The new year has begun with different ads from Microsoft regarding what's new in Operations Management Suite (OMS) and System Center. This article summarizes briefly with the necessary references in order to learn more about.
Operations Management Suite (OMS)
Log Analytics
The release of theIT Service Management Connector (ITSMC) for Azure provides a bi-directional integration between Azure monitoring tools and ITSMC solutions such as: ServiceNow, Provance, Cherwell, and System Center Service Manager. With this integration you can:
- Create or update work-items (event, alert, incident) in ITSM solutions on the basis of alerts present in Azure (Activity Log Alerts, Near real-time metric alerts and Log Analytics alerts).
- Consolidate in Azure Log Analytics data related to Incident and Change Request.
To configure this integration you can consult the Microsoft's official documentation.
Figure 1 – ITSM Connector dashboard of the Log Analytics solution
Agent
This month the new version ofOMS agent for Linux systems fixes important bugs also introducing an updated version of the components SCX and OMI. Given the large number of bug fixes included in this release the advice is to consider the adoption of this upgrade. To obtain the updated version of the OMS agent you can access to the official GitHub page OMS Agent for Linux Patch v 1.4.3-174.
Figure 2 – Bug fixes and what's new for the OMS agent for Linux
Azure Backup
During the process of creating virtual machines from Azure portal now there is the ability to enable the protection via Azure Backup:
Figure 3 – Enabling backup while creating a VM
This ability improves in a considerable way the experience of creation of the virtual machine from the Azure Portal.
Azure Site Recovery
Azure Site Recovery allows you to handle different scenarios to implement Disaster Recovery plans, including replication of VMware virtual machines to Azure. In this context the following important changes have been introduced:
- Release of a template in the format Open Virtualization Format (OVF) to deploy the Configuration Server. This allows you to deploy the template in your virtualization infrastructure and have a system with all the necessary software already preinstalled, with the exception of MySQL Server 5.7.20 and VMware PowerCLI 6.0, to speed up the deployment and the registration to Recovery Service Vault of the Configuration Server.
- Introduced in Configuration Server a web portal to drive the main configuration actions necessary such as proxy server settings, details and credentials to access the vCenter server and the management of the credentials to install or update the Mobility Service on virtual machines involved in the replication process.
- Improved the experience for deploying the Mobility Service on virtual machines. Since the 9.13.xxxx.x version of the Configuration Server would be used VMware tools to install and update the Mobility Service on all VMware virtual machines protected. This means that you no longer need to open firewall ports for WMI and for File and Printer Sharing services on Windows systems, previously used to perform the push installation of the Mobility Service.
The monitoring features included natively in Azure Site Recovery have been greatly enriched for having a complete and immediate visibility. The Panel Overview of Recovery Service Vault is now structured, for the section Site Recovery, as follows:
Figure 4 – Azure Site Recovery dashboard
These the various sections, which are updated automatically every 10 minutes:
- Switch between Azure Backup and Azure Site Recovery dashboards
- Replicated Items
- Failover test success
- Configuration issues
- Error Summary
- Infrastructure view
- Recovery Plans
- Jobs
For more details on the various sections you can see the official documentation or view this short video.
Known Issues
Please note the following possible problem in the execution of backup of Linux VMs on Azure. The error code returned is UserErrorGuestAgentStatusUnavailable and you can follow this workaround to resolve the error condition.
System Center
System Center Configuration Manager
Released the version 1801 for the branch Technical Preview of System Center Configuration Manager: Update 1801 for Configuration Manager Technical Preview Branch.
Among the new features in this release there are:
- Ability to import and run signed scripts and monitor the execution result.
- The distribution point can be moved between different primary sites and from a secondary site to a primary site.
- Improvement in the client settings for the Software Center, with the ability to view a preview before the deployment.
- New settings for Windows Defender Application Guard (starting with Windows 10 version 1709).
- Ability to view a dashboard with information about the co-management.
- Phased Deployments.
- Support for hardware inventory string longer than 255 characters.
- Improvements in the scheduling of Automatic Deployment Rule.
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.
In addition to System Center Configuration Manager current branch, version 1710 was issued an update rollup that contains a large number of bug fixes.
Evaluation of OMS and System Center
Please remember that in order to test and evaluate for free Operations Management Suite (OMS) you can access this page and select the mode that is most appropriate for your needs.
To test the various components of System Center 2016 you can access to the’Evaluation Center and after the registration you can start the trial period.
