How to Use This Manual

The Oracle Enterprise Manager Policy Reference Manual (hereafter referred to as the Policy Reference Manual) lists all the Oracle defined target policies that Enterprise Manager monitors. This manual compiles in one place all the target policy help available online, eliminating the need to have the Grid Control Console up and running.

Organization of Policy Text

This manual contains a chapter for each Enterprise Manager target for which there are policies defined by Oracle. The policies in each chapter are in alphabetical order according to category.

Policy Information

The information for each policy comprises a description, summary of the policy's main properties, default values, impact of the violation, and action to perform when the violation occurs. The following list provides greater detail:

Description

Defines the policy.
Policy Summary

Summarizes in table format the severity, category, target type, versions affected, policy rule evaluation, automatically enabled, and alert message statistics for the policy.
Defaults

Lists the parameters with their default values and objects that are excluded by default.
Impact of Violation

Describes the effect of the policy violation on Enterprise Manager.
Action

Provides guidelines to follow once the policy rule is violated.

Definitions of Columns in Policy Summary Tables

The Policy Summary table is part of the overall policy information. The following is an example of a customary Policy Summary table.

Severity	Category	Target Type	Versions Affected	Policy Rule Evaluation^Foot 1	Automatically Enabled?	Alert Message
Warning	Storage	Database Instance	Oracle Server 10g Release 1 or later	The underlying metric has a collection frequency of once every 7 days.	Yes	Disk Group %DISK_GROUP_NAME% contains disks with different redundancy attributes. This may offer inconsistent levels of data protection.

^Footnote 1The policy rule is evaluated each time its underlying osm_diskGroup_Policies metric is collected.

The following table provides descriptions of columns in the Policy Summary table.

Column Header	Column Definition
Severity	Seriousness of the policy. Options are: Critical, Warning, and Informational.
Category	Classification of the policy. Options are: Configuration, Security, and Storage.
Target Type	Components monitored by Enterprise Manager, The target options are: Automatic Storage Management (ASM), BEA WebLogic Managed Server, Calendar Server, Cluster Database, Database Instance, Host, Listener, OC4J, Oracle HTTP Server, and Web Cache.
Versions Affected	Version of the target, for example, BEA WebLogic Server 7.1 or later.
Policy Rule Evaluation	Lists the underlying metric and that metric's collection frequency.
Automatically Enabled?	States whether the policy is enabled upon installation of Enterprise Manager. The possible values are yes and no.
Alert Message	Message indicating why the policy was violated. Words that display between percent signs (%) denote variables. For example, `Disk Group %DISK_GROUP_NAME%` could translate to `Disk Group /dev/hda`.

Abbreviations and Acronyms

The following abbreviations and acronyms are used in this manual:

Abbreviation/Acronym	Name
ASM	Automatic Storage Management
Database	Oracle Database
DBA	Database Administrator
IP	Internet Protocol
FAT	File Allocation Table
FTP	File Transfer Protocol
HTTP	HyperText Transfer Protocol
HTTPd	HyperText Transfer Protocol daemon
LGWR	Log Writer Process
Listener	Oracle Listener
OC4J	Oracle Application Server Containers for J2EE
NCOMP	Natively Compiled
NTFS	NT File System
PGA	Program Global Area
RAC	Real Application Cluster
SGA	System Global Area
SSL	Secure Sockets Layer
SSO	Single Sign-On
SMTP	Simple Mail Transfer Protocol
SPFILE	Server Parameter File
TCP	Transmission Control Protocol
UDP	User Datagram Protocol

Background Information on Policies

A policy defines the desired behavior of systems and is associated with one or more targets or groups.

While a metric alert monitors data that is very dynamic in nature and attempts to evaluate how the system is performing, a policy monitors data that changes much less frequently. Policies evaluate the existing state of the system against corporate standards and best practices.

Accessing Policy Rules Using the Grid Control Console

To access the Policy Rule Library page that contains all the policy rules provided by Oracle, perform the following steps:

From the Grid Control Console home page, click Policies.
On the Policy Violations page, click Library.
On the Policy Rule Library page, locate the policy of interest and click the Information icon (i) in the Description column. The help for the policy displays.

For additional information about policies, see the Enterprise Manager online help and Oracle Enterprise Manager Concepts.