Creating an Oracle database instance for the Infrastructure Management Server

To create an Oracle database instance for the BMC TrueSight Infrastructure Management Server, perform the following tasks:

1. Create a dedicated Oracle database instance on the Oracle server. For instructions, see the Oracle database documentation.
2. While creating the Oracle database instance, specify the following character sets:
   • Database Character Set—AL32UTF8
   • National Character Set—AL16UTF16

   • NLS_LENGTH_SEMANTICS—BYTE

     Notes

     • Ensure that you use the default values for all the other fields, apart from the ones mentioned earlier.
     • Ensure that you dedicate one Oracle database instance exclusively only to BMC TrueSight Infrastructure Management Servers.
     • BMC recommends that you set the NLS_LENGTH_SEMANTICS value to BYTE, and set the DB_BLOCK_SIZE value to 8192. If you set the NLS_LENGTH_SEMANTICS value to CHAR, ensure that you set the DB_BLOCK_SIZE value to 16384.

Testing the connectivity of the Oracle database instance

To ensure that the BMC TrueSight Infrastructure Management Server can connect to the Oracle database instance you created, BMC recommends that you Install the Oracle SQL*Plus Instant Client by performing the following steps. Install the Oracle SQL*Plus Instant Client on the same computer in which the BMC TrueSight Infrastructure Management Server will be installed.

1. Install the following packages. See the Oracle documentation for installation guidelines.
   
   • SQL*Plus Instant Client package
   • Either the Basic Instant Client package or the Lightweight Instant Client package
2. If the password file is not created by default, create the password file as follows:

   1. Go to the ORACLE_HOME directory in which the Oracle server is installed and run following command. See the Oracle documentation for more information about creating the password file.

      ORAPWD FILE=filename [ENTRIES=numusers] [FORCE={Y|N}] [IGNORECASE={Y|N}]
      [NOSYSDBA={Y|N}]
      

      For example,

      orapwd file=samplePasswordFile entries=5 force=N ignorecase=Y

      

   2. The REMOTE_LOGIN_PASSWORDFILE parameter is exclusive by default. If it is not, set it to exclusive in the Oracle database initialization file as follows. If the Oracle database initialization file does not exist, create it executing the CREATE SPFILE FROM PFILE; command.
      
      

      REMOTE_LOGIN_PASSWORDFILE=exclusive
      

      If the SID is ORA112DB then database initialization file is named initORA112DB.ora

       

   3. Restart the database after configuring these settings for the changes to take effect.

3. Now from the Oracle Instant Client, connect to the remote Oracle database as follows:
   
   

   sqlplus <user name>/<password>@//<database_hostname>:<Port>/<SID> [as sysdba]
   

   

4. (For Oracle 12c only) To allow the Infrastructure Management client connections to connect to the Oracle Pluggable Database (PDB) through JDBC, add the USE_SID_AS_SERVICE_listener=on entry in the ORACLE_HOME/network/admin/listener.ora file.
5. (For Oracle 12c only) Reload the listener service by using the $ lsnrctl reload command.
   You can now connect to the PDB by using the jdbc:oracle:thin:@<oracle_host_name>:1521:pdb1 URL.

Other Oracle instance configuration recommendations

• Set the Oracle database instance on the Oracle server to run in ARCHIVELOG mode. For instructions on how to set the ARCHIVELOG mode, see the Oracle database documentation.
• Create at least two sets of redo log files with a minimum of 500 MB each on the Oracle database instance.
• BMC TrueSight Infrastructure Management Server communicates with the Oracle database using Java Database Connectivity (JDBC). It does not require additional software such as Oracle Client to be present on the server where BMC TrueSight Infrastructure Management Server is installed.
• (For Oracle 12c only) The administrator user that is created for the PDB is for the purpose of administration only. Do not use this user for Infrastructure Management.