Configure Virtualized Exalytics Host for Enterprise Manager Cloud Control Discovery (and how to save you from a 4.3 GB download)

Today Rob Zoeteweij asked me to help discover an Exalytics in OVMM. When discovering the Exalytics in Enterprise Manager 12c an error returned on a missing /var/exalytics/info/em-context.info file.
Digging into the issue, Rob found that It seems that Configure Exalytics Host for Enterprise Manager Cloud Control Discovery gives some headache. The documentation mentions a script called exalytics_configure_for_emcc.sh , however this script cannot be found on the virtualized Exalytics (which is OVS). Given that the script was not to be found, we couldn’t be sure that other settings were missing too.

To find the script, you need to download “Oracle Exalytics X2-4/ X3-4/X4-4 Base Image 1.0.0.7 for Linux x86-64” from edelivery. Exalytics software can be found by searching on the “Oracle Business Intelligence” product and “Linux x86-64” platform. Select the link for “Oracle Exalytics Software Media Pack for Linux x86-64”

The 4.3GB download wil result in a file called V56223-01.iso . If you mount this iso on a tempory directory, e.g.

mount -o loop /var/tmp/V56223-01.iso /mnt

you can next up find an RPM that contains the exalytics_configure_for_emcc.sh script. To get the script from the rpm without installing it, you can extract the RPM to a temporary directory:

cd /var/tmp
rpm2cpio /mnt/Server/exalytics-scripts-1.0.0.7-18.noarch.rpm | cpio -idmv

The contents of this script is

[root@exalytics ]# cat /var/tmp/opt/exalytics/bin/exalytics_configure_for_emcc.sh
#!/bin/sh
#
# Copyright (c) 2013, Oracle and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved.
#

mkdir -p /var/exalytics/info/
IPMI_OUT_FILE=/var/exalytics/info/impi.out
ipmitool sunoem cli 'show /SP system_identifier'    2>&1 | tee -a $IPMI_OUT_FILE
cat $IPMI_OUT_FILE | grep "system_identifier =" > /var/exalytics/info/em-context.info
echo "Contents of /var/exalytics/info/em-context.info file:"
cat /var/exalytics/info/em-context.info
echo "Note: If the system_identifier is displayed as blank then it needs to be set through the ILOM web interface and this script needs to be rerun."
echo "Configured System Successfully"

So, as you can read the script only extracts the system identifier from ILOM and places it in a file. This means that the contents of this file should be something like:

[root@exalytics ]# cat /var/exalytics/info/em-context.info
        system_identifier = Oracle Exalytics XXXXXXXXX

Where XXXXXXXXX should be your specific system identifier.

This file is required to be available on the server where you have the Enterprise Manager agent installed that will monitor your virtualized Exalytics. Typically I would locate that on the same server as the Oracle VM Manager for Exalytics will run. The file is only required during configuration of the Exalytics in Enterprise Manager, hence it can be reused (with a different system identifier) for multiple Exalytics systems.

Secondly you have to install ipmitool on the server that has runs the monitoring agent. ipmitool can be found on the installation DVD of your Oracle Linux distribution. It is also distributed via the Exalytics .iso that you downloaded to find the Exalytics_configure_for_emcc.sh script.

After you have placed this file, you can follow the guided discovery process in Enterprise Manager for Exalytics.

Hope this helps.