Oracle Enterprise Manager Grid Control 11g vs SQL Sever 2008 R2 Universal Control Point Facility

Both Oracle and Microsoft have recently introduced new or upgraded Database Farm Monitoring and System Management Software. In the case of Oracle, the long awaited 11g release of Oracle Enterprise Manager (OEM) Grid Control is finally available. Microsoft has introduced a somewhat similar, but smaller in scope at present its' Universal Control Point (UCP) feature which is part of the new SQL Server 2008 R2 Enterprise Edition.

Oracle Enterprise Manager Grid Control has been around for several years beginning with release 10g and has support for current and past versions of Oracle and other Database Management Systems including Sybase, DB2 and SQL Server via installable Management Agents. The Grid Control Repository can be in the same or other Oracle Server. 11g editions are available for Linux, Solaris, HP-UX and AIX5L. A Windows Server version for the 11g release is not yet available. The Oracle WebLogic and Database Servers provide the infrastructure needed for OEM.

The UCP facility in SQL Server 2008 R2 does not provide for connections for monitoring, system analysis, job submission or other DBMS activities to non Microsoft DBMS vendor products. At this point, UCP in SQL Server 2008 R2 is limited enrolling only other SQL Server 2008 R2 databases. This is particularly problematic since even if you are in a SQL Server only medium or larger installation, it would be rare not to find earlier versions of SQL Server 2008 and 2005 in production. Many application vendors still have yet to ramp up support for SQL Server 2008.

Oracle OEM Grid Control on the other hand has a wide variety of system and database agents that make it a comprehensive solution for system and database management and monitoring across all database systems employed in the datacenter.