Compared to what we were used to seeing in recent months, during the month of December, also because of the holiday period, have been announced by Microsoft a few news about Operations Management Suite (OMS) and System Center. This article will be made a summary accompanied by references required for further study.
Operations Management Suite (OMS)
Log Analytics
In Azure Monitor was including the ability to view and define alert of Log Analytics. This is a feature in preview that allows you to use Azure Monitor as a centralized point of management and visualization of alerts.
Figure 1- Defining a Log Analytics alert in Azure Monitor (preview)
This month the new version of the’OMS agent for Linux systems fixes in particular a major bug concerning the DSC package (omsconfig) that due to a possible hang prevents sending data to the OMS workspace. In this release, there are not new features. To obtain the updated version you can access to the official GitHub page OMS Agent for Linux Patch v 1.4.2-125.
Figure 2 – Bug Fix list for the new OMS agent for Linux
Azure Automation
In Azure Monitor, within Action Groups was introduced the possibility to define a Azure Automation Runbook as action type. It is a further integration that enables you to have an effective alerting platform to take action not only for workloads running on Azure, but independently from their location.
Figure 3 – Defining an action based on Automation Runbook
Protection and Disaster Recovery
Azure Backup introduced support for the protection of Azure virtual machines with discs, managed or unmanaged, encrypted using Bitlocker Encryption Key (BEK). This feature extends the possibilities of protection of encrypted virtual machines, already supported previously in the Bitlocker Encryption Key scenario (BEK) and Key Encryption Key (KEK), allowing to obtain with ease a high level of security in these protection scenarios. For further information you can consult theofficial announcement.
Figure 4 – Protection of VM encrypted using Bitlocker Encryption Key (BEK)
Microsoft has released Azure Site Recovery Deployment Planner a very useful tool that can be used when you plan to implement a disaster recovery plan through to Azure Azure Site Recovery (ASR). ASR Deployment Planner is able to make a detailed assessment of the on-premises environment, targeted use of ASR, and provides the necessary elements to be taken into consideration in order to contemplate effectively the various operations required by the DR plan (replica, virtual machine failover and DR-Drill). The tool works in VMware and Hyper-V also includes a cost estimate for the use of ASR and resources necessary for the protection of Azure virtual machines on-premises. This tool currently can also be useful to make the necessary assessments when you have the need to address real migration scenarios from Hyper-V to Azure. This is because the instrument Azure Migrate, designed specifically to assess migration scenarios, allows you to present to the assessment only of VMware environments. The support for Hyper-V in Azure Migrate will be introduced in the coming months. ASR Deployment Planner can be downloaded at this link and includes the following features:
- Estimates of the network bandwidth required for the initial replication process (initial replication) and for delta replication.
- Indicates the type of Storage (standard or premium) required for each VM.
- Indicates the total number of storage accounts (standard and premium) required.
- For VMware environments, indicates the number of Configuration Server and Process Server you need to implement on-premises.
- For Hyper-V environments, provides guidance on additional storage needed on-premises.
- For Hyper-V environments, indicates the number of VMs that can be protected in parallel (through batch) and the order to be followed in order to successfully activate the initial replication.
- For VMware environments, specifies the number of VMs that can be protected in parallel to complete the initial replication at any given time.
- Estimate the throughput attainable by ASR (on-premises to Azure).
- Perform an assessment, of the supported virtual machines, providing details about the disks (number, its size and IOPS) and the type of the OS.
- Estimate the costs of DR, for use it in a specific region of Azure.
For detailed information about using the tool you can consult the official documentation relating to the specific scenario:
Figure 5 – Sample reports generated by ASR Deployment Planner
System Center
System Center Configuration Manager
Released the version 1712 for the branch Technical Preview of System Center Configuration Manager. The new features in this update are:
- Improvements on the Surface Device dashboard, that allows you to view the firmware version of Surface devices, as well as the version of the operating system.
- Dashboard improvements in Office 365 client management.
- Multiple installation of applications by accessing the Software Center.
- Client can be configured to respond to PXE requests without adding a distribution point role (Client-based PXE).
Please note that the Technical Preview Branch releases help you to evaluate new features of SCCM and it is recommended to apply these updates only in test environments.
Microsoft allows you to test and evaluate for free Operations Management Suite (OMS) by accessing this page and selecting the mode you find most suitable for your needs.
