Category Archives: Technical Preview

SCOMing soon to a System Center near you!

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As the world eagerly awaits the release of the upcoming version of SCOM lets have a brief look at the publicly announced features so far:

The features that have me the most excited are the updated HTML 5 dashboards (so long silverlight!) and the enhanced management pack recommendations which will include MPs from 3rd parties.

Which features are you excited about? 
Do you have an idea for a feature that’s not included yet? Let the product team know through UserVoice!

Linux monitoring

You can now use a Linux agent with FluentD support for log file monitoring at par with Windows Server. This update provides the following improvements over previous log file monitoring:

  • Wild card characters in log file name and path.
  • New match patterns for customizable log search like simple match, exclusive match, correlated match, repeated correlation, and exclusive correlation.
  • Support for generic Fluentd plugins published by the fluentd community.

Improved HTML console experience

The Web console has been redesigned and is now a fully HTML-based console and no longer has a dependency on Silverlight. The monitoring tree and dashboards support the HTLM5 markup language.

Enhanced SDK Client performance

We have introduced performance improvements in the Operations console that typically prevent the console from responding while a new management pack is being imported or deleted, or a configuration change to an MP is saved.

Updates and recommendations for third-party Management Packs

In System Center 2016 we released the MP Updates and Recommendations feature which has been expanded now to include discovery and downloads of third-party management pack updates, based on feedback from customers.

Linux Kerberos support

Operations Manager can now support Kerberos authentication wherever the WS-Management protocol is used by the management server to communicate with UNIX and Linux computers, providing greater security by no longer needing to enable basic authentication for Windows Remote Management (WinRM).

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. For further information on planning and configuring integration, see Service Map integration with System Center Operations Manager.

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System Center: First preview, version 1711 now available

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The first preview of the new semi-annual channel for System Center is now available you can get it here.

Here are some of the new features that you can experience

In Operations Manager:

  • Improvements to Linux MPs
  • Linux Kerberos support
  • Improvements to Windows Server OS MP
  • One setup for all languages
  • Improved UI responsiveness with large number MPs
  • Visual Studio 2017 support in VSAE

In Virtual Machine Manager:

  • SLB Guest cluster floating IP support
  • Storage QoS at VMM Cloud
  • Storage QoS extended to SAN storage
  • Remote to VMs in Enhanced Session mode
  • Seamless update of non-domain host agent
  • Support for fallback HGS for Shielded VM
  • Host Refresher made up to 10X faster

For more information check out the MS Cloud Platform Blog

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SCOM: MP for .NET Application Performance Monitoring with Visual Studio Application Insights

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A new preview management pack if you which extends the APM functionality to include Visual Studio Application Insights get it here

Here is a nice set of installation instructions.

Note that this is a preview so I would suggest extensive testing before using in a live environment.

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SCOM: MP update SQL (Community Technical Preview 2) v6.7.5.0

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Technical preview 2 of the new SQL management packs are out for preview, get them here.

Updates:

Dashboards

  • Improved Dashboards performance
  • Fixed issue: Regular\Virtual group tile will show 0 objects if user adds a new group before the previous one has been saved
  • Fixed issue: virtual group filtering for Generic Distributor does not work
  • Fixed issue: tooltips on some menus appear in unexpected places
  • Fixed issue: Web Console is crashing upon right-clicking the Hamburger menu
  • Fixed issue: button captions are cropped in some dashboard localization packs
  • Fixed issue: instance dashboard displays data for the item that is the first in the list if no items appear after applying a filter
  • Fixed issue: the first group object is not in focus after clearing “Filter” field if there were no search results
  • Fixed issue: Summary dashboards appear to be in a strange state if one installs only Dashboards MP without SQL MPs
  • Fixed issue: Bulk Add Tiles does not trigger the refresh action
  • Fixed issue: object and alert counters of Virtual groups containing real groups display zeros
  • Fixed issue: an error appears in Web Console when using keyboard for navigation in “Add Aggregated Monitor” dialog
  • Fixed issue: unexpected scrolling behavior in the instance view when using mouse scroll
  • Fixed issue: markup of the dialog for adding classes gets broken when the scrollbars are displayed
  • Fixed issue: wrong width value of the Edit dialog
  • Fixed issue: there is no refresh action after saving the edited Virtual Group configuration
  • Fixed issue: white-screen exception when working with a dialog in Web Console
  • Fixed issue: datacenter and instance queries fail when a special set of classes is selected

SQL Server 2016 / 2014 / 2012 /2008 / 2005

  • Added support for configurations where computer host names are longer than 15 symbols
  • Added “Event ID” to descriptions of all the alerts generated by the alerting rules
  • Deprecated “Run As Account does not exist on the target system, or does not have enough permissions” rule
  • Added 2 rules for alerts generating when there are problems with execution of the monitoring workflows scripts on the following agents: “MSSQL: Monitoring failed” and “MSSQL: Monitoring warning”
  • Added “MSSQL 2016: Discovery warning” rules to generate alerts when there are non-critical problems with execution of the discovery scripts (warning events in the Operations Manager log)
  • Changed “MSSQL 2016: Discovery failed” rules to generate alerts for only critical errors during executing discovery scripts
  • Improved error logging in the MP scripts
  • Fixed some issues in the scripts, which could lead to unstable work with WMI
  • Fixed the issue when not all available performance counters were presented at “All Performance Data” view in Memory-Optimized Data sub-folder
  • Added a new overridable parameter to monitor “Stale Checkpoint File Pairs Ratio” in order to ignore databases having the number of checkpoint file pairs less than the threshold (300 by default)
  • Made “Resources Pool Memory Consumption (rollup)” enabled by default
  • Updated the visualization library

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SCOM: Preview MP for Windows Server 2016 Guarded Fabric v10.0.0.0

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A preview has been released for the Windows Server 2016 Guarded Fabric management pack it is available for download here.

          The Windows Server 2016 Guarded Fabric Management Pack enables discovery and monitoring of guarded hosts and Host Guardian Service instances in your environment with System Center Operations Manager. The alerts surfaced by this management pack will help you quickly detect and remediate service availability issues with the Host Guardian Service and Hyper-V host misconfigurations that could prevent you from succesfully starting up shielded VMs. Please note that this is a preview release of the management pack and is not suitable for production deployments.

 

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SCOM: SQL Server MP (Community Technical Preview 2.1)

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An update to the SQL management packs Community Technical Preview is now available here.

There have been additions for SQL Server 2016 SSRS and SSAS and minor improvements to the other existing management packs. Hopefully when this reaches public release it will avoid the issues of previous SQL mp versions.

Newly released
SSRS Native Mode 2016
SSAS 2016

Updates and fixes

SQL Server 2005/ 2008 / 2012 / 2014 / 2016

  • Updated the visualization library

SQL Server 2008 /2012 / 2014 / 2016 Replication

  • Updated the visualization library

Dashboards

  • Improved Dashboards performance.

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SCOM: SQL MP (Community Technical Preview 2) v6.7.0.0

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Version 6.7.0.0 of the Community Technical Preview 2 for the SQL management packs have been released, they are available for download here.

Microsoft seems to be very cautions now with releases of the SQL MP which is good considering the issues with the last 4 live versions,

What’s new?

New Releases
MP for SSAS 2016
MP for SSRS 2016 (Native Mode)

Updates and fixes

SQL Server Dashboards

  • Added a feature to support Virtual Groups (groups defined by classes, not by real group instance). This will help users with partial access to use our predefined dashboards.
  • Added a feature to Bulk Add tiles from the class definition.
  • Added a feature to ignore some states while calculating the worst state for the Datacenter View State Tile; added a feature to set this ignorance up for each group
  • Added a feature to show/hide Instance path in the list on the Instance view
  • Added instance path to the Instance Details
  • Implemented deferred loading of the instance tiles to make the instance view operation faster
  • Implemented a new format for Dashboards configuration providing a smaller size and a single binding
  • Implemented a converter from old to new format providing preservation of user changes
  • Improved error reporting
  • Improved performance of initial load process
  • Improved data sources performance
  • Improved performance of instance selection (made it asynchronous)
  • Improved performance of Datacenter and Instance View Tiles, loading and loaded animations
  • Fixed animation issues and minor visual glitches (positioning, size of elements, fonts, main loading animation)
  • Updated Summary dashboard
  • “Known issues and Troubleshooting” section of the guide is updated

SQL Server 2016 / 2014

  • Fixed Smart Admin policies monitoring
  • Fixed Always On Database replica discovery incorrect behavior; fixed Always On policies discovery and monitoring
  • Fixed Database policies discovery and monitoring
  • Fixed and optimized CPU Usage monitoring scripts (the issue appeared when only one core was assigned)
  • Added support for more than 32 processors count in CPU Usage monitoring.
  • SQLPS module is now used for the tasks instead of deprecated SQLPS.EXE
  • Implemented FILESTREAM filegroup monitoring
  • FILESTREAM is now supported on the summary dashboard
  • Multiple Ports are now supported in SQL Server TCP/IP parameters
  • Fixed error occurring when no port is specified in SQL Server TCP/IP parameters
  • Fix filegroup read-only state discovery
  • Fixed RunAs profiles mapping for some workflows
  • Added support for new SQL Server 2016 Memory-Optimized Data implementation
  • Implemented support for TLS 1.2 in connection logic
  • Implemented support for different client drivers in connection logic
  • Updated connection logic error logging
  • Updated Availability Group Automatic Failover monitor
  • Added rules to collect new Always On performance counters
  • Updated SMO usage in Always On workflows to support the new connection logic
  • Upgraded the used PowerShell version to 3+, since SQL Server 2016 uses .Net 4 Runtime
  • Fixed issue: CPU usage monitor ignored SQL server limitations on CPU core count
  • Fixed display strings and Knowledge Base articles
  • Fixed error reporting in the scripts
  • Fixed threshold percentage comparison of deactivated subscriptions workflow in Distributor.

SQL Server 2016 / 2014 / 2012 / 2008 Replication

  • Reviewed threading implementation
  • Fixed issue: Distributor Discovery could fail for Replication
  • Fixed error logging, added more details
  • Fixed “Availability of the Distribution database” monitor issue: added missing overridable parameter
  • Assigned SDK profile to the Replication Database Health Discovery
  • Fixed replication monitoring issue: compatibility with SQL 2005 as a part of Replication
  • Fixed Publisher Discovery issue: unable to cast object of type ‘System.DBNull’ to type ‘System.String’
  • Added timeout support for .Net modules
  • Fixed issue: SQL Server Event Log Collection Target was not discovered Associate due to invalid path in DataSource
  • Fixed Replication Agent State monitor type cookdown issue
  • Fixed issue: failing replacement warning in “One or more of the Replication Agents are retrying on the Distributor” monitor
  • Dashboards fixes: added bindings to the tiles; added Datacenter Classes (L1 dashboard for Replication)
  • Fixed upgradeability
  • Fixed Knowledge Base articles and display strings
  • Updated Known Issues and Troubleshooting section of the guide

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SCOM: Updated Microsoft Azure MP (Technical Preview) v1.3.18.0

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A new version of the Azure technical preview MP has been released you can get version 1.3.18.0 here

New in this version

  • Added support for Virtual Machines (non-classic) in addition to Classic Virtual Machines supported previously
  • Improved logging for the case when RDFE resources request is performed under SPN mode
  • Fixed/added display names and Knowledge Base articles
  • Improved error logging
  • Fixed resource group name validation issue (underscore symbols in resource group names led to discovery fails)
  • Added “Configuring Proxy Connection” section to the guide
  • Fixed Data Warehouse performance issue; added main aggregation for performance metrics
  • “Known Issues” section of the guide is updated

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SCOM 2016: TP 5 new features Updated 03/05

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This posting will be updated as more features come to light

Install splash

At first glace there isn’t a whole lot new floating around, the administration pane has the following, Tune Management Packs and Partner Solutions:

Tune Management Packs

This feature will show which management packs are generating the most noise.

Tune

Once alerts are populating the Tune Management pack view will give you an overview of how many alerts are being generated by each management pack, filtered by a date range you specify. Unfortunately you cannot choose a filter such as “previous week”

tune2

Clicking the Tune Alerts task will display a list of the alerts from that management pack with count, location, type and name. You can access the rule / monitor settings directly from this location to make it easy to reduce noise.

Tune3

Partner Solutions

This feature is actually from one of the later 2012 UR’s but I’ll keep it here due to it being relatively unnoticed. Partner solutions gives a nice view into the 3rd party management packs that are available, it’s easier to than the marketplace and less hassle then trawling through search engines. I’d like to see more from this feature.

Partner2

Console optimization 

Some improvements have been made to the console this should be especially noticeable in environments with heavy load on the databases. Hopefully this mean less “busy” in the bottom left corner.

  • Alert view is optimized to load efficiently
  • Alert tasks and alert details in alert view is optimized to load efficiently
  • Context menus of an alert in alert view is optimized to load efficiently

Improved scalability for Unix/Linux Agents monitoring

A nice addition for those with large *nix environments is that the supported amount of cross platform agents per management server has been effectively doubled.

This has been achieved by using the new Async Windows Management Infrastructure (MI) APIs instead of WSMAN Sync APIs. By default, Operations Manager would use the sync APIs. To switch to the new method you need to create a new Registry key “UseMIAPI” to enable Operations Manager to use the new Async MI APIs.

To enable the new Async MI APIs – create a Registry key “UseMIAPI” under HKLM:\Software\Microsoft\Microsoft Operations Manager\3.0\Setup

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