The provisioning subsystem provides support for automating provisioning of software on multiple targets. Using provisioning subsystem, the System Administrator can do initial provisioning of software, for example provisioning of Linux operating system and RAC database on a new host. Provisioning system also provides support for provisioning software from a reference installation, where Enterprise Manager can clone software from reference environment to new environment. For example, if a database instance is running on host1, Enterprise Manager can provision a new database instance on host2 by cloning the database instance on host1.
Major building blocks of provisioning subsystem are:
Deployment procedures
Deployment procedures define the steps that need to be executed to achieve a particular objective. For example, the deployment procedure for J2EE server installation defines all of the steps that need to be executed to install a J2EE server. The provisioning subsystem provides out-of-the-box deployment procedures for most common provisioning operations, it also provides support to customize existing deployment procedures or to define a new deployment procedure.
Provisioning subsystem also provides support for scheduling and executing these deployment procedures. Enterprise Manager console provides an interface for scheduling deployment procedure and monitoring the status of scheduled deployment procedure.
Software library
Software Library is a central repository to keep installable software and gold images of software. Provisioning framework uses Software Library for storing gold images and provisioning new software from the images. For example, the provisioning subsystem can build a gold image from an existing Linux setup and store it in the software library. At some later point in time the provisioning subsystem can use the stored gold image to provision a new Linux host.
Software library also provides support for versioning, maturity levels (beta, production) for installable software and gold images. Enterprise Manager Console provides interface to browse the contents of software library, and update the version, maturity level of software, and gold images.