Oracle GoldenGate Director

The Director is another stand-alone product from Oracle used mainly to administer, manage and view Oracle GoldenGate instances remotely. This product, like the Monitor, requires a repository and has its own installation. Unlike Monitor which runs Apache Tomcat, Director requires a WebLogic server. It creates a WLS domain to deploy its application code.  Director is not part of the OEM framework, nor does it rely on OEM. Director connects directly to Oracle Goldengate instances (via the manager port) to issue “ggsci” commands to the manager to get information.

Director’s core feature/usage is remote administration and management and offers very little monitoring capabilities.  It is useful to remotely see and manage a diverse number of Oracle GoldenGate instances and how the components are linked together. Director and Monitor both do this fairly well and give the user a great visual view of the Oracle GoldenGate implementations).  Monitoring of Oracle GoldenGate is very basic in Director. 
 

Requirements:

·       Requires Java 6 (1.6.x+) on the Director server platform

o   Windows, Linux, Solaris, HPUX and AIX

·       Requires a WebLogic Server 11G (10.3.1,10.3.2,10.3.3) Standard Edition

o   Director runs as a Weblogic (Java) deployed application

·       Requires a repository to hold the configuration and operational data

o   MySQL, SQL Server or Oracle (needs 400MB)

·       Can work with most all GoldenGate versions 10.4.x, 11.1.x, 11.2.x and 12.1.x

·       Manager port number for each GoldenGate instance to be administered must be accessible over the network from the Director server

o   Uses remote GGSCI calls to obtain information and issue management commands

Benefits:

·       Allows remote administration/configuration of GoldenGate instances

o   No other product can do this, this is the only one

§  Can review ggserr.log and report log files

§  Can issue GGSCI commands remotely

·       stop/start processes

·       add/delete processes/trails

·       any GGSCI command can be issued

§  Can change parameter files remotely

·       No JAgent configuration required on each GoldenGate instance

o   uses GGSCI remotely, over the network

·       No version or platform restrictions

o   Works with all versions of Oracle GoldenGate and all supported platforms capable of running GoldenGate

·       Graphical views of GoldenGate topology and components, and views can be customized

o   Graphical views can be customized and saved for complex topologies

§  Components in the view can be moved around to customize view

·       Can set per process metric thresholds ????????

·       Supports email (SMTP) alerts

·       Supports SSL between browser/client and Director server

Drawbacks:

·       Monitoring is very limited (only SMTP based alerts)

·       Needs a Weblogic server (does not run on Tomcat like Monitor)

·       Monitoring process is threaded (scales)

·       No per table/per process statistics collected

The reference architecture for Oracle GoldenGate Director is listed below:

As shown in the diagram above, Director has several components: Director Server and Director Web are provided by the installed Weblogic application components.   Director Web is used for viewing the operational status and topology of all GoldenGate instances and is useful for operations staff or a NOC to see all components in a complex GoldenGate topology/implementation. The Director web is your read only view into status.

Director Client and Director Admin are utilities which can be installed on administrator desktop/PC for remote administration of GoldenGate instances and the Director server.
The power of Director is in the Director Client and the ability to remotely control/administer GoldenGate instances and view all components of the topology in a single view. GoldenGate can be difficult at times due to the many systems imvolved (at least one source and one target usually). In more complex implementations, there may be many sources or many targets (I have seen as many as 100 sources to 10 targets). This is when Director is invaluable!

Sample screen shots of Director Client in action with registered Oracle GoldenGate instances.  

Below is an example of viewing the "ggserr.log" of the GoldenGate instance remotely

Below are examples of issuing "ggsci" commands to the GoldenGate instance remotely.

Below is an example of viewing process status and alerts from the GoldenGate instance remotely

Below is an example of configuring an alert in Director.