Cloud computing has changed the way enterprise software is developed and deployed. Cloud computing is becoming the obvious choice for large scale software deployments because of the various cost benefits it offers. Cloud platforms eliminate the need for setting up costly hardware to host your applications. Your applications are hosted on a shared platform managed by specialists. You can focus on building your application and not really involved in managing the platform. Though there are modern software that make it easier to deploy a scalable cloud infrastructure, there are no single-click solutions available yet. This book focuses on two varieties of cloud deployments: IaaS (Infrastructure as a Service) and DBaaS (Database as a Service). We are going to explore Oracle Enterprise Manager Cloud Control 12c to implement these two flavors of Cloud Computing. Oracle's Enterprise Manager is an interesting tool because it combines the prowess of Oracle's Database (though you can configure other databases), Fusion Middleware, as well as virtualization technologies. Oracle Enterprise Manager has quickly established itself as an end-to-end cloud management system. Organizations like CERN have utilized Enterprise Manager to extend their existing Oracle Grid databases and WebLogic Server infrastructure into a scalable elastic cloud.

This book will cover these specific scenarios and we will assume that the reader is familiar with the common components involved in building the cloud platform. We assume that the reader knows the basics of networking, storage, and has a working knowledge of command-line tools. This book takes a hands-on tutorial approach and targets specific areas to achieve the most productive setup of Oracle Enterprise Manager.

This chapter focuses on making sure the basic setup is complete before we start with the complex scenarios of implementing IaaS and DBaaS.

Topics covered in this chapter: