by Lisa Guthrie - Microsoft Support Engineering

If you’ve ever called Microsoft Support to work on an issue on one of your servers, you probably had to send some sort of data to the support professional working your case. Perhaps some event logs, web server logs, a list of patches installed… the list goes on and on.
Gathering this data (especially if you have to do it across multiple machines in your enterprise), sending it to Microsoft, and getting it analyzed can take time. And if your server is down or experiencing a critical issue, time is not your friend.
Enter a cool new feature of Operations Management Suite: You can now choose to add one or more Microsoft Support users to any of your workspaces. The user(s) you add will immediately see the same dashboard and the same data that you see. No gathering. No uploading. No waiting!
To get started, simply go to the Accounts tab of the Settings page in OMS, and choose the Microsoft Support radio button. Then enter the @microsoft.com email address of the support professional who you wish to add to your workspace.

A pop-up will appear explaining more about the access provided to the Microsoft Support user, and asking you to confirm that you want to add this access. You must click Yes to add the user.

Once confirmed, the Microsoft Support user will appear on your Manage Users screen.

The Microsoft support user will immediately have read-only access to your OMS dashboard and all the data in your OMS workspace. If you upload new data, the support user will be able to see that data as soon as it’s available.
You can remove the Microsoft support user manually at any time by clicking the blue “X”. In addition, the support user’s access will expire automatically after 7 days.
We hope this feature helps you get back to business faster than ever. Try it out on your next support case!

-Lisa

We are happy to announce 2 new releases of System Center Management Packs for SQL Server product family. Please see the blog posts below for information about the releases and the new features introduced.  

Links to the release blog and some highlights:

• Released: Localized System Center Management Packs for SQL Server Product Family (6.6.0.0)
  • All Management Packs, all versions (2008-2012-2014): SQL Server, Replication, AS, RS
  • The languages: Chinese (Simplified), Chinese (Traditional), French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese (Brazil), Russian, Spanish

• Released: System Center Management Pack for SQL Server and Replication (6.6.2.0)
  • Accessible Dashboards (high contrast)
  • Low privilege configuration
  • Performance improvement for dashboard (10x)
  • Named pipes and shared memory support
  • Various bug fixes (deadlock, user policies, improved error handling and logging, etc.)

Suraj Suresh Guptha | Program Manager | Microsoft

Get the latest System Center news on Facebook and Twitter:

System Center All Up: http://blogs.technet.com/b/systemcenter/

Configuration Manager Support Team blog: http://blogs.technet.com/configurationmgr/
Data Protection Manager Team blog: http://blogs.technet.com/dpm/
Orchestrator Support Team blog: http://blogs.technet.com/b/orchestrator/
Operations Manager Team blog: http://blogs.technet.com/momteam/
Service Manager Team blog: http://blogs.technet.com/b/servicemanager
Virtual Machine Manager Team blog: http://blogs.technet.com/scvmm

We are excited to announce the launch of Microsoft Operations Management Suite (OMS) mobile apps for iOS, Android and Windows Phone.
With the new OMS mobile apps, you can gain full visibility of your IT infrastructure at any time, from any location.
You can access your personalized dashboards, solutions and saved search queries through fully optimized mobile experience.

Get the insights you need to spot and troubleshoot IT operational issues at the touch of your fingertips. Experience the power of log analytics from your mobile device.

Go to the OMS mobile app site to download the app for your device today!

If you haven’t yet joined Microsoft Operations Management Suite, do so by visiting http://www.microsoft.com/oms
Have feedback or idea for Operations Management Suite? Tell us at: Feedback Forum!

Thanks,
Tigran

When you try to configure System Center Operations Manager for Microsoft Operations Management Suite (formerly known as Operations Insight), you receive the following error message in the Operations Manager Console:

Error 3000: Unable to register to Advisor Service. Please contact the system administrator

For complete details regarding this problem as well as a resolution, please see the following:

KB3094195 - "Error 3000: Unable to register to Advisor Service" error in System Center 2012 R2 Operations Manager (https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/3094195)

J.C. Hornbeck| Solution Asset PM | Microsoft GBS Management and Security Division

Get the latest System Center news onFacebookandTwitter:

Main System Center blog: http://blogs.technet.com/b/systemcenter/

Configuration Manager Support Team blog: http://blogs.technet.com/configurationmgr/
Data Protection Manager Team blog: http://blogs.technet.com/dpm/
Orchestrator Team blog: http://blogs.technet.com/b/orchestrator/
Operations Manager Team blog: http://blogs.technet.com/momteam/
Service Manager Team blog: http://blogs.technet.com/b/servicemanager
Virtual Machine Manager Team blog: http://blogs.technet.com/scvmm

Microsoft Intune: http://blogs.technet.com/b/microsoftintune/
WSUS Support Team blog: http://blogs.technet.com/sus/
RMS blog: http://blogs.technet.com/b/rms/
App-V Team blog: http://blogs.technet.com/appv/
MED-V Team blog: http://blogs.technet.com/medv/
Server App-V Team blog: http://blogs.technet.com/b/serverappv

Forefront Endpoint Protection blog: http://blogs.technet.com/b/clientsecurity/
Forefront Identity Manager blog: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/ms-identity-support/
Forefront TMG blog: http://blogs.technet.com/b/isablog/
Forefront UAG blog: http://blogs.technet.com/b/edgeaccessblog/
Application Proxy blog: http://blogs.technet.com/b/applicationproxyblog/
The Surface Team blog: http://blogs.technet.com/b/surface/

OpsMgr 2012 R2

Update Rollup 8 for System Center 2012 R2 Operations Manager has been released and is now available to download. The KB article below describes the issues that are fixed in Update Rollup 8 (UR8) for Microsoft System Center 2012 R2 Operations Manager as well as download and installation instructions.

For complete details please see the following:

KB3096378 - Description of Update Rollup 8 for System Center 2012 R2 (https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/3096378)

J.C. Hornbeck| Solution Asset PM | Microsoft GBS Management and Security Division

Get the latest System Center news onFacebookandTwitter:

Main System Center blog: http://blogs.technet.com/b/systemcenter/

Configuration Manager Support Team blog: http://blogs.technet.com/configurationmgr/
Data Protection Manager Team blog: http://blogs.technet.com/dpm/
Orchestrator Team blog: http://blogs.technet.com/b/orchestrator/
Operations Manager Team blog: http://blogs.technet.com/momteam/
Service Manager Team blog: http://blogs.technet.com/b/servicemanager
Virtual Machine Manager Team blog: http://blogs.technet.com/scvmm

Microsoft Intune: http://blogs.technet.com/b/microsoftintune/
WSUS Support Team blog: http://blogs.technet.com/sus/
RMS blog: http://blogs.technet.com/b/rms/
App-V Team blog: http://blogs.technet.com/appv/
MED-V Team blog: http://blogs.technet.com/medv/
Server App-V Team blog: http://blogs.technet.com/b/serverappv

Forefront Endpoint Protection blog: http://blogs.technet.com/b/clientsecurity/
Forefront Identity Manager blog: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/ms-identity-support/
Forefront TMG blog: http://blogs.technet.com/b/isablog/
Forefront UAG blog: http://blogs.technet.com/b/edgeaccessblog/
Application Proxy blog: http://blogs.technet.com/b/applicationproxyblog/

OpsMgr 2012 R2

By Priscilla 'Nini' Ikhena, Program Manager - Microsoft OMS Log Analytic team

Are you interested in easily troubleshooting issues in your Exchange environment? A little while ago, we made available near-real time performance data collection in OMS, and now you are better able to track metrics (which is important for managing Exchange) in your environment in addition to logs.

I recently set up a small Exchange environment in Azure and have been tracking different metrics in OMS using search queries based on the Exchange Management Pack monitors, and now you can do the same! Before you begin searching, be sure to add the necessary event logs and enable the performance counters you intend on collecting data for.

Some of the queries I’ve been tracking:

Average percentage of time that the processor is executing application or operating system processes (should be less than 75% on average)

Counter Name: Process\% Processor Time
Query: Type=Perf ObjectName="Process" CounterName="% Processor Time" | measure avg(Average) by Computer | where AggregatedValue > 75
Note: If the aggregated average value goes above 75, one or more logs will get generated, which will then increase the ‘0’ log count on my dashboard, thus highlighting the tile! 

Recovery Action Failed

Log Name: Microsoft-Exchange-ManagedAvailability/RecoveryActionLogs
Query: Type=Event Source=Microsoft-Exchange-ManagedAvailability EventLog: "Microsoft-Exchange-ManagedAvailability/RecoveryActionLogs" 

MS Exchange Frontend Transport Service has not been running for a period of time

Log Name: Application
Query: Type=Event EventLog: Application Source: "MSExchangeFrontEndTransport"

The connection between the Client Access server and the Mailbox server failed

Log Name: Application
Query: Type=Event EventLog=Application Source=ActiveSync EventID=1022 

The Availability service could not successfully send a proxy Web request to another instance of the Exchange Availability service that is running in a different Active Directory site or forest.

Log Name: Application
Type=Event EventLog=Application EventID=4002 Source=MSExchange Autodiscover

A setting in the Web.config file was not valid and has been reset to the default value

Log Name: Application
Query: Type=Event EventLog=Application EventID=1033 Source=ActiveSync 

Percentage of the free usable space on my disk drive

Counter Name: LogicalDisk\% Free Space
Query: Type=Perf ObjectName=LogicalDisk CounterName="% Free Space” 

Low Disk Space - Free Disk Space is less than 10%

Counter Name: LogicalDisk\% Free Space
Query: Type=Perf ObjectName: "LogicalDisk" "% Free Space" | measure avg(Average) by Computer | where AggregatedValue < 10 

Average number of bytes transferred to or from the disk during write or read operations

Counter Name: LogicalDisk\Avg. Disk Bytes/Transfer
Query: Type=Perf ObjectName=LogicalDisk CounterName="Avg. Disk Bytes/Transfer" 

Amount of Virtual memory in use

Counter Name: Memory\% Committed Bytes In Use
Query: Type=Perf ObjectName=Memory CounterName="% Committed Bytes In Use"  | measure avg(Average) by Computer 

Amount of physical memory available for running processes

Counter Name: Memory\Available MBytes
Query: Type=Perf ObjectName=Memory CounterName="Available MBytes"

Percentage of elapsed time processor spends in User Mode

Counter Name: Processor\% User Time
Query: Type=Perf ObjectName=Processor CounterName="% User Time" 

Rate at which bytes are sent and received over each adapter

Counter Name: Network Interface\Bytes Total/sec
Query: Type=Perf ObjectName="Network Interface" CounterName="Bytes Total/Sec"

LDAP Search Time is beyond the warning threshold

Counter Name: MSExchange ADAccess Domain Controllers\LDAP Search Time
Query: Type=Perf ObjectName="MSExchange ADAccess Domain Controllers" CounterName="LDAP Search Time" |measure avg(Average) by Computer | where AggregatedValue > 50 

LDAP Read Time is beyond the warning threshold

Counter Name: MSExchange ADAccess Domain Controllers\LDAP Read Time
Query:Type=Perf ObjectName="MSExchange ADAccess Domain Controllers" CounterName="LDAP Read Time" |measure avg(Average) by Computer | where AggregatedValue > 50 

Exchange ActiveSync could not access a mailbox on a Mailbox server because the Mailbox server is offline.

Log Name: Application
Query: Type=Event EventLog=Application EventID=1023 Source=ActiveSync                                                                                                                   

Length of output packet queue in packet

Counter Name: Network Interface\Output Queue Length
Query: Type=Perf ObjectName="Network Interface" CounterName="Output Queue Length" 

Memory leak occurs

Counter Name: Process\Private Bytes
Query: Type=Perf ObjectName=Process CounterName="Private Bytes" 

Client RPC Average Latencies are very high

Counter Name: MSExchange RpcClientAccess \RPC Averaged Latency
Query: Type=Perf ObjectName= "MSExchange RpcClientAccess" CounterName="RPC Averaged Latency"|measure avg(Average) by Computer | where AggregatedValue > 250 

Getting data on Message Tracking Report

Counter Name: MSExchange Message Tracking\Get-MessageTrackingReport Task Executed
Query: Type=Perf ObjectName="MSExchange Message Tracking" CounterName="Get-MessageTrackingReport Task Executed"
Counter Name: MSExchange Message Tracking\Get-MessageTrackingReport Task Executed/Sec
Query: Type=Perf ObjectName="MSExchange Message Tracking" CounterName="Get-MessageTrackingReport Task Executed/Sec" 

The Exchange Transport service is rejecting message submissions due to memory consumption higher than the configured threshold

Log Name: Application
Query: Type=Event EventLog: Application EventID=15007 Source=MSExchangeTransport 

Outlook Web Access was unable to read or update some of its configuration settings

Log Name: Application
Query: Type=Event EventLog: Application EventID=64 Source="MSExchange OWA" 

Exchange Direct Push has detected that the configuration value for the minimum heartbeat interval is set to a value that is too low

Log Name: Application
Query: Type=Event EventLog: Application EventID=1011 Source=ActiveSync 

Unable to add an email address because it is invalid

Log Name: Application
Query: Type=Event EventLog: Application EventID=1 Source=InternetProxy 

The database engine lost one page of corrupted data

Log Name: Application
Query: Type=Event EventLog: Application EventID=500 Source=ESE 

MSExchangeMailSubmission, There is no available Hub Transport server in the local site

Log Name: Application
Query: Type=Event EventLog: Application EventID=1008 Source=MSExchangeMailSubmission 

Outlook Web Access is not available for one of the mailboxes in a mailbox database

Log Name: Application
Query: Type=Event EventLog: Application EventID=57 Source="MSExchange OWA"

I then went on to save these search results and added them to my dashboard:

Note: I’ve set Thresholds on these tiles so a tile gets highlighted whenever it has an unusual number of logs. For example, if the ‘Exchange ActiveSync could not access a mailbox on a Mailbox server’ tile above reads greater than 0, this would mean there was an instance where this happened in the Exchange environment which may lead messages not getting delivered.

You can do this by selecting “Customize” at the bottom of the Dashboard page, then selecting the tile you’re interested in and then “Edit”:

Additionally, a quick and easy way to add these search queries to your Saved Searchesafter adding the right events and counters, would be to simply copy and paste the PowerShell script below into Windows PowerShell ISE. Be sure to download the Armclient command line tool prior to running this code. More information on Armclient available here – ArmClient – A command line tool for Azure API:

--

--

For your convenience, here’s a list of counters and event logs I added to my workspace before searching:

What’s Next?

Moving forward, our thoughts are around building an OMS Exchange Solution that will you help you better manage your Exchange environment by providing assessment, suggestions and monitoring across all portfolios.

I hope this has been helpful! Enjoy searching and please post feedback or questions on UserVoice or leave a comment below!

- Nini

What’s the OMS Agent for Linux?

The OMS Agent for Linux is the easiest way to collect Syslog events, Performance metrics, Container data, as well as Nagios and Zabbix alerts.  The agent is a light, open and modular agent built on proven open source components.  The core of the agent uses an existing open source data aggregator called FluentD.  FluentD has hundreds of existing plugins, which will make it really easy for you to add new data sources.  In fact, for the collection of performance counters, we wrote a plugin for the rich, well-established OMI provider we use for System Center today.   We’re looking forward to hearing your feedback about which plugins we should work on next, and hopefully you all will write your own!

Wait.  What’s OMS?

Operations Management Suite (OMS) is a simplified IT Management Solution that provides Log Analytics, Automation, Backup and Site Recovery.  It also seamlessly integrates with your existing management solutions to provide a single pane of glass view.  To learn more about OMS visit microsoft.com/oms

Which Operating Systems do you support? 

Check out this handy graphic!

What sorts of data can I collect?

• Syslog: Collect your choice of syslog events from rsyslog and syslog-ng
• Performance Metrics:  We can collect 70+ performance metrics at a 30 second granularity using our new Near Real Time Performance data pipeline.  Getmetrics from the following objects:  System, Processor, Memory & Swap space, Process, Logical Disk (File System) and Physical Disk.  Full list of Performance Counters. 
• Docker container logs, metrics & inventory: We show information about where your containers and container hosts are, which containers are running or failed, and Docker dameon and container logs sent to stdout and stderr. We also show performance metrics such as CPU, memory, network and storage for the container and hosts to help you troubleshoot and find noisy neighbor containers.  We support Docker version 1.8+.
• Alerts from Nagios + Zabbix: The agent can collect alerts from your most popular monitoring tools.  This allows you to view all your alerts from all your tools in a single pain of glass!  Combine this with our existing support for collection of alerts from Operations Manager.  We currently support Nagios 3+ and Zabbix 2.x.
• Apache & MySQL performance metrics: Collect performance metrics about your MySQL/MariaDB server performance and databases as well as Apache HTTP Servers and Virtual Hosts.  

OK I’m in.  How do I install the agent?

The easiest way to onboard is to run this set of scripts:

You’ll need to get the Workspace ID and Primary/Secondary Key from Settings -> Connected Sources. 

If you prefer you can download the agent from our GitHub page which has full documentation on how to onboard.

If you’re using Docker and the Container Solution, you will need to run these additional scripts:

If you'd like to join the OMS Container Solution Private Preview, please fill out this survey. 

Wow, that was really easy.  How do I choose what data I want to collect?

By default we collect a set of common syslog facilities and performance metrics.  Besides the defaults, there are two ways to configure your machines to send data to OMS:

CONFIGURE IN THE OMS PORTAL: If you are already an OMS user, you know the easiest way to get data into OMS is to go to Settings, and click on the DATA tab.  Here you’ll see two new options for “Syslog” and “Linux Performance Counters”.  Simply search for the facility or counter you’d like to collect.

CONFIGURE ON THE CLIENT:  If you’d prefer to manage the configuration yourself, there are 2 configuration files you will need to edit.  We strongly encourage you to read the documentation before editing these files.  Full documentation on configuring the OMS Agent for Linux

To add Perf counters, Nagios or Zabbix alerts, or Container data, edit this file:

/etc/opt/microsoft/omsagent/conf/omsagent.conf:

To edit the syslog configuration, edit 1 of the following files.  The location of this file is dependent on your Linux distro:

/etc/rsyslog.d/rsyslog-oms.conf

/etc/syslog.conf

/etc/rsyslog.conf

/etc/syslog-ng/syslog-ng.conf

I hate reading.  Do you have a video explaining how to get started?

Yep!

How can I troubleshoot if I have any issues?

Here are common issues and how to fix them:

Take a look at our full documentation for more detailed troubleshooting options.

We also recognize that it’s possible we did not build perfect software.  If you encounter any bugs during this preview, the best thing you can do is email us at scdata@microsoft.com describing your issue.

This is great.  How can I give you guys feedback?

We love feedback!  Whether it be good, bad or indifferent, it really helps us build a better product for you.  There are a few different routes to give feedback:

UserVoice: Post ideas for new OMS features to work on.  Visit the OMS UserVoice page.

OMS Forums: Good general discussion of OMS.  Visit the OMS Forums.

Email:scdata@microsoft. Tell us whatever is on your mind :)

Monthly survey: if you are an OMS customer, you know we send out a survey every month via email asking our customers about the features we’re working on next. 

Elite Linux customer panel: If you are a die-hard OMS Linux user and want to join our weekly calls and talk directly to the product team apply through this survey.

It sure seems like you guys are embracing Linux in a whole new way.  Is that right?

First of all, thanks for making it this far.  Secondly, yep! Our plan going forward is to treat Linux as a first class citizen.  The OMS group has been speaking to a lot of Linux customers over the past 6+ months and we think we’re ready to embrace the community.  The release of this Public Preview is just the beginning.  We will continue to deliver on our promise of open-sourcing our Linux releases, we will contribute more code back to FluentD and other OSS projects, and we will continue to listen and participate in the community as a whole.  Our only hope is that you’ll embrace us with open arms!

We hope you enjoy! As always, if you have any issues during install or have any questions, email us at scdata@microsoft.com

We are pleased to announce that System Center 2007 R2 Operations Manager (SCOM 2007 R2) now supports SQL Server 2008 R2 SP3 as its database. The use of SQL Server 2008 R2 Service Pack 3 is supported for Operations Manager 2007 R2 with Cumulative Update 7 applied. If you are upgrading, please remember to restart the health service after database upgrade.

Suraj Suresh Guptha | Program Manager | Microsoft

Get the latest System Center news on Facebook and Twitter:

Main System Center blog: http://blogs.technet.com/b/systemcenter/

Configuration Manager Support Team blog: http://blogs.technet.com/configurationmgr/
Data Protection Manager Team blog: http://blogs.technet.com/dpm/
Orchestrator Team blog: http://blogs.technet.com/b/orchestrator/
Operations Manager Team blog: http://blogs.technet.com/momteam/
Service Manager Team blog: http://blogs.technet.com/b/servicemanager
Virtual Machine Manager Team blog: http://blogs.technet.com/scvmm

In a Microsoft System Center environment that has many clients, configuration changes are not updated on an OpsMgr 2012 management server. Additionally, the following event is repeatedly logged in the Operations Manager log:

Log Name:      Operations Manager
Source:        OpsMgr Management Configuration
Event ID:      29181
Level:         Error
User:          N/A
Computer:      <server>
Description: OpsMgr Management Configuration Service failed to execute 'SnapshotSynchronization' engine work item due to the following exceptionMicrosoft.EnterpriseManagement.ManagementConfiguration.DataAccessLayer.DataAccessException: Snapshot data transfer operation failed batch write.

This issue occurs when the Management Configuration service fails because the instance transfer can't perform a bulk insert. This issue typically occurs when the environment has many clients (e.g. 2000 or more).

For complete details as well as a resolution, please see the following:

KB3092452 - Configuration isn't updated and event ID 29181 is logged in System Center Operations Manager (https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/3092452)

J.C. Hornbeck| Solution Asset PM | Microsoft GBS Management and Security Division

Get the latest System Center news onFacebookandTwitter:

Main System Center blog: http://blogs.technet.com/b/systemcenter/

Configuration Manager Support Team blog: http://blogs.technet.com/configurationmgr/
Data Protection Manager Team blog: http://blogs.technet.com/dpm/
Orchestrator Team blog: http://blogs.technet.com/b/orchestrator/
Operations Manager Team blog: http://blogs.technet.com/momteam/
Service Manager Team blog: http://blogs.technet.com/b/servicemanager
Virtual Machine Manager Team blog: http://blogs.technet.com/scvmm

Microsoft Intune: http://blogs.technet.com/b/microsoftintune/
WSUS Support Team blog: http://blogs.technet.com/sus/
RMS blog: http://blogs.technet.com/b/rms/
App-V Team blog: http://blogs.technet.com/appv/
MED-V Team blog: http://blogs.technet.com/medv/
Server App-V Team blog: http://blogs.technet.com/b/serverappv

Forefront Endpoint Protection blog: http://blogs.technet.com/b/clientsecurity/
Forefront Identity Manager blog: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/ms-identity-support/
Forefront TMG blog: http://blogs.technet.com/b/isablog/
Forefront UAG blog: http://blogs.technet.com/b/edgeaccessblog/
Application Proxy blog: http://blogs.technet.com/b/applicationproxyblog/
The Surface Team blog: http://blogs.technet.com/b/surface/

OpsMgr 2012 R2

A question we’ve heard often from OMS customers is “How can I connect an agent to multiple OMS workspaces?” We call this capability “Multi-homing” and today this is possible by connecting different SCOM Management Groups to different OMS workspaces.

To understand the value of multi-homing agents, think about the different teams that use computers you are managing. If you have several teams using overlapping resources - but you still want to compartmentalize data & analysis by teams –multi-homing may be a good approach for you.

Since you can determine the level of log collection per workspace, you can use workspaces to separate the information you get from your agents. This way you can keep everything within the context of that team/workspace.  You could setup one workspace to collect only security logs, while another workspace collects much more. It’s the same agents in the background, but each workspace provides a unique view into them.

Connect one agent to two OMS-connected SCOM Management Groups

Summary: Add one or more agents to two different SCOM Management Groups, then connect each of these Management Groups to two different OMS workspaces.

Note: This option does not support the “Configuration Assessment” OMS solution.

1. Ensure that the agent(s) you want to multi home are part of ManagementGroup1 and Management Group 2

   1.  Click here for more information on Multihoming agents in SCOM

2. Connect Management Group 1 to OMS Workspace 1

   1. Click here for more information on Connecting SCOM to OMS

3. Connect Management Group 2 to OMS Workspace

As a next step, we are looking to enable Direct Agents to connect/multi-home to multiple workspaces. If more options for multi-homing are important to you, don’t forget to submit & vote for these ideas in our User Voice forums!

Just a quick note to let you know that the "System Center Management Packs for SQL Server and Replication" have been updated. You can find more details about the update at the blog post here.

Suraj Suresh Guptha | Program Manager | Microsoft

Get the latest System Center news on Facebook and Twitter:

System Center All Up: http://blogs.technet.com/b/systemcenter/

Configuration Manager Support Team blog: http://blogs.technet.com/configurationmgr/
Data Protection Manager Team blog: http://blogs.technet.com/dpm/
Orchestrator Support Team blog: http://blogs.technet.com/b/orchestrator/
Operations Manager Team blog: http://blogs.technet.com/momteam/
Service Manager Team blog: http://blogs.technet.com/b/servicemanager
Virtual Machine Manager Team blog: http://blogs.technet.com/scvmm

We added a new capability to Operations Manager in the Technical Preview 4 release of System Center 2016. The new Updates and Recommendations screen in the Operations Manager console recommends Management Packs for downloading based on a scan of servers in your SCOM environment. This will help a SCOM administrator know when someone installs a new workload for which a SCOM management pack is available. The screen will also notify when updates are available to Microsoft authored Management Packs that are already running in your environment. In Technical preview, this feature only identifies and recommends windows server 2016 management packs but we will be adding a lot more recommendations soon. There is no such limitation for management pack update notifications, the feature will notify when updates are available to most Microsoft authored management packs running in your SCOM environment. For more information about Updates and Recommendations see the Updates and Recommendations section of How to Import an Operations Manager Management Pack. You can find the System Center 2016 Technical Preview VHDs here.

Suraj Suresh Guptha | Program Manager | Microsoft

Get the latest System Center news on Facebook and Twitter:

System Center All Up: http://blogs.technet.com/b/systemcenter/

Configuration Manager Support Team blog: http://blogs.technet.com/configurationmgr/
Data Protection Manager Team blog: http://blogs.technet.com/dpm/
Orchestrator Support Team blog: http://blogs.technet.com/b/orchestrator/
Operations Manager Team blog: http://blogs.technet.com/momteam/
Service Manager Team blog: http://blogs.technet.com/b/servicemanager
Virtual Machine Manager Team blog: http://blogs.technet.com/scvmm

We are pleased to announce that System Center 2012 SP1 Operations Manager (SCOM 2012 SP1) now supports SQL Server 2008 R2 SP3 as its database. The use of SQL Server 2008 R2 Service Pack 3 is supported for Operations Manager 2012 SP1 with Cumulative Update 9 applied. If you are upgrading, please remember to restart the health service after database upgrade.

Suraj Suresh Guptha | Program Manager | Microsoft

Get the latest System Center news on Facebook and Twitter:

Main System Center blog: http://blogs.technet.com/b/systemcenter/

Configuration Manager Support Team blog: http://blogs.technet.com/configurationmgr/
Data Protection Manager Team blog: http://blogs.technet.com/dpm/
Orchestrator Team blog: http://blogs.technet.com/b/orchestrator/
Operations Manager Team blog: http://blogs.technet.com/momteam/
Service Manager Team blog: http://blogs.technet.com/b/servicemanager
Virtual Machine Manager Team blog: http://blogs.technet.com/scvmm

Just a quick note to let you know that the System Center Management Pack for Windows Server 2012 DHCP has been updated. 

In a DHCP server with multiple scopes, if the first scope exceeds the threshold for minimum available addresses, alerts are sent for all scopes on the DHCP server even for the ones that don't violate the threshold. The update ensures that alerts are sent only for the scope exceeding the threshold.

You can find all the details as well as a download link here: http://www.microsoft.com/en-in/download/details.aspx?id=39062

Suraj Suresh Guptha | Program Manager | Microsoft

Get the latest System Center news on Facebook and Twitter:

System Center All Up: http://blogs.technet.com/b/systemcenter/

Configuration Manager Support Team blog: http://blogs.technet.com/configurationmgr/
Data Protection Manager Team blog: http://blogs.technet.com/dpm/
Orchestrator Support Team blog: http://blogs.technet.com/b/orchestrator/
Operations Manager Team blog: http://blogs.technet.com/momteam/
Service Manager Team blog: http://blogs.technet.com/b/servicemanager
Virtual Machine Manager Team blog: http://blogs.technet.com/scvmm

Hello

The technical preview version of Microsoft Azure management pack (version 1.3.10.0) is now available for download at http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=50013. This version of Azure MP is able to monitor any of the Azure ARM based services (since they follow a standardized way of exposing performance metrics). As new ARM services become available the MP is able to monitor them and does not need a new release. You can find all the details in the MP guide included in the above link.

Please give it a try and let us know your feedback.

What are OMS Alerts?

You asked for it (a lot!), so here it is – OMS Alerts!  Operations Management Suite (OMS) can trigger an alert if a search finds a specific set of results.  If this occurs, OMS can send an email with the results to a list of user-defined recipients or execute an Automation runbook (or both!).  With this Automation integration, it is easy to set up “auto-remediation” for common actions, such as restarting a service that has stopped.

Alerts are completely based off of search records ingested into OMS.  This makes them very lightweight and easy to manage. 

Wait.  What’s OMS?

Operations Management Suite (OMS) is a simplified IT Management Solution that provides Log Analytics, Automation, Backup and Site Recovery.  It also seamlessly integrates with your existing management solutions to provide a single pane of glass view.  To learn more about OMS visit microsoft.com/oms

Alerting sounds great.  How do I start using it?

Here are the steps you’ll need to take to enable the Alerting Public Preview:

1. Enable “Alerting” in Settings -> Preview Features.  In OMS Settings you’ll notice a new tab called “PREVIEW FEATURES”, click this.  At the moment there are only two preview features: “Alerting” and “Alert Remediation”.  Enable both of these features.

FYI: If you choose to disable the Alerting feature, the alert rules you create will continue to be executed in the background.  In order to stop receiving alerts, you should delete all alert rules THEN disable the feature.

2.       Create your search.  Craft a search query for which you would like to be alerted on.  In this example, I’m going to look for all Event log errors

3.       Click the “New Alert” button in the search taskbar. 

4.       Fill out the required fields.  Here’s a breakdown of all the required fields and what they mean:

Name: The name for your alert rule.

Saved Search: By default, we will just use the current query in the search box, but if you prefer, you can choose from any of your existing Saved Searches.

Schedule: How often OMS will execute the search to check for the alert.  For example, if I create a new alert at 11:00 and the schedule is set to 15 minutes, OMS will check for the alert at 11:15, 11:30, etc.

Threshold (“Generate alert when…”): The number of results required to trigger the alert.  For example, if my threshold is set to “Greater than 500”, I will get an alert if the search returns 501+ results.

Time window:  This is the search time window when OMS checks for the alert.  If my time window is 30 minutes long, and OMS checks for the alert at 11:00, this means OMS will search for all results from 10:30-11:00.  You’ll notice when you change the time window, we execute the search to help you set the above threshold.

5. Choose your actions.  When the alert triggers, you can send an email to specified recipients, execute an Automation runbook, or do both.  In this example, I’m just going to send myself an email with the results.

6. Manage your Alert rules in Settings.  All Alert rules are managed in Settings underneath the “ALERTS” tab.   At the moment, you can only delete newly created rules.

You said I could execute an Automation runbook when the alert fires.  How do I do this?

This is very easy to do.  In the “Actions” section of the “Create new alert rule” pane, underneath the option “Enable remediation” simply choose “Yes”. 

If you have already integrated your Azure Automation account, you will see a list of all published runbooks.  Choose the runbook you would like to execute.  When the runbook is called, the top 5000 results will be passed as a JSON object inside the runbook.  For more information about parsing JSON in Automation runbooks, check out this blog post.

You will need to link your Azure subscription in order to use the Automation features.  You can learn more about that here.

Where can I view alerts that have fired?

All generated alerts are ingested back into search as if they were any other log record.  To view your alert history, simply visit search and execute the query “Type=Alert SourceSystem=OMS”.  This allows you to use filtering, time controls and all the other search functionality you’ve already learned.

We will be updating the “Alert Management” solution over the coming months to include visibility into your OMS alerts.

Since this is a preview, are there any limitations I should know about?

A few: 

Workspaces are limited to 10 alerting rules.  We will increase this limit to 10,000 by the time we make this feature generally available.

The minimum Schedule interval is 5 minutes. We will have even more granular scheduling windows by general availability.  

You cannot edit an Alert rule.  We wanted to get this feature out to you quickly, so at the moment there is no ability to edit a newly created alert rule.  For now, you will need to delete and recreate the alert.  Of course, we are looking to light up this capability quickly.

As with any Preview, part of what we are looking to do is ensure reliability of the alerting service.  It’s possible the service may go down as we expect to onboard many new customers in a short period of time.  We recommend using caution if you plan to use OMS Alerting for mission critical scenarios.

Looks really cool.  How can I let you know if there are any issues (or give you excessive compliments)?

If you’ve been paying attention to OMS, then you know we live and die with the wonderful feedback our customers provide.  There are lots of ways to do this.  Here are the most common methods:

Email:scdata@microsoft.com This is the best place to report issues.

Alerting customer panel:  We will be putting together a small cohort to test bleeding edge capabilites before they are enabled for all customers.  If interested, please fill out this survey.

UserVoice: Post ideas for new OMS features to work on.  Visit the OMS UserVoice page.

OMS Forums: Good general discussion of OMS.  Visit the OMS Forums.

Monthly survey: if you are an OMS customer, you know we send out a survey every month via email asking our customers about the features we’re working on next. 

We hope you enjoy this exciting new feature.  We know we have lots of work to do before we can take this out of “Preview”, so we are looking to you, our loyal customer base, to let us know exactly what you want next.  Over the next several months, you will see us light up new alerting capabilities like webhook support, more granular schedules and alert throttling.

Hello

Just wanted to let you know that an updated version of System Center Visual Studio Authoring Extensions tool with support for Visual Studio 2015 is now available. Both Community and Enterprise editions are supported. Older versions of Visual Studio (2012/2013) continue to be supported. There are no other new features.

You can download the tool from http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=30169. 

I know many of you have integrated Operations Manager and OMS and leverage Azure Automation workflows so I thought this might be of interest to you. When using Azure Automation, you may see jobs begin to fail with the following error message:

The job has failed. The quota for the monthly total job run time have been reached for this subscription

This occurs when the job execution exceeds the 500 minute free quota for your account. Minutes are based on the number of job run time minutes used in a given month, and the quota applies to all job execution types (test, manual, webhook and scheduled) and all job execution sources (Azure and Hybrid). If you want to use more than 500 minutes of processing per month you will need to change your subscription from the Free tier to the Basic tier.

To view your account details please visit https://account.windowsazure.com/Subscriptions.

For more details regarding the pricing model, please see https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/pricing/details/automation.

Adrian Doyle| Senior Supportability PM | Microsoft

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Configuration Manager Support Team blog: http://blogs.technet.com/configurationmgr/ 
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Orchestrator Support Team blog: http://blogs.technet.com/b/orchestrator/ 
Operations Manager Team blog: http://blogs.technet.com/momteam/ 
Service Manager Team blog: http://blogs.technet.com/b/servicemanager 
Virtual Machine Manager Team blog: http://blogs.technet.com/scvmm

The Forefront Endpoint Protection blog : http://blogs.technet.com/b/clientsecurity/
The Forefront Identity Manager blog : http://blogs.msdn.com/b/ms-identity-support/
The Forefront TMG blog: http://blogs.technet.com/b/isablog/
The Forefront UAG blog: http://blogs.technet.com/b/edgeaccessblog/

OpsMgr 2012 R2

Just a quick note to let you know that the System Center Management Pack for Dynamics CRM 2016 is now released. 

The Operations Manager management pack for CRM enables you to monitor Microsoft Dynamics CRM Server 2016 and Microsoft Dynamics CRM Server 2015 in Microsoft System Center Operations Manager. If you already have the Operations Manager management pack for CRM 2015 installed, the Operations Manager management pack for CRM 2016 will replace it. 

You can find all the details as well as a download link here: http://www.microsoft.com/en-in/download/details.aspx?id=50379

Suraj Suresh Guptha | Program Manager | Microsoft

Get the latest System Center news on Facebook and Twitter:

System Center All Up: http://blogs.technet.com/b/systemcenter/

Configuration Manager Support Team blog: http://blogs.technet.com/configurationmgr/
Data Protection Manager Team blog: http://blogs.technet.com/dpm/
Orchestrator Support Team blog: http://blogs.technet.com/b/orchestrator/
Operations Manager Team blog: http://blogs.technet.com/momteam/
Service Manager Team blog: http://blogs.technet.com/b/servicemanager
Virtual Machine Manager Team blog: http://blogs.technet.com/scvmm

Last year, an issue with Operations Manager DataWarehouse event grooming was discovered that was addressed in Microsoft System Center 2012 R2 Operations Manager Update Rollup 7 (OpsMgr 2012 R2 UR7). This was an issue where dependent tables were not being groomed:

In a database, the grooming of certain MT$X$Y tables were missed because of the filtering logic, therefore the tables were never groomed.

In Data Warehouse, the grooming of certain tables was missed occasionally because current logic expects the rows to be returned in a certain order.

What’s important to note about this fix in UR7 is that it simply prevented the issue from continuing. It did not delete any orphaned data that was already in the EventParameter tables.  Because of this, you may still be seeing large EventParameter tables in your environment. If so, Microsoft’s own Nicole Welch has a great blog post where she’ll tell you how to get this cleaned up:

SCOM 2012 - Large Event.Parameter Table(s)

J.C. Hornbeck | Solution Asset PM | Microsoft

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