By Francisco Munoz Alvarez 
Before you start with an installation of Grid Control, I’ll recommend you to go thru the documentation to understand all the minimum requirements and the installation process. For reference purpose, I’ll resume some important points of it here.
Let’s start taking a close look in the components of the Grid Control and some important information:
| Component | Definition |
| Grid Control Console |
From the Grid Control console, you can monitor and administer your entire computing environment from one location on the network. All the services within your enterprise, including hosts, databases, listeners, application servers, Oracle Collaboration Suite applications, and Web applications are easily managed from one central location (console). |
|
Management Agent |
The Management Agent is a process that is deployed on each monitored host. It is responsible for monitoring all targets on the host, for communicating that information to the middle-tier Management Service, and for managing and maintaining the host and its targets. |
|
Management Service |
The Management Service is a J2EE Web application that renders the user interface for the Grid Control console. It works with all Management Agents to process monitoring and jobs information, and uses the Management Repository to store data. |
|
Management Repository |
The Management Repository consists of objects such as database jobs, packages, procedures, views, and two tablespaces in Oracle Database that contain all available information about administrators, targets, and applications managed within Enterprise Manager. |
The Management Service uploads the monitoring data received from the Management Agents to the Management Repository. The Management Repository then organizes all data collected, so that it can be retrieved by the Management Service and displayed in the Grid Control console, making our life easy. Because all data is stored in the Management Repository, it can be shared between any number of administrators accessing the Grid Control console.
Licensing Information
Although the installation media in your media pack contain many Oracle components, you are permitted to use only those components for which you have purchased licenses. Oracle Support Services does not provide support for components for which licenses have not been purchased. For more information please refer to Oracle Enterprise Manager Licensing Information.
Oracle Directory
If you choose to install Enterprise Manager Grid Control using a new database on a computer with no other Oracle software installed, Oracle Universal Installer creates an Oracle base directory for you. If Oracle software is already installed, then one or more Oracle base directories already exist. In the latter case, you must specify the Oracle base directory into which you want to install Oracle Database.
You are not required to create an Oracle base directory before installation, but you can do so if desired. You can set the ORACLE_BASE environment directory to point to this directory, which the Oracle Universal Installer will recognize.
Multiple Oracle Home Support
Enterprise Manager is installed on multiple Oracle homes within the Oracle base directory. This means that a typical Enterprise Manager Grid Control installation creates three Oracle homes in different Oracle home directories. For example, oms10g, db10g, and agent10g.
Permissions Required for Executing UTL_FILE
The management audit log package of the scheme owner uses the UTIL package. For this package to function properly, the Enterprise Manager schema user (for example, sysman) must have permissions to execute this package.
To grant permissions, run this command (where sysman is the schema user):
grant execute on utl_file to sysman;
Enterprise Manager 10g Grid Control Certification Matrix
Before you download the software, Oracle recommends you to read the Oracle Enterprise Manager 10g Grid Control Certification matrix. The certification matrix shows the operating systems and browser versions on which Enterprise Manager Grid Control and Management Agent are certified.
The Enterprise Manager 10g Grid Control Certification matrix is available on Oracle Metalink at:
Login and select the Certify tab. On the Certify page, click View Certifications by Product and select Enterprise Manager 10g Grid Control, and then click Submit.
Preinstallation Requirements for Enterprise Manager
For small environments (100 monitored targets):
- 1 Host with 1 CPU (3GHz) 2 GB RAM and 2 GB Space to install the Oracle Management Service.
- 1 Host with 1 COU (3GHz) 2 GB RAM and 10 GB space to the Oracle Management Repository
Note: On small environments it’s ok to share the same host for the Oracle Management Service and Repository.
- 400 MB hard disk space to install the Oracle Management Agent for all Unix platforms and 500 MB for Windows,
For information regarding Preinstallation requirements, please refer to the OEM Documentation here.
Certified Enterprise Manager Targets
This is a resume of the list, for full list, please refer to the documentation.
| Supported Targets | Release |
| Oracle Application Server |
|
| Oracle Database, Listener |
|
| Oracle Real Application Clusters Database |
|
| Oracle Collaboration Suite |
|
Note: Oracle recommends that the target host on which you are installing the Management Agent have a static IP address and not DHCP.
Reference material: Enterprise Manager Grid Control Installation and Basic Configuration Guide.