Category Archives: Azure Automation

OMS and System Center: What's New in March 2018

In March there have been several news announced by Microsoft on Operations Management Suite (OMS) and System Center. In this series of articles, which we make with monthly basis, are listed all the main innovations of the current month, accompanied by the necessary references to be able to conduct further studies.

Operations Management Suite (OMS)

Azure Automation

In Azure Automation new features have been officially released that allow you to:

  • Manage the distribution of updates (Update management).
  • Collect inventory information about the applications installed on systems (Inventory).
  • Track changes made on the machines (Change tracking).

The our article, posted in recent months, shows how to configure the Azure Automation Account to take advantage of these new features and reports the key features.

Figure 1 – Related solutions in Log Analytics


Azure Backup

Azure Backup introduces several new features that address the following aspects:

  • Large disk support: ability to protect disks of size up to 4 TB, both typologies: managed and unmanaged. The limit was previously of 1 TB.
  • Backup and Restore performance improvements: to reduce the execution time of the backup and restore will be retained snapshots, performed during the backup process, for 7 days.
  • Instant recovery point: the recovery point is made available instantly at the moment of creation of the snapshot made by the backup job, in a similar way to the checkpoint created by Hyper-V or VMware.
  • Distribute the disks of restored VM: during the restore process you are given the opportunity to choose where to place the disks unmanaged of virtual machines. This reduces the configurations, post restore activities, that would be required putting all disks within the same storage account .

To take advantage of these improvements you need to upgrade your subscription which owns the Recovery Service Vaults. The upgrade can be performed directly from the Azure Portal (there will be an appropriate notification in the dashboard of the Recovery Service vault ) or via PowerShell commands. For further information you can consult theMicrosoft's official announcement.

Figure 2 – Subscription upgrade process at the new stack

Microsoft has also announced that the Azure Backup service is now also available in the regions of Azure France (France Central and France South).

 

System Center

Microsoft has officialized the release of Windows Server 2019 which will be available to the public in the second half of 2018. In the same time will be made available System Center 2019 and it will have full support for Windows Server 2019 from the very first day of release.

System Center Configuration Manager

During the month has been released the version 1802 for the Current Branch (CB) of System Center Configuration Manager that introduces new features and major improvements in the product.

This summarizes the areas impacted by this update:

Modern Management

  • Endpoint Protection workload transition in co-management
  • Management insights
  • Co-management reporting

Figure 3 – Co-management reporting

Microsoft 365 Adoption

  • Phased deployments
  • Windows AutoPilot Device Information report
  • Support for Windows 10 ARM64 devices
  • Surface Device Dashboard
  • Microsoft Edge browser policies
  • Report to show default browser for client machines
  • Windows 10 Servicing for a specific collection report
  • Improvements to Office 365 client management dashboard
  • Improvements for Windows Defender Exploit Guard
  • New settings for Windows Defender Application Guard

Streamlined Infrastructure

  • Configure Windows 10 Delivery Optimization to use Configuration Manager boundary groups
  • Add management points to your boundary group fallback relationships
  • Moving Distribution Points between sites

Improvements in Cloud Management Gateway

  • Cloud management gateway support for Azure Resource Manager
  • Install user-available applications on Azure AD-joined devices
  • Windows 10 in-place upgrade task sequence over the Internet

Improvements in Software Center

  • Approve application requests for users per device
  • Improvements to client settings for Software Center

Improvements in OSD

  • Improvements to Windows 10 in-place upgrade task sequence
  • Deployment Template for Task Sequences

Miscellaneous Improvements

  • Support for hardware inventory strings greater than 255 characters in length
  • Run scripts

Figure 4 – Run Script status

To see the complete list of new features and to get more details about it you can access the Microsoft's official documentation.

The update will be made available globally in recent weeks and will be displayed in the node "Updates and Servicing" in the SCCM console. To force the availability of this update you can use this PowerShell script.

For System Center Configuration Manager has been released the version 1803 for the Technical Preview branch. In addition to general improvements in the solution are introduced useful changes that can improve the Configuration Manager infrastructure. Furthermore, interesting improvements have been made to the Software Center. All the new features included in this update can be found in the article Update 1803 for Configuration Manager Technical Preview Branch.

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.

System Center Updates Publisher

System Center Updates Publisher (SCUP) is the Microsoft solution that allows you to manage custom third-party update. This month a new version of SCUP has been officially released and can be downloaded at this link. The new release introduces support for Windows 10 and Windows Server 2016. All details about this release can be found in the’official announcement.

System Center Operations Manager

Following, are reported the news about Management Packs of SCOM:

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 try System Center products you can access to the’Evaluation Center and after the registration you can start the trial period.

OMS and System Center: What's New in December 2017

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.

OMS and System Center: What's New in October 2017

This article lists the main changes announced in October concerning Operations Management Suite (OMS) and System Center. This is a concise summary that contains the necessary references for further study.

Operations Management Suite (OMS)

Log Analytics

In Log Analytics in August was released a major update that introduces a number of changes, as the powerful new query language, the introduction of the new Advanced Analytics portal and greater integration with Power BI. For further information you can consult the specific article Log Analytics: a major update evolves the solution. During the month, Microsoft announced that from 30 October 2017 is started automatically the upgrade process of the OMS workspaces not yet updated manually. Everything will be done in a gradual way for region according to the schedule below:

Figure 1 - Scheduling for rollout of the upgrade of Log Analytics

Also starting from 16 October 2017 the new OMS workspaces are already build in the new mode and there is no possibility to create a legacy workspace. For further information you can consult the article Azure Log Analytics workspace upgrades are in progress.

Solutions

Thanks to the solution Azure Log Analytics Container Monitoring for the Service Fabric under Linux now you can:

  • Centralize and correlate logs that are related to containers.
  • For containers and nodes display in almost real-time metrics for CPU, memory, storage and network utilization.
  • Identify containers with excessive use of resources.
  • Control the use of process-wide resources (Docker container top).
  • See an inventory of the container node that contains information about the Orchestration.

Figure 2 – Container Monitoring solution for Linux Service Fabric

The presence of an Azure Resource Manager (ARM) template that lets you create a new Log Analytics Workspace and install during the deployment the OMS agent on all nodes of the Service Fabric cluster facilitates the activation of the monitor. At the end of the cluster deployment simply add to the workspace of Log Analytics the solution Container Monitoring available in Azure Marketplace, and in a few minutes will be available in Log Analytics information on the Service Fabric. For further information you can consult the article Azure Log Analytics Container Monitoring solution for Linux process Fabric.

By using the Azure Action Groups you can use the Log Analytics solution IT Service Management Connector Solution to automatically open incident in your product or service of IT Service Management (ITSM), if properly supported, against alert generated in the Azure environment. The steps to configure this new feature is documented in the ad Send your Azure alerts to ITSM tools using Action Groups.

Agent

Released a new version of the OMS agent for Linux systems that mainly has solved some bugs and introduced some useful improvements. For more details and to get the updated version please refer to the official GitHub page OMS Agent for Linux GA v 1.4.1-123

Figure 3 – Bug fixes and what's new for the OMS agent for Linux

Azure Automation

As for Azure Automation have been announced, currently in preview, exciting new features:

  • Update management: it allows you to have visibility on the updates compliance for both Windows and Linux systems, regardless of their location (Azure, on-premises or others cloud). It also allows you to schedule the deployment to install the updates within a specific maintenance window. Among the features offered is the ability to exclude specific updates from the deployment and retrieve logs for the deployment useful for troubleshooting.
  • Inventory: it allows you to retrieve inventory information about the installed applications within systems. All this can easily be accessed directly from the portal Azure.
  • Track changes: useful for monitoring changes made to systems for services, daemons, software, registry and files. This feature can be very useful to diagnose specific problems and to enable alerts against unexpected changes.

Figure 4 – New features in preview of Azure Automation

For further details please consult the specific article What's New in Azure Automation: Inventory, Change Tracking and Update Management.

Azure Automation also introduces the ability to implement runbook written in Python 2 and adds support for the role Hybrid Runbook Worker under Linux. These features are currently in public preview.

System Center

TheUpdate Rollup 4 for Microsoft System Center 2016 has been released.

These are the System Center products affected by the update that resolves several issues and introduces some improvements:

The Update rollup 4 introduces support for the security protocol TLS 1.2 for all encrypted communications. Earlier versions of TLS and SSL encryption mechanisms are not considered with a high level of security, for this reason Microsoft has decided to introduce for the following System Center products official support for the security protocol TLS 1.2:

  • System Center Operations Manager (SCOM)
  • System Center Virtual Machine Manager (SCVMM)
  • System Center Data Protection Manager (SCDPM)
  • System Center Orchestrator (SCO)
  • Service Management Automation (SMA)
  • Service Provider Foundation (SPF)
  • System Center Service Manager (SM)

Enabling TLS 1.2 requires that you follow the following macro step:

  1. Install security updates for Windows Server, .NET 4.6 and SQL Server.
  2. Install the Update Rollup 4 of System Center 2016 on the different components. Regarding Service Management Automation (SMA) and Service Provider Foundation (SPF) you still need to apply the latest Update Rollup available. In addition to SMA you need to update its Management Pack.
  3. Change the settings to enable TLS 1.2 in the Windows environment on all System Center components.
  4. Adapt the System Center component-specific settings that require it (SCOM, SCDPM and SCO).

For more details you can follow the specific deployment guide.

System Center Configuration Manager

Released version 1709 for the branch Technical Preview of System Center Configuration Manager: Update 1709 for Configuration Manager Technical Preview Branch – Available Now!

The new features in this update are:

  • Co-management: solution that allows the management of devices using either System Center Configuration Manager and Microsoft Intune. Thanks to Windows 10 Fall Creators Update there is the opportunity to join the device both to the Active Directory domain (AD) on-premises and to Azure AD in the cloud. This expands the possibilities for management of devices using the Configuration Manager client and the MDM agent of Intune.

Figure 5 – Co-Management from the SCCM console

  • Improvement regarding the use of SCCM connected to Intune for the management of the mobile devices with regard to the settings of VPN profiles. With this update, in fact while creating a new VPN profile shows only the appropriate settings for the platform that you intend to configure. More details about you can retrieve them in this article.

Also released version 1710 always for the branch Technical Preview of System Center Configuration Manager. The many innovations introduced with this update are available in the announcement Update 1710 for Configuration Manager Technical Preview Branch – Available Now!.

I remind you that the releases in the Technical Preview Branch allows you to evaluate in preview new SCCM functionality and is recommended to apply these updates only in test environments.

System Center Operations Manager

In the table below the news about SCOM Management Pack 2016:

The changes introduced by these new MPs can be found in the article DHCP 2016 and 2012 R2 Management Pack release.

System Center Orchestrator

Released the latest version of’Integration Pack for System Center 2016.

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.

What's New in Azure Automation: Inventory, Change Tracking and Update Management

In Azure Autiomation were recently introduced new features, currently in preview, which make it possible to manage the distribution of updates, collect inventory information about the applications installed on the systems and keep track of changes made on the machines. This article will show you how to configure the Azure Automation Account to take advantage of these new features and it will show their main characteristics.

In order to use each of these features it is necessary that the Automation Account is associated with a Log Analytics Wokspace.

If the Automation Account where you want to enable these new features is not linked to any Workspace of Log Analytics is requested, in the process of activation, the binding to an existing Workspace or it propose the creation of a new Workspace:

Figure 1 - Association of Automation Account to Log Analytics Workspace

The capabilities of Change Tracking and Inventory are enabled simultaneously by the Azure portal and at the end of the activation will appear the following notification:

Figure 2 – Notification after enabling Change Tracking and Inventory features

For enabling Update management you will need to perform the same operation.

Figure 3 – Enabling the Update Management feature

At the end of these activities in the Log Analytics Workspace will be present the following solution:

Figure 4 – Solution added in Log Analytics

After the completion of the activation, the solution begins to show the data of machines already connected to the OMS Workspace associated with the Automation Account. You could also get the onboarding by further machines directly from the relevant sections of the Azure Portal:

Figure 5 - Adding additional systems

This process requires the installation of the OMS agent on systems and can be done either on Windows and Linux. If the machines are on the Azure fabric the OMS agent installation process is integrated and can happen quickly with a simple click from the Azure Portal. Otherwise you can still associate the systems by manually installing the OMS agent, independently from their location (on-premises or others cloud).

For the functionality of Inventory and Change Tracking you can access the settings (common among the two solutions) to customize the registry key information, the files under Windows and Linux that you plan to inventory and monitor:

Figure 6 – Edit your settings

Figure 7 - Personalization of the configuration

 

Inventory

This feature allows you to retrieve inventory information relating to: installed software, files, Windows Registry keys, Windows Services and Linux Daemons. All this can be accessed easily directly from the Azure portal and it is possible to apply search filters:

Figure 8 - Search the inventory data

 

Change Tracking

The functionality of Change Tracking monitors changes made to systems relatively to Daemons, File, Registry, software and services on Windows . This feature can be very useful to diagnose specific problems and to enable alerts against unexpected changes.

Figure 9 - Consultation of changes

By accessing the Log Analytics console you can also carry out more targeted searches:

Figure 10 – Log Search Analytics

Also in the Change Tracking there is the possibility to connect theAzure Activity Log of an Azure subscription to collect also changes you make in Azure side.

Figure 11 – Azure Activity Log connection

 

Update Management

The solution of Update Management allows a total visibility on the update compliance for both Windows and Linux systems:

Figure 12 - Global status of compliance of the updates on managed systems

Using the search panel you can quickly identify missing updates:

Figure 13 – Identify missing updates

The solution is not only very useful for consultation, It also allows you to schedule the deployment to install the updates within a specific maintenance window.

Figure 14 – Deplyment schedule

Very soon, even the ability to deploy on Linux systems. Among the features offered there is the ability to exclude specific updates from the deployment.

Figure 15 - Deployment Settings

Scheduled deployments and their execution status can be monitored in real time directly from the Azure Portal:

Figure 16 – List of scheduled update deployments

Figure 17 – Update Deployment in progress

Figure 18 – Update Deployment successfully completed

Selecting the deployment completed you will be sent to a well-structured and easy-to-use dashboard that allows you to check the details of the deployment:

Figure 19 – Deployment dashboard

Also useful the ability to retrieve logs that are related to deployment for troubleshooting purposes.

Conclusions

These are features that give you the ability to control and manage easily, and efficiently environments composed of few units in the cloud up to contemplate hybrid scenarios with a large number of systems. These features are currently in preview therefore intended to further expand their potential. In particular the functionality of Update Management to manage and orchestrate the updates deployment in complex environments in an efficient and flexible way will have to evolve, but it is definitely in a good point of the develop. For more details of Azure Automation I invite you to consult official documentation.