A System is the set of infrastructure components (hosts, databases, application servers, etc.) that work together to host your applications. For example, an email application can be hosted by a database, listener, application server, and the hosts on which these components reside.
In Enterprise Manager, a System is modeled as a new type of target. The application that runs on this system is modeled as another type of target called Service. To monitor an email application in EM, you would first create a System in Enterprise Manager, such as Mail System, that consists of the database, listener, application server, and hosts targets on which the email application runs. You would then create a Service target to represent the email application, and specify that it runs on the Mail System target.
When defining a System, you can specify the associations between the components in the System to logically represent the connections or interactions between them. For example, you can define an association between the database and the listener to indicate the relationship between them. These associations are displayed in the topology viewer for the System.
Some data centers have systems dedicated to one application or service. Alternatively, others have systems that host multiple services. In Enterprise Manager, you can associate single or multiple services to a System, based on how the data center is set up.
In Enterprise Manager, Groups have the same features that are supported for Systems, such as jobs and blackouts. Groups dffer slightly from Systems, however. A Group consists of any set of targets that you might want to group together to administer and monitor the targets more efficiently, such as all hosts in a network grid, whereas Systems contain targets that work together to host an application or service.
Related Topics
Creating, Editing, and Viewing Systems
Creating, Editing, and Viewing System Topology
Enterprise Manager Information Roadmap
Copyright © 1996, 2005, Oracle. All rights reserved.