Microsoft System Center 2022 Operations Manager Web Console
In the Last Blogpost MVPLAB Serie we installed Microsoft System Center 2022 Operations Manager on a Windows Insider SQL Cluster for testing and monitoring. You can find that blogpost here
Before we install Microsoft System Center 2022 Operations Manager Web Console, you should have a look at the requirements of SCOM 2022 Web Console for the IIS settings and features.
In the following steps we will install SCOM 2022 Web Console
First of all you have to install the IIS Features.
See the Microsoft Docs.
Don’t worry if you missed a setting, Microsoft did make a requirements check in the installation procedure before you can move on with the installation of SCOM 2022 Web Console. You will see later.
Run the setup as Administrator of the SCOM 2022 software ISO.
Select Web Console.
Click on Next.
This is what I mean by forgetting a feature Role.
Install the feature Role.
Verify prerequisites again.
Then Click Next.
Check if the Installation Summary is good.
Click on Install
Setup is Completed
SCOM 2022 Web Console is running
Now you can configure your Microsoft System Center 2022 Operations Manager monitoring with the right Management Packs installed via your Edge web browser to get monitoring and alerts in place. Here you find more information about SCOM Management Packs
Now we have in our MVPLAB On-premises Datacenter everything running, we will have a look at Microsoft Azure Hybrid benefit in the following MVPLAB Series. Think about Microsoft Azure Arc Services, Security and more.
Installing Operations Manager creates a management group. The management group is the basic unit of functionality. At a minimum, a management group consists of a management server, the operational database, and the reporting data warehouse database.
The management server is the focal point for administering the management group and communicating with the database. When you open the Operations console and connect to a management group, you connect to a management server for that management group. Depending on the size of your computing environment, a management group can contain a single management server or multiple management servers.
The operational database is a SQL Server database that contains all configuration data for the management group and stores all monitoring data that is collected and processed for the management group. The operational database retains short-term data, by default 7 days.
The data warehouse database is a SQL Server database that stores monitoring and alerting data for historical purposes. Data that is written to the Operations Manager database is also written to the data warehouse database, so reports always contain current data. The data warehouse database retains long-term data.
When Operations Manager reporting functionality is installed, the management group also contains a Reporting server which builds and presents reports from data in the data warehouse database.
These core components of a management group can exist on a single server, or they can be distributed across multiple servers, as shown in the following image.
In my Test LAB mvplab.local I will install the Management Server on a Windows Server Insider member Server and the Operational Database with the Data Warehouse Database on the SQL Cluster Instance. Here you find more Microsoft Information about System Center 2022 Operations Manager
Architecture SCOM 2022
IMPORTANT : In my MVPLAB I’m working with Windows Server Insider Preview Builds and with SQL Server 2022 CTP2.1 Preview version on a Cluster and is not supported yet for Production workloads, then you have to wait for Microsoft to make it General Available!
Now we have a SQL Cluster Instance running in my mvplab.local domain, I’m going to install Microsoft System Center 2022 Operations Manager (SCOM) for monitoring in the following step-by-step guide :
Run SCOM_2022 as Administrator
Click on Next
Click on Accept the Agreement.
Click on Next
Extract the files to your location.
Click on Next
Click on Extract
Completed Click on Finish
Run Setup
Click on Install
I’m installing only the Management Server and Operations Console.
When this was Production I would install every feature on separated Servers with
two Management Servers.
Click on Next
Select installation location
Click on Next
Click on Next
Give your Management Group a Name.
Click on Next
Agree with the License Terms.
Click on Next
Select de SQL Instance and Port.
Set Database Size.
and Data File Folders.
Click on Next
Here you can select de Instance for data warehouse database.
Click Next
Select the Service accounts
Click on Next
Click on Next
Check the Summary.
Click on Install
SCOM 2022 Installation in Progress.
Processing
SCOM License we set later.
I have installed both databases in one SQL Instance for in my MVPLAB.
System Center 2022 Operations Manager (SCOM)
Now you can Configure the Management Packs in SCOM for your environment and set the Alerts. More information about System Center 2022 Operations Manager can you find here :
As enterprise environments now span on-premises to the cloud, customers look to leverage the innovation in Azure services using their on-premises tools. To enable this, Microsoft has integrated System Center with a set of management services in Azure to augment the on-premises tools.
With Service Map integration with System Center Operations Manager (SCOM), you can automatically create distributed application diagrams in Operations Manager (OM) that are based on the dynamic dependency maps in Service Map.
With Azure Management Pack, you can now view perf and alert metrics in SCOM, integrate with web application monitoring in Application Insights, and monitor more PaaS services, such as Azure Blob Storage, Azure Data Factory, etc.
Virtual Machine Manager (VMM) 2019 enables simplified patching of VMs by integrating with Azure Update Management.
What is New in Microsoft System Center 2019
Read here what is new on Microsoft System Center 2019 for your IT Management :
New features in Operations Manager 2019
See the following sections for detailed information about the new and updated features in System Center 2019 – Operations Manager. Features and updates introduced in Operations Manager version 1801 and 1807 are included in version 2019. Plan your Upgrade to SCOM 2019
Service Map integration
Service Map automatically discovers application components on Windows and Linux systems and maps the communication between services. It automatically builds a common reference map of dependencies across your servers, processes, and third-party services. Integration between Service Map and System Center Operations Manager allows you to automatically create distributed application diagrams in Operations Manager that are based on the dynamic dependency maps in Service Map.
SCVMM 1801 supports management of ARM-based VMs, Azure Active Directory (AD) based authentication that is created by using the new Azure portal and region-specific Azure subscriptions (namely, Germany, China, US Government Azure regions).
What is New in System Center Data Protection Manager version 1801 ?
The following features are either new to DPM, or are improved for DPM 2016.
Modern Backup Storage – Using Resilient File System (ReFS) block-cloning technology to store incremental backups, DPM 2016 dramatically improves storage utilization and performance. The storage consumed by backups grows and shrinks with the production data source, and there is no over-allocation of storage. Resilient change tracking (RCT) – DPM uses RCT (the native change tracking in Hyper-V), which removes the need for time-consuming consistency checks. RCT provides better resiliency than the change tracking provided by VSS snapshot-based backups. DPM also uses RCT for incremental backup. It identifies VHD changes for virtual machines, and transfers only those blocks that are indicated by the change tracker.
Continued protection during cluster aware updates – Windows Server 2016 comes with the cluster OS rolling update, where a cluster can be upgraded to Windows Server 2016 without bringing it down. DPM 2016 continues to protect VMs during the upgrade, maintaining the backup service level agreement (SLA). Shielded VM Backups – Shielded VMs in Windows Server 2016 help protect sensitive VMs from inspection, tampering, and data theft by malware and malicious administrators. DPM 2016 backups retain the protections provided by shielded VMs to ensure they can be recovered seamlessly and securely. Hyper-V with Storage Spaces Direct – DPM recognizes and protects Hyper-V VMs deployed on Storage Spaces Direct, delivering seamless backup and recovery of VMs in disaggregated and hyper-converged scenarios.
Hyper-V with ReFS SOFS Cluster – DPM 2016 can back up Hyper-V VMs deployed on ReFS-based SOFS clusters. Backup and recovery of RCT-based VMs and non-RCT VMs is supported. Upgrading a DPM production server to 2016 doesn’t require a reboot – When you upgrade to DPM 2016, you are not required to reboot the production server. To avoid rebooting the production server, upgrade to DPM 2016 and upgrade the DPM agent on the production servers. Backups continue and you reboot the production server when you want.
What is New in System Center Operations Manager version 1801 ?
Enter product key from the Operation Console
Linux monitoring
Improved HTML5 dashboarding experience
System Center Visual Studio Authoring Extension (VSAE) support for Visual Studio 2017
Enhanced SDK Client performance
Updates and recommendations for third-party Management Packs
Linux Kerberos support
Service Map integration
Microsoft Service Map automatically discovers application components on Windows and Linux systems and maps the communication between services. It automatically builds a common reference map of dependencies across your servers, processes, and third-party services. Integration between Service Map and System Center Operations Manager allows you to automatically create distributed application diagrams in Operations Manager that are based on the dynamic dependency maps in Service Map.
There are a range of tools for monitoring your Azure environment, from the application code running on Azure to the services and infrastructure hosting your application. These tools work together to offer comprehensive cloud monitoring and include:
Azure Monitor – the Azure service that operates as a consolidated pipeline for all monitoring data from Azure services. It gives you access to performance metrics and events that describe the operation of the Azure infrastructure and any Azure services you are using. Azure Monitor is a monitoring data pipeline for your Azure environment, and offers that data directly into Log Analytics as well as 3rd party tools where you can gain insight into that data and combine it with data from on premises or other cloud resources.
Application Insights – the Azure service that offers application performance monitoring and user analytics. It monitors the code you’ve written and applications you’ve deployed on Azure, on-premises, or other clouds. By instrumenting your application with the Application Insights SDK you can get access to a range of data including response times of dependencies, exception traces, debugging snapshots, and execution profiles. It provides powerful tools for analyzing this application telemetry while developing and operating your application. It deeply integrates with Visual Studio to enable you to get right to the problem line(s) of code so you can fix it, and offers usage analytics to analyze customer usage of your applications for product managers as well.
Log Analytics –Â is an Azure service that ingests log and metric data from Azure services (via Azure Monitor), Azure VMs, and on-premises or other cloud infrastructure and offers flexible log search and out-of-the box analytics on top of this data. It provides rich tools to analyze data across sources, allows complex queries across all logs, and can proactively alert on specified conditions. You can even collect custom data into its central repository so you can query and visualize it. You can also take advantage of Log Analytic’s built-in solutions to immediately gain insights into the security and functionality of your infrastructure.
Azure Monitor enables you to consume telemetry to gain visibility into the performance and health of your workloads on Azure. The most important type of Azure telemetry data is the metrics (also called performance counters) emitted by most Azure resources. Azure Monitor provides several ways to configure and consume these metrics for monitoring and troubleshooting.
Telemetry data is important
Because telemetry data is sending every minute, you get near to real-time monitoring of your data and/or your IT Solution.
There are three types of alerts off of data available from Azure Monitor — metric alerts, near real-time metric alerts (preview) and Activity Log alerts.
Metric alerts– This alert triggers when the value of a specified metric crosses a threshold that you assign. The alert generates a notification when the alert is “Activated” (when the threshold is crossed and the alert condition is met) as well as when it is “Resolved” (when the threshold is crossed again and the condition is no longer met)
Near real-time metric alerts (preview) – These alerts are similar to metric alerts but differ in a few ways. Firstly, as the name suggests these alerts can trigger in near real-time (as fast as 1 min). They also support monitoring multiple(currently two) metrics. The alert generates a notification when the alert is “Activated” (when the thresholds for each metric are crossed at the same time and the alert condition is met) as well as when it is “Resolved” (when at least one metric crosses the threshold again and the condition is no longer met).
Activity log alerts– A streaming log alert that triggers when an Activity Log event is generated that matches filter criteria that you have assigned. These alerts have only one state, “Activated,” since the alert engine simply applies the filter criteria to any new event. These alerts can be used to become notified when a new Service Health incident occurs or when a user or application performs an operation in your subscription, for example, “Delete virtual machine.”
Alerts overview
When you go to the Microsoft Azure Portaland click on the left side on Monitor you can start your Solutions and configure them.
Alerts are created by alert rules that automatically run log searches at regular intervals. If the results of the log search match particular criteria then an alert record is created. The rule can then automatically run one or more actions to proactively notify you of the alert or invoke another process. Different types of alert rules use different logic to perform this analysis.
In addition to creating an alert record in the Log Analytics repository, alerts can take the following actions.
Email. Send an email to proactively notify you of a detected issue.
Runbook. An alert in Log Analytics can start a runbook in Azure Automation. This is typically done to attempt to correct the detected issue. The runbook can be started in the cloud in the case of an issue in Azure or another cloud, or it could be started on a local agent for an issue on a physical or virtual machine.
Webhook. An alert can start a webhook and pass it data from the results of the log search. This allows integration with external services such as an alternate alerting system, or it may attempt to take corrective action for an external web site.
Monitoring your IT Solutions is really important for your Application Life Cycle management to get feedback for improvements and to get Customer satisfaction.
With Microsoft Monitoring from the Cloud with Azure and OMS you get more inside information via telemetry and log analytics to keep you Up-To-Date of
your IT Hybrid Infrastructure. Modern Hybrid Cloud Datacenter(s) need a Modern Secure Monitoring environment to keep yourself and your business in Control all the time in this rapidly fast changing IT World. Monitoring via the Microsoft Cloud gives you :
More Security information, Alerts and Advice to prevent security leaks
Application improvements in your Life Cycle management
Automation of action plans on Events.
The Health of your IT Hybrid Cloud Services
Makes troubleshooting much easier with Diagnostics logs
Integration with on-premises IT Infrastructures
OMS assessments, like Active Directory, SQL, Upgrades, Malware, Security & Audits………… and More
Great Dashboards for DevOps, IT Administrators, IT Managers, or for your Customers.
Microsoft System Center Management Pack (Community Technology Preview) for SQL Server vNext Replication enables the monitoring of Replication as a set of technologies for copying and distributing data and database objects from one database to another and then synchronizing between the databases to maintain consistency.
The Management Pack for Microsoft Azure enables you to monitor the availability and performance of Azure resources that are running on Microsoft Azure. The management pack runs on a specified server pool, and then uses Microsoft Azure REST APIs to remotely discover and collect performance information about the specified Microsoft Azure resources.
This management pack focuses on the collection of performance metrics made available by Azure Services that use Azure Resource Manager.
Azure Active Directory is used for authenticating Azure REST API calls.
This management pack queries Azure REST APIs to enumerate the resources running in an Azure subscription and the performance metrics available for each resource.
Virtual machines, web roles, and worker roles can store events and performance counters into Azure table storage by means of Azure diagnostics. If these resources are configured to use Azure diagnostics, this Management Pack can collect these events and performance counters.
Examples of services that can be discovered, and whether performance counters are available for collection, are presented in the table below.
Service
Discovered
Performance Counters
Notes
Application Insights
Yes
Yes
Automation
Yes
No
Backup
Yes
No
BizTalk
Yes
No
Cloud Service (web and worker roles)
Yes
Yes
Data Factory
Yes
Yes
DocumentDB
Yes
No
Metrics are not available in the Add Monitoring wizard
Logic App
Yes
No
Media Services
Yes
No
Uses Service Management APIs
Mobile Services
Yes
Yes
Uses Service Management APIs
Networks
Yes
No
Notification Hubs
Yes
No
Operational Insights
Yes
No
Redis Cache
Yes
Yes
Scheduler
Yes
No
Search
Yes
No
Service Bus
Yes
No
SQL Azure
Yes
Yes
Storage Accounts
Yes
No
Traffic Manager
Yes
No
Uses Service Management APIs
Virtual Machines
Yes
Yes
Virtual machines also appear as role instances for Cloud Services
This blogpost describes how to set-up and use the Network Performance Monitor solution in OMS, which helps you monitor the performance of your networks-in near real-time-to detect and locate network performance bottlenecks. With the Network Performance Monitor solution, you can monitor the loss and latency between two networks, subnets or servers. Network Performance Monitor detects network issues like traffic blackholing, routing errors, and issues that conventional network monitoring methods are not able to detect. Network Performance Monitor generates alerts and notifies as and when a threshold is breached for a network link. These thresholds can be learned automatically by the system or you can configure them to use custom alert rules. Network Performance Monitor ensures timely detection of network performance issues and localizes the source of the problem to a particular network segment or device.+
You can detect network issues with the solution dashboard which displays summarized information about your network including recent network health events, unhealthy network links, and subnetwork links that are facing high packet loss and latency. You can drill-down into a network link to view the current health status of subnetwork links as well as node-to-node links. You can also view the historical trend of loss and latency at the network, subnetwork, and node-to-node level. You can detect transient network issues by viewing historical trend charts for packet loss and latency and locate network bottlenecks on a topology map. The interactive topology graph allows you to visualize the hop-by-hop network routes and determine the source of the problem. Like any other solutions, you can use Log Search for various analytics requirements to create custom reports based on the data collected by Network Performance Monitor.+
The solution uses synthetic transactions as a primary mechanism to detect network faults. So, you can use it without regard for a specific network device’s vendor or model. It works across on-premises, cloud (IaaS), and hybrid environments. The solution automatically discovers the network topology and various routes in your network.+
Typical network monitoring products focus on monitoring the network device (routers, switches etc.) health but do not provide insights into the actual quality of network connectivity between two points, which Network Performance Monitor does.
When you have added the Microsoft OMS Network Performance Monitor (Preview) to your Dashboard you have to install OMS agents and configure them in an easy way to start the Network Performance solution and getting results.
Install OMS Agents.
Configure OMS Agents
Create your Networks.
1. Install OMS Agents :
In order to work with OMS, OMS agents are required to be installed on all servers of interest.
NPM requires agents to be installed on at least 2 servers to monitor the connectivity between them. We recommend that for every subnet that you want to monitor, select two or more servers and install the agent on them. If you are unsure about the topology of your network, simply install the agents on critical workloads for which you want to monitor the network performance.
Here you can download your OMS Agent for your Server
If you are deploying using SCOM you should ignore step 1 and jump directly to step 2
Once the NPM solution is enabled on your OMS workspace the required management packs for NPM will automatically flow down to the machines that are connected to OMS via SCOM.
In case you want to connect SCOM with OMS but haven’t figured out how to do it yet, click on the link below. How to Connect SCOM to OMS
2. Configure OMS agents :
Firewall ports are required to be opened on the servers so that the agents can connect to each other.
Run the script without any parameters in a power shell window with administrative privileges. This script creates few registry keys required by NPM and creates windows firewall rules to allow agents to create TCP connections with each other
The port opened by default would be 8084. You have the option of using a custom port by providing the parameter ‘portNumber’ to the script. However, the same port should be used on all the machines where the script is executed.
Note that the script will configure only windows firewall locally. If you have a network firewall you should make sure that it is allowing traffic destined for the TCP port being used by NPM
Run the Powershell script as Administrator on your Servers.
3. Create your Networks :
A ‘Network’ in NPM is a container for a bunch of subnets. The Default network is the container for all the subnets that are not contained in any user defined network. In the most likely case the subnets in your organization will be arranged in more than one network and you should create one or more network to logically group your subnets.
You can create network with any name that meets your business requirements and add the subnets to the network.
Once you have saved the configuration for the first time, the solution will start collecting network data. The process usually takes a while. Once the data has been uploaded you should be able to see the solution dashboard with data and graphs. At this point the setup is complete and you can start using the solution
The OMS Performance Monitor Solution needs time to get the information of your network.
I have only one network in my lab environment
OMS Network Performance Monitor (Preview)
The issue here is that my switches are not IP V6 ready 😦
After a view days analytics you can make your own custom view
Here you can plot network performance issues between two Servers
Everything is fine here 🙂
When something is wrong you can go directly to the View Node Logs.
OMS Log analytics results of your Server
When you have a large network with a lot of HOPS like switches and routers you can see where you have latency :
The OMS NPM solution is still in preview but you can test it in your test environment to learn and get a better network by eliminating your network issues.
When you use the OMS Gateway on-premises you can connect your Servers to Operations Management Suite, here you
find my blogpost for the installation and configuration :
Service Map automatically discovers application components on Windows and Linux systems and maps the communication between services. It allows you to view your servers as you think of them – as interconnected systems that deliver critical services. Service Map shows connections between servers, processes, and ports across any TCP-connected architecture with no configuration required other than installation of an agent.
Instead of each individual agent sending data directly to OMS and requiring a direct Internet connection, all agent data is instead sent through a single computer that has an Internet connection. That computer is where you install and use the gateway. In this scenario, you can install agents on any computers where you want to collect data. The gateway then transfers data from the agents to OMS directly.
Now the Microsoft OMS Gateway Services is installed
Now Microsoft Operations Management Suite Gateway is installed, you can use some Microsoft Powershell Commands :
After the installation of the OMS Gateway, I installed the OMS Agent :
Download your OMS Agent here
Copy => Paste your OMS Workspace ID and Key.
Here you can see the OMS Agent Connection settings.
When you wait for a few minutes you will see the connection in the Portal of OMS.
After this I installed the OMS Agent on One of my Domain Controllers with OMS Gateway settings //HyperV2016.hybridcloud4you.nl:8080.
This is what you will see in the Event Viewer of the OMS Gateway Server :
Domain Controller 192.168.2.100 is going via the OMS Gateway
OMS Agent via the Microsoft OMS Gateway
From here you can start with your OMS Solutions 😉
It is also possible to connect your System Center Operations Manager (SCOM) on-premises to the OMS Gateway.
Then you don’t have to connect your SCOM Management Server directly to the internet to OMS.
Cloud and Datacenter Management Blog 