SGA within the RAC, by means of the following components:

  • A chart — providing a representation of the size each of the RAC’s nodes occupies within the SGA
  • A table — containing the name of the RAC or the specific node, along with columns that indicate the SGA’s breakdown between the RAC’s nodes, using the following metrics:
    • Fixed size
    • Variable size
    • Database buffers
    • Redo buffers

Reviewing the free space reserved for the various SGA pools

The SGA Pool Free Space section displays, both graphically using a chart and in a table format, the free space reserved for the following types of SGA pools for each of the RAC’s nodes:

  • Java pool
  • Large pool
  • Shared pool

Reviewing SGA Settings at the Instance Level

Reviewing SGA Settings

Use the SGA management section to review the current SGA settings for the entire RAC, by means of a row that contains the following indicators:

  • Automatic SGA — indicates whether the SGA memory’s automatic memory management is turned on or off
  • Max SGA Size — displays the maximum amount available for the SGA memory.
  • SGA Utilization — displays the average amount of SGA memory, in megabytes, which was consumed during the selected time range
  • Memory Target — displays the target amount of SGA memory, in megabytes

Reviewing SGA Utilization

The SGA Utilization section contains a chart that displays the instance’s current SGA size in either of the following views:

  • Baseline — total SGA space utilization (current SGA size)
  • Breakdown — displays the size the following components occupy within the instance’s SGA:
    • ASM Buffer Cache (data is available only if the ASM instance is installed and configured)
    • Buffer Cache
    • Java Pool
    • Large Pool
    • Shared Pool
    • Stream Pool

Reviewing the SGA’s Breakdown

Use the SGA Size section to review the breakdown of the SGA within the instance, by means of the following components:

  • A pie chart — providing a representation of the size each component described in the table occupies within the instance’s SGA
  • A table — shows the SGA’s breakdown between the following components:
    • Fixed size
    • Variable size
    • Database buffers
    • Redo buffers

Reviewing the Free Space Reserved for the Various SGA Pools

The Free Space section displays, both graphically using a chart and in a table format, the free space reserved for the following types of SGA pools for each of the RAC’s nodes:

  • Shared pool
  • Java pool
  • Large pool

Reviewing the Initialization Parameters

The Initialization Parameters panel displays the entire list of initialization parameters, as defined by Oracle. These parameters define the characteristics of each Oracle instance when the instance is started. Upon clicking anywhere on a row that displays a specific initialization parameter, a popup appears, listing the properties of the selected parameter:

  • The parameter description, taken from Oracle’s documentation (also appears under the Description column).
  • Link to perform searching for further information.
  • Change History table — displays the entire history (time and dates) when the Foglight for Oracle agent detected the changes made to this parameter since the instance was created.

The Initialization Parameters table varies between instance mode and RAC mode. In Instance mode, the table displays the following columns.

Initialization Parameters for Instance mode

Name Description
Parameter Parameter name.
PDB In multitenant architectures, the name of the pluggable database.
PDB is Modifiable Hidden by default. In multitenant architectures, displays the list of pluggable databases that have been modified.
Current Value The parameter’s current value.
Default Indicates whether the parameter’s current value is its default value, as defined by Oracle.
Dynamic Indicates whether the initialization parameter is dynamic, that is, can be modified using the ALTER SESSION, ALTER SYSTEM, or ALTER SYSTEM DEFERRED commands while an instance is running.
Modified Indicates whether the parameter’s value has been modified.
Deprecated Indicates whether the parameter is deprecated, in which case specifying it in a parameter file will invoke a warning message when the instance starts.
Type The parameter type, as defined by Oracle.
Description The parameter description, taken from Oracle site.
PDB_modifiable Indicates whether the pluggable database can be modified.
Note: This column is not displayed by default

Reviewing the Initialization Parameters in RAC Mode

In RAC mode, the Initialization Parameters panel can be accessed by selecting either the Whole Cluster or a specific instance view. In the Whole Cluster view, instance-specific initialization parameters are displayed with the icon to the left of the parameter name, and the names of the various instances are displayed in the Scope column. The following columns in Initialization Parameters table differ in RAC mode.

Name Description
Parameter Parameter name. A ‘+’ icon to the left of the name indicates that the parameter applies differently to specific instances.
Scope Indicates whether the parameter applies to the entire RAC or varies between specific instances.
Current Value The parameter’s current value. This value can be either instance-specific or apply to the entire RAC.

Reviewing the Alert Log

The Alerts drilldown provides a view on the alert and error logs received for a selected Oracle agent during the specified time range. This drilldown comprises the following panel:

  • Alert Log

    Both the Error Log and Alert Log panels are displayed only at the instance level. Selecting the Error Log or Alert Log menu item from within a RAC, when the Whole Cluster view is selected, displays a message that prompts the selection of the requested instance.

By default, the Alert Log panel displays all of the alert log messages. To display messages under a pre-defined name, category and severity, create or edit patterns for these messages in the Match List, which is found in the Alert Log view in the Databases Administration dashboard, and add the corresponding regular expressions to this list. To prevent messages from being displayed on the Alert Log panel, add these messages to the Ignore List.

Only messages that are explicitly defined in the Ignore List will not be displayed. Messages that were not added to either the Match or Ignore lists appear with the name Other, the type of Oracle alert messages, and the severity Information. Therefore, ensure that messages that do not need to be displayed are added to the Ignore List.

The Alert Log panel comprises the panes described in the following topics:

  • Alert Log Messages Chart
  • Alert Log Messages Table

Alert Log Messages Chart

The Alert Log Messages chart provides a graphic, color-coded representation of the various alert log messages, broken down by their severity level, as described below.

  • Informational — displayed on the screen, but does not invoke alarms
  • Warning
  • Critical
  • Fatal The severity assigned for each alert, as well as the minimal severity level (Warning or higher) for which alarms are to be invoked as a result of the alert, are defined using the Alert Log view in the Databases Administration dashboard, accessible from the Agent Settings button.

Alert Log Messages Table

The Alert Log Messages table provides the following details about each alert log:

  • Timestamp — the exact time and date when the alert log message was created
  • Severity — can have one of the values listed below
    • Informational
    • Warning
    • Critical
    • Fatal
  • Message — the title of the Oracle error message
  • Dump File — this field is populated by a link only if the error message also refers to a dump file. When the link is clicked, the Dump File popup appears, displaying the first 100 lines of the dump file contents.
  • Name — the alert log name
  • Type — the alert log type, such as Oracle errors or Oracle alert messages

    Both Name and Type refer to the parameters defined using the Alert Log view in the Databases Administration dashboard.

Reviewing Monitored Data Guard Environments

Starting in version 5.7.5.50, Foglight for Oracle provides a detailed dashboard for monitoring Data Guard environments. The Data Guard environment information is presented only after Data Guard environments are configured. The Data Guard tab lists all Data Guard environments which have been configured.

To access the detailed dashboard for that Data Guard environment, click the name of that Data Guard environment under the Name column.

The Data Guard dashboard displays a Data Guard status, provides information about Primary and Standby databases, monitors progress and performance of log transfer and apply processes. The Data Guard dashboard has three tabs:

  • Summary
  • Performance
  • Log Shipping Status

Reviewing Summary Information

The Summary tab displays information about all Primary and Standby databases that are configured for the Data Guard environment. It comprises the following sections:

  • General information about Data Guard environment — shows details about a Data Guard environment that includes its protection mode, fast-start failover status and if Data Guard Broker is enabled.
  • Primary Database table — shows details about Primary database that includes database mode, switchover status, and DG errors that were raised in the Primary database during the selected time frame.
  • Standby Databases table — shows a list of Standby databases and their details, which include statuses, DG errors that were raised in the Standby database, and a number of received and applied log gaps.
  • Gap Time Chart — provides a representation of the current received and applied gap time in seconds for each Standby database

    Gap Time Chart is available for Standby databases that are monitored by users that have SYSDBA privileges.

Reviewing Performance Information

The Performance tab displays the following charts:

  • Primary Redo Generation Rate chart — provides a redo generation rate of the Primary database per hour.
  • Transport Rate bar chart — provides a transport rate for each Standby database per hour. This chart can be displayed in two modes. You can switch the mode in the menu of Data Guard dashboard.
    a. Displaying all monitored Standby databases of the specific Data Guard environment in the same chart.
    b. Displaying only one selected Standby database in the chart.
  • Standby Apply Rate bar chart — provides an apply rate for each Standby database per hour. This chart can be displayed in two modes. You can switch the mode in the menu of Data Guard dashboard.
    a. Displaying all monitored Standby databases of the specific Data Guard environment in the same chart.
    b. Displaying only one selected Standby database in the chart.
  • Estimated Failover chart — provides an estimated failover time in seconds for each Standby database.

    Estimated Failover chart is available for Standby databases that are monitored by users that have SYSDBA privileges.

    This chart can be displayed in two modes. You can switch the mode in the menu of Data Guard dashboard.
    a. Displaying all monitored Standby databases of the specific Data Guard environment in the same chart.
    b. Displaying only one selected Standby database in the chart.

Reviewing Log Shipping Status Information

The log shipping status tab contains information about non received and non applied logs into Physical Standby databases of the configured Data Guard environment. It comprises the following sections:

  • Primary Database table — shows details about a current log in the Primary database.
  • Standby Databases table — shows a list of Physical Standby databases of specific Data Guard environment and details about current received and applied logs for each Physical Standby database.
  • Log Details table — shows a list of non received and non applied logs for a chosen Physical Standby database from the Standby Databases table above.

Reviewing ASM Instances

Starting in version 5.6.5.5, Foglight for Oracle provides a detailed dashboard for monitoring ASM performance. The ASM information is presented only after ASM instances are configured. The ASM tab lists all ASM instances which have been configured. To access the detailed dashboard for that instance, click the home button.

The ASM dashboard provides information about the ASM cluster/instance, it includes general instance information, Disk groups and disks information, ASM Parameters and ASM Alert log information. The ASM dashboard has three tabs:

  • Summary
  • Parameters
  • Alert log

Reviewing Summary Information

The summary tab contains information about all the disk groups that are configured for the ASM, as well as the disks that are configured for each ASM disk group. This information includes the version number, status, total storage space, and the number of ASM clients. The number of ASM clients is clickable and opens a pop-up that shows all the Oracle instances that are using a disk group managed by the ASM instance. It also has a column named Monitored that gives an indication whether or not that Oracle instance is monitored by Foglight. If the Oracle instance is not monitored by Foglight, it is possible to monitor it immediately by clicking Monitor. The Disk Groups table provides detailed information about each group. Selecting one or more disk groups will display additional information in the pane below, either in Map or Table View. Each disk group in the top table or disk in the Map or Table view is clickable and opens a pop-up with additional information.

For disk groups, the pop-up includes the following tabs:

  • General — General Disk group information. For example, name, state number of disks, number of fail groups, allocation unit size.
  • Storage — Disk group storage-related information
  • Performance — Performance-related information
    • I/O Operations
    • Average Service Time
    • Disk Errors
  • Operations — Currently running rebalance operations
  • Alarms — List of alarms associated with this disk group

If you select a specific disk in the Map or Table view, the pop-up includes the following tabs:

  • General — General Disk information (e.g. path, failure group, creation date)
  • Storage — Disk storage-related information
  • Performance — Disk performance-related information

Reviewing Parameter Information

The Parameters tab displays a list of all the ASM parameters and their values, as well as some other additional information for each parameter.

Reviewing Alert Log Information

The Alert log tab displays the entire alert log messages with the relevant severity, as defined in the Match List. Only messages that appear in the Ignore List will not be displayed in this screen.