What’s new in this release
This is the Open Beta of the IBM Db2 plug-in — the first release covered by this guide. It ships as two builds with the same features, 24.1.9.9.0 for Enterprise Manager 24ai and 13.5.9.4.0 for Enterprise Manager 13.5, the first drop to make the 13.5 build available alongside 24ai. Everything below is new, because there is nothing before it: read this page as the feature list for the release, and the beta terms as what you are agreeing to by installing it.
Where to find it: the plug-in appears under Setup → Extensibility → Plug-ins → Databases → IBM DB2 Database (Beta); its pages appear in the ip_db2_database_beta target’s own navigation tree once a target is added.
In this page: What is verified · Beta identity · Feature-complete scope · Known limitations · Beta terms · Feedback · Full changelog
What is verified
Open Beta means the release is feature-complete for its scope and has been exercised end to end against live systems — not yet a production-supported release. Read the columns below as what to trust today versus what is not yet verified.
| Area | Status |
|---|---|
| Offline build validation | Verified — both the GA and beta identities build clean through Oracle’s plug-in packager. |
| Live OMS deployment (24ai) | Verified — import, server-side deploy, and agent-side deploy against a running Enterprise Manager 24ai, on both a local Linux agent and a remote Windows agent. |
| Live Db2 12.1 collection | Verified — real metric collection cycles against a Db2 12.1 target. |
| Licensing | Verified end to end against real keys: Active, Expired, Invalid Signature, Exceeded Limit, and the beta↔GA identity dead end in both directions. |
| Metric semantics | Verified against IBM Db2 12.1 documentation, with a hard rule that a metric must mean the same thing as the plug-in it replaces, so thresholds carried over from prior monitoring behave predictably. |
| Least-privilege grant, TLS, audit-posture config | Verified — certified against a live Db2 12.1.4 instance; see The monitoring role. |
| Live Db2 11.5 collection | Not yet verified. A full 11.5 collection run has not yet been completed; 11.5 is supported by design, and certification against a live 11.5 instance is in progress. |
| Enterprise Manager 13.5 line | Not yet verified. The 13.5.9.4.0 build passes full validation against the 13.5 development kit but has not yet been through the live-deploy and console verification given to 24ai — treat 24ai as the reference platform until 13.5 catches up. |
| HADR standby pair | Verified in PEER state against a live primary+standby pair; a controlled takeover/failover exercise has not yet been exercised — see HADR monitoring. |
| Amazon RDS for Db2 | Documentation-verified only. See Troubleshooting. |
Beta identity
The beta ships under its own plug-in identity, deliberately separate from the eventual GA release:
| Open Beta | General availability | |
|---|---|---|
| Plug-in ID | ip.em.xdbb |
ip.em.xdb2 |
| Target type | ip_db2_database_beta |
ip_db2_database |
| Display name | IBM DB2 Database (Beta) | IBM DB2 Database |
| Version line | 24.1.9.N.0 / 13.5.9.N.0 |
24.1.<n>.0.0 |
| Licence keys | Issued for ip.em.xdbb; expire 2026-10-31 |
Issued for ip.em.xdb2 |
- Beta to beta upgrades in place, within the beta line — see Install and upgrade.
- Beta to GA is always a clean install, never a migration. Nothing a beta install writes to your repository — targets, metric history, tuned thresholds — carries into GA, and a beta target remains identifiable as such in any audit. Plan the GA rollout as a fresh deployment alongside the beta, then retire the beta targets.
- Both plug-ins can be deployed to the same OMS and the same agent at once; a licence key minted for one identity is structurally rejected by the other (
Invalid Signature) rather than silently accepted.
Feature-complete scope
Everything the beta covers, all new in this release:
- Full metric parity with a curated set of new capability, rebuilt cleanly on
MON_GET_*— availability, roughly 14 performance groups (buffer pool, cache, sort/hash memory, transaction-log and direct I/O, agent and connection statistics), storage, and locking with by-table, by-blocked-application, and by-blocking-application roll-ups. No discontinuedSNAP_GET_*interface is used anywhere. See Monitoring pages. - Backup, restore, and load history. A
DB_Historymetric group readsSYSIBMADM.DB_HISTORYdirectly, with per-operation status and a failed-operation alert — beyond the age-only backup check every prior Db2 monitoring tool shipped. - SQL workload analytics (QAN v1). Periodic top-SQL delta snapshots keyed by a statement-ID hash, with per-statement CPU-time and execution-count trends.
- Deep HADR monitoring. Role, state, sync mode, connection status, heartbeats, and log positions, plus a takeover-readiness composite and a connection-status alert. See HADR monitoring.
- Tablespace growth forecasting. Per-tablespace snapshots feed a growth-rate and days-to-full projection alongside auto-resize tracking.
- Curated default thresholds. Sensible Warning/Critical values ship enabled on the metrics that matter, instead of arriving
Not Definedacross the board. See Alerts and thresholds. - First-class TLS and least privilege. A first-class SSL/TLS transport with client-truststore validation, DRDA AES-256 encryption as a first-class property, and a documented, certified least-privilege monitoring grant —
CONNECT+SQLADM, nothing more. See Prerequisites. - Compliance and advisor pack v1. Configuration best-practices, a version end-of-life advisory, and audit-posture rules, evaluated as Enterprise Manager compliance standards. See Compliance standards.
- Native console pages. Three MPCUI pages — Home, Analysis, Performance — with no dependency on a legacy report platform.
- Six administrative job types, including a Purge Stale Plugin Cache job you should run (or schedule) after every upgrade. See Jobs.
- Amazon RDS for Db2 compatibility, documented. The JDBC metric surface is expected to work unchanged against an RDS endpoint; the local-only admin jobs and diagnostic-log monitoring are not. See Troubleshooting.
- Licensing enforcement. Every target needs a beta licence key or it stops collecting everything but three deliberately-exempt metric categories — see Getting started and Troubleshooting.
Known limitations
- Live Db2 11.5 collection, the Enterprise Manager 13.5 line, and an HADR takeover exercise are still closing out — see What is verified above.
- Amazon RDS for Db2 is documentation-only in this release. Compatibility, including the
rdsadmingrant path, is doc-verified but not lab-certified. On RDS the five local administrative jobs and diagnostic-log monitoring are unavailable, because the agent cannot be co-located with the instance. See Troubleshooting. - SQL workload analytics are numeric-only. Top-SQL trends are keyed by a statement-ID hash and carry CPU-time and execution-count trends; statement text is not collected in this release.
- Out of scope for this release: Workload Management (WLM), lock/deadlock event capture, BLU/columnar, pureScale, AI Query Optimizer monitoring, Q Replication, auto-discovery, remote administrative operations, and Db2 for z/OS.
Beta terms
The full terms of use for this Open Beta — what installing it means you accept, before you install, licensing during the beta, and feedback and support — now live on their own page, in the same format as the SQL Server and MySQL plug-ins’ Open Beta notices: Open Beta notice. Read it before installing.
Feedback
Send findings — bugs, confusing metrics, missing thresholds, unclear documentation — through your Integration Plumbers support contact. Include the plug-in version (emcli list_plugins_on_server), the Enterprise Manager line (24ai or 13.5), the Db2 version (11.5 or 12.1), the metric group or console page involved, and any deploy log, agent log, or collection-error text. HADR-pair, Db2 11.5, and RDS observations fill known gaps in our own lab coverage and are especially valuable.
Full changelog
The Changelog lists every beta drop, most recent first, including the drops that predate this guide.
Related
- Getting started — install the plug-in and add your first target
- Trial setup — request a beta licence key and work the guided evaluation
- Prerequisites — supported versions, the monitoring role, and network requirements
- Troubleshooting — what an unlicensed target looks like, and how to fix it
- Changelog — every beta drop in detail