Did you know that the latest release of Oracle Enterprise Manager 11g features new capabilities for managing Oracle Database 11g Release 2 and Oracle Exadata V2. These new enhancements were developed and built to help administrators focus on managing their database environments more efficiently and with less manual effort.
In addition to all the rich capabilities including; performance tuning, configuration and change management, provisioning, patching, data masking, and testing--Oracle Enterprise Manager 11g also introduced new support for:

Compression Advisor: A Compression Advisor has been added in Oracle Database 11g Release 2 to facilitate choosing the correct compression level for your data. The Compression Advisor is available through Oracle Enterprise Manager 11g Grid Control console. As part of the existing Advisor framework in Oracle Database 11g, the compression advisor analyzes objects in the database, discovers the possible compression ratios that could be achieved, and recommends optimal compression settings.

Instance Caging: Oracle Enterprise Manager 11g introduces more flexible alternatives to server partitioning to support resource management. Instance caging allows you to limit CPU count per instance and enables resource management that has more consistent support across operating systems compared to resource managers available in many operating systems. It also has lower administration overhead than traditional virtualization techniques.

Global RAC Diagnostics: Oracle Enterprise Manager 11g extends Automatic Database Diagnostics Monitor (ADDM) for Oracle Database 11gR2 by greatly enhancing cluster-wide performance analysis for Real Application Clusters (RAC) databases. For RAC environments ADDM analyses the RAC cluster and reports on issues that are affecting the entire database as well as its individual instances. DBAs can now use ADDM to perform database-wide analysis of global resources, such as high-load SQL, global cache interconnect traffic, network latency issues, skew in instance response times, and I/O capacity.

Tuning Standby Databases: Active Session History (ASH) is now available for performance diagnostics for standby databases. Using Grid Control, DBAs can quickly drill-down into problem areas that are affecting performance and resolve them with minimal impact.


Extensive Oracle Exadata V2 Support: Oracle Exadata can now be managed through Grid Control as a target or as an aggregate service, and takes full advantage of Enterprise Manager's rich comprehensive management capabilities. In addition, there are some Exadata specific features that are supported in Oracle Enterprise Manger 11gR1, including:


Monitoring of Exadata storage;

Exadata aware SQL monitoring for performance diagnostics and tuning;

I/O resource management for Exadata;

For more in-depth technical details on managing Oracle Exadata V2, check out the Oracle Technology Network site.
High Availability Console: Accessed through Grid Control, the new High Availability Console allows you a configuration-wide summary view, with charts, of RAC and HA setups instead of individual targets. It provides HA configuration best practices and standards, along with recommendations from the new Maximum Availability Architecture Advisor, to help you implement a HA system. The HA Console also uses EM's powerful workflows and provisioning automation to minimize downtime for things like single instance to MAA conversions. Take a look at the following HA Console screen shot to better understand its functionality:

The HA console also show availability related events across the configuration, and includes new manage role-based standby databases allowing you to convert physical standby databases to Oracle Active Data Guard instances.
Another great feature of the HA Console is its non-intrusive, always-on, performance monitoring with drill-down capabilities, and provides smart alerting and instant notifications with adaptive thresholds to guard against unexpected outages.

Be sure to watch the latest Oracle Enterprise Manager 11g webcast to learn more about all these new database manageability features.