System Center Operations Manager 2012: Management Pack

After the discovery and installation of Agents, we are now going to install the Management Pack. A management pack extends the SCOM’s monitoring ability. With SQL Server Management Pack, SCOM can monitor the jobs, the state of each database, free spaces on each etc.

On this guide, we will install and configure SQL Server and SharePoint Management Pack.

Open Operations Manager Console.

Go to Administration Pane

Right Click on the Management Pack > Import Management Pack

Navigate to where you installed the SQL Server Management Pack and Select all.

Click OK

Click Install.

After installing the Management Pack, we will configure the Accounts our Management Pack will use to monitor those SQL Server Machines.

Administration > Run as Configuration > Accounts

Click Create Run As Account

Click Next

Run as account Type: Windows

We will add the Domain Administrator to the Run As Account.

 

Choose Less Secure

Click Next

Click Close to close the Wizard.

After creating the Run As Account, we are going to configure that service account on the SQL Server Default Action Account, SQL Server Discovery Account and SQL Server Monitoring Account on the Profiles.

Double Click on the SQL Server Default Action Account.

Click Next.

Click Next

Add the Windows Account configured a while ago

Click OK.

Click Save

 

Click Close.

Now just sit back and wait for the Management Pack to be loaded and propagated to the Agents. Soon we will see all the MOnitors, Tasks, and State of the SQL Server on the Monitoring Pane.

 

There is another way of importing the Management Pack on SCOM. This is by downloading it directly using SCOM.

Go to Administration > Management Pack > Right Click > Download Management Pack

Choose which Management Pack to be downloaded.

Click OK

Click Download

Close

 

 

Select Management Pack from Catalog

Select and Install

If there are Dependencies, it will prompt for a download.

Click Install

 

And there! we have managed to setup SQL Server Management Pack and even download and install SharePoint Management Pack.

Remember that each Management Pack has a different Profile, service accounts and how to install and configure. You need to read all the document pertaining to each management pack for it to work in SCOM.

Enjoy

System Center Operations Manager 2012: Discovery

Now that we have a running SCOM 2012, we are going to discover and install agents to the computers we want to monitor.

On this guide, we will discover and install SCOM Agents on Server1 (AD) and Server 2 (SQL Server). Without installing the agents, SCOM 2012 won’t able to monitor those machines effectively. Even though you can still monitor a machine without an agent, most management pack available requires an agent to run. Remember that an agentless machines places greater resource requirements over an agent-managed computer.

Let’s start

Open SCOM Operations Manager Console

Click on the Administration Pane

Click Discovery Wizard

On the Computer and Device Management Wizard, we choose Windows Computers since

We will choose Advance Discovery. Since we will target only Servers, on the Computer and Device Classess, choose Servers.

Click Next

Since this is a fresh installation of SCOM, we are going to Scan the entire Active Directory. Please be reminded that if your Organization has a large no of computers or servers, it will take time before the entire AD will be discovered.

Click Next

We now specify an account with Administrator rights on the computers. This will also be the account to be used when installing the Agent. On this guide, I have used by Domain Admin account.

SCOM managed to discover Server1, Server2 and Server3. I will now select both Server1 and Server.

Management Mode: Agent

Click Next

 

 

 

 

For Active Directory not being monitored issues, we add NT Authority\SYSTEM using HSLOCKDOWN Tool.

The tool can be found on C:\Program Files\ System Center Operations Manager\Agent\hslockdown

Restart the Healthservice after adding NT Authority\System

And its done! We can now see both Server1 and Server2 being monitored.

On the next guide, we will install and configure some management pack. A management pack extends the monitoring capabilities of SCOM. It defines what are the things to be monitored on a certain Microsoft application. All Microsoft software has its own management pack.

Enjoy!

System Center Operations Manager 2012: Installation

We are now ready to setup SCOM 2012.

Architecture:

We will concentrate on Server4 on this guide.

1. Launch the SCOM 2012 Installer.

Click Install

2. We will select the Management Server, Operations Console and Web Console. Click Next

3. Specify the installation location

4. Prerequisite checker will commence to see if we miss any requirements.

5. Specify the Management Group Name

6. Accept the License Terms

7. Configure the Operational Database.

On this configuration, I already installed SQL Server 2008 R2 on the same box as SCOM. I am using a named instance (DN02).

8. Specify the data warehouse database

9. Specify the web site for the Web Console

10. Select the Authentication Mode.

We will be using Mixed Authentication

11. Specify the Service Accounts

12. Configure the Customer Experience Improvement Program and Error Reporting

13. Specify if we will enable Microsoft Update

14. Installation Summary. Click Install

Click Close.

Notice that the option Start the Operations Console when the Wizard closes is enabled. This will launch the Console afterwards.

Operations Console Icon

 

 

And there we have it.

Please remember that we need SQL Server 2008 SP1 or SQL Server 2008 R2 to make it work. Support for SQL Server 2008 SP2 will come during the RTM

After installation, SCOM will be running on evaluation mode. We need to configure the license via PowerShell.

On the next guide, we will setup a Management Pack, Discover Servers and Client Machines and other stuff on SCOM.

Have fun~

System Center Operations Manager 2012: Introduction

Hi guys, we are going to start a series of guides on SCOM 2012.

System Center Operations Manager 2012 or SCOM for short is the infrastructure monitoring tool from Microsoft. This tool can monitor physical and virtual infrastructure.

New features includes various Linux / Unix and Sun Solaris management pack, Windows Azure applications Monitoring Management Pack, Apache Tomcat, IBM Websphere, Java Enterprise Edition, Oracle WebLogic and Red Hat JBoss. Another awesome feature is that SCOM can now monitor Network Devices.

Software Requirements:

Operating System: Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1

Software Requirements

• Management Server:
       Windows PowerShell Version 2.0 
       Windows Remote Management
       Microsoft Core XML Services (MSXML) 6.0
      .NET Framework 3.5 SP1 and .NET Framework 4
• Operations Console
      Microsoft Report Viewer 2010 Redistributable Package
      .NET Framework 3.5 SP1 Hot Fix
      Windows Installer 3.1
      Windows PowerShell Version 2.0
      Windows PowerShell Version 3.0 (Unix and Linux Computers Administration)
      .NET Framework 3.5 SP1 and .NET Framework 4
• Web Console
      IIS 7.5
          Roles:
          Static Content
          Default Document
          Directory Browsing 
          HTTP Errors 
          HTTP Logging
          Request Monitor
          Request Filtering
          Static Content Compression
          Web Server (IIS) Support
          IIS 6 Metabase Compatibility
           ASP.NET
           Windows Authentication

    *Note: Web Console with SharePoint Installed is not Supported
    .NET Framework 3.5 SP1
    .NET Framework 4 Redistributable Package

    Requires ISAPI and CGI Restrictions in IIS Enabled for ASP.net 4

    Install IIS Before .NET Framework 4
   
Operational Database
    SQL Server 2008 SP1, SQL Server 2008 R2, SQL Server 2008 R2 SP1
    SQL Collation: SQL_Latin1_General_CP1_CI_AS
    SQL Server Full Text Search
    .NET Framework 3.5 SP1
    .NET Framework 4
       
    Architecture:

What we will accomplish on this guide is to setup SCOM2012, monitor a SharePoint 2010, SQL Server database and a client machine. All SCOM components will be placed on a single box. For production, it is advised to separate those components.

Step by Step Procedure on how to install SCOM 2012

I will not cover how to install SQL Server 2008 R2 on this guide as of this time. We will concentrate more on setting up SCOM (Server4)

1. Creating Service Accounts

It is a good practice to configure different service accounts for your SQL Server and SCOM.

Here are the Service Accounts we will be needing:

Account Name	Remarks
MSAAService	Management Server Action Account	Used to carry out actions on monitored computers across a network connection
DRAService	Data Reader Account	Used to define which account credentials SQL Server Reporting Services uses to run queries against the Operations Manager Reporting data warehouse
DWAService	Data Writer Account	This account writes data from the management server to the Reporting data warehouse and reads data from the operational database
SQLService	SQL Service Account	Used for SQL Server 2008 R2 Database Account

Sources:

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/hh298609.aspx

SERVER4

2. Configure / Install Software Prerequisites

Installing IIS and ASP.Net

Installing .NET Framework 4.0

Installing KB952241 – Microsoft Report Viewer 2010 and MSXML Parser

Enabling ISAPI and CGI Restrictions

Right Click > Allow

Now SERVER4 Software requirements are now ready.

Up next is to setup SCOM 2012.

 

Cheers!