Puppet users - Sep 2013 - Puppet vs Oracle Enterprise Manager (cm pack)?

Hey;

I''m still very new to puppet having *just* finished the pro puppet
book.
 Going to have to go back to that a few times for re-reading, I suspect. 
 Any rate, I have a client who''s leaning very heavily towards OEM w/the
configuration management pack.  Despite some fairly exhaustive google 
sessions, I haven''t been able to find a direct comparison between these
two.  I have found a couple of troubling points (like cost); but, nothing 
saying how well these two CM apps compare/contrast with each other.  Does 
anyone here have any experience w/OEM and how it compares against puppet?

Any info, stories, tips, or links would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks.

Doug O''Leary

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We use both as they solve different problems.  I don''t use any of the
OS
provisioning or metering in 12c as i use puppet for that but being that we 
run a lot of oracle stuff, i use the oracle management tool packs quite 
extensively.  We run puppet agents offline and use mcollective to 
orchestrate all changes, that way there isn''t the burden of so many
agents
running on each host 100% of the time.. (Which was the biggest downfall of 
Puppet + 12c)

What features are you looking to implement? What are you trying to solve? 
do you already have 12c licensing? What is your vitalization or hardware 
layer?


On Saturday, September 28, 2013 6:40:11 PM UTC-5, dkoleary
wrote:
>
> Hey;
>
> I''m still very new to puppet having *just* finished the pro puppet
book.
>  Going to have to go back to that a few times for re-reading, I suspect. 
>  Any rate, I have a client who''s leaning very heavily towards OEM
w/the
> configuration management pack.  Despite some fairly exhaustive google 
> sessions, I haven''t been able to find a direct comparison between
these
> two.  I have found a couple of troubling points (like cost); but, nothing 
> saying how well these two CM apps compare/contrast with each other.  Does 
> anyone here have any experience w/OEM and how it compares against puppet?
>
> Any info, stories, tips, or links would be greatly appreciated.
>
> Thanks.
>
> Doug O''Leary
>
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Hey;
>>We use both as they solve different problems.
Thank you very much for responding!  All of the searching I''ve been
doing
has slowly lead me to that same conclusion, but I don''t have any solid 
facts or sites to back it up.  

My client also has a lot of oracle stuff.  I''m sure they could start
using
rhel w/o issue, but it''s almost exclusively OEL at this point.  They
say
they have the license for OEM 12c; but, so far, I''ve not been able to 
confirm the license for the CM pack - which, if I''m reading it right,
is
*not* cheap and does not come with the base OEM.

I''ve read about the mcollective but haven''t had a chance to
try it yet.
 Good to know that there''s a performance issue running both of puppet
and
OEM simultaneously.

As for the environment: as I mentioned, it''s mostly OEL but they do
have a
smattering of rhel ver 4 and 5.  Most of the systems are now vmware guests; 
but, there are a few physicals - mostly the rhel4 systems, still running.  
>>What are you trying to solve? 
That, right there, is my core problem.  I haven''t yet been able to
hammer
that down; but, I believe that the other admin (the one pushing for OEM) 
and I are trying to solve different problems.  She''s looking for
something
that''ll automate patching + some other nebulous things on which I
haven''t
gotten a clear answer.  I''m looking for a tool through which I can nail
down system configurations - ensuring that they''re kept consistent
across
all environments - and help automate configuration change distributions. 
 I''m a UNIX admin but also a security guy at heart (CISSP/CISA).

So, short version: I need to figure out what my client''s trying to
solve
(not as easy an investigation as one would hope) and, from there, I can 
figure out whether or not OEM will be sufficient.

At your convenience, any chance you could expand on the concept that they 
solve different problems?

Thanks again, very much, for your response.  It''s nice getting at least
a
partial confirmation that what I was suspecting is accurate.

Doug O"Leary

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Doug,

For the most part, Oracle sells 12c cloud control as an enterprise 
dashboard with provisioning and metering capabilities.  12c provisions 
using templates and scripts and then has some patching stuff built on that 
for its oracle products and some os''s.  It''s not an idempotent
based system
by design - not a desired state config - more of a reporting config and 
here is how to bill for it.  It makes people happy who want to share costs 
since oracle costs so much to begin with :)

While oracle can provision oracle vm''s and oracle systems and oracle is
moving to pluggable databases to further remove themselves from the OS, 
there is value in 12c for oracle shops. It''s just a big cost and a big 
price you pay to play that game.

We don''t use the oracle provisioning, oracle vm. We''re a
vmware shop, so i
provision everything from the OS up to apps through puppet & the foreman 
and i use puppet to deploy an RPM based 12c agent on hosts in the oracle 
groups.  The oracle agent just does its thing for our management and 
performance packs and allows us to easily manage / alert on oracle metrics, 
processes, jobs and events.

For what isn''t oracle related, we don''t install the oracle
cloud control
agents - we use Nagios..

We weren''t using puppet to help do metered billing or to focus on
provision
oracle stacks only so we didn''t buy the provisioning or cloud
management
packs, but we do enjoy it for the oracle rdbms / weblogic 
monitoring/reporting/alerting



On Monday, September 30, 2013 6:50:24 PM UTC-5, dkoleary
wrote:
>
> Hey;
>
> >>We use both as they solve different problems.
>
> Thank you very much for responding!  All of the searching I''ve
been doing
> has slowly lead me to that same conclusion, but I don''t have any
solid
> facts or sites to back it up.  
>
> My client also has a lot of oracle stuff.  I''m sure they could
start using
> rhel w/o issue, but it''s almost exclusively OEL at this point. 
They say
> they have the license for OEM 12c; but, so far, I''ve not been able
to
> confirm the license for the CM pack - which, if I''m reading it
right, is
> *not* cheap and does not come with the base OEM.
>
> I''ve read about the mcollective but haven''t had a chance
to try it yet.
>  Good to know that there''s a performance issue running both of
puppet and
> OEM simultaneously.
>
> As for the environment: as I mentioned, it''s mostly OEL but they
do have a
> smattering of rhel ver 4 and 5.  Most of the systems are now vmware guests;
> but, there are a few physicals - mostly the rhel4 systems, still running.  
>
> >>What are you trying to solve? 
>
> That, right there, is my core problem.  I haven''t yet been able to
hammer
> that down; but, I believe that the other admin (the one pushing for OEM) 
> and I are trying to solve different problems.  She''s looking for
something
> that''ll automate patching + some other nebulous things on which I
haven''t
> gotten a clear answer.  I''m looking for a tool through which I can
nail
> down system configurations - ensuring that they''re kept consistent
across
> all environments - and help automate configuration change distributions. 
>  I''m a UNIX admin but also a security guy at heart (CISSP/CISA).
>
> So, short version: I need to figure out what my client''s trying to
solve
> (not as easy an investigation as one would hope) and, from there, I can 
> figure out whether or not OEM will be sufficient.
>
> At your convenience, any chance you could expand on the concept that they 
> solve different problems?
>
> Thanks again, very much, for your response.  It''s nice getting at
least a
> partial confirmation that what I was suspecting is accurate.
>
> Doug O"Leary
>
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