Category Archives: Operations Management Suite

Azure Backup: the System State protection in the Cloud

The ability to protect the System State of Windows Server machines directly in Azure using the Azure Backup Agent was recently included. This feature was in preview for a few months and now it is available to be used in production environments. In this article I'll show you how you can protect with Azure Backup the System State of the machines, analyzing the characteristics and the benefits brought by this new feature.

The Azure Backup Agent allows you to save files, folders and thanks to the incorporation of the System State are covered by the protection of Windows Server machines the following components:

  • Boot files, including system files, and all files protected by Windows File Protection (WFP).
  • Active Directory and Sysvol (on domain controllers).
  • The registry.
  • IIS metabase (on Web Server IIS machines): includes IIS configurations and web sites hosted by the web server.
  • Database cluster (on cluster nodes).
  • Certificate Services (on the certification authority).
  • Information about the Performance counters.
  • Component Services Class registration database.

Thanks to the incorporation of the System State, Azure Backup becomes ideal for protection strategies of Active Directory, File Server and IIS Web Server.

Figure 1 – Protection of System State in Azure

This solution is supported starting with Windows Server 2008 R2 to Windows Server 2016.

To enable this type of protection is necessary to create within the subscription Azure a Recovery Service Vault, install the Azure Backup Agent on Windows Server machine and complete its registration by following the steps shown in the following diagram:

Figure 2 - Activation steps for the protection with Azure Backup

By accessing the Azure portal and selecting the Recovery Service Vault, within which you want to include the protection, in the Backup section appears the possibility of protecting the System State for workloads running On-Premises:

Figure 3 – Selection of System State as a component to be protected

By selecting the button "Prepare Infrastructure" it lists the necessary steps to protect the System State of the machines:

Figure 4 – Steps for preparing the infrastructure

From the panel above you need to download the Recovery Service Agent installation setup and the Vault credentials.

The installation of the agent (MARSAgentInstaller.exe) is very fast and consists of the following steps:

Figure 5 - Selecting the installation folder and the cache location

In the cache location it is advisable to have as free space at least 5% of protected data.

Figure 6 – Configuration of proxy system for Internet access

Figure 7 – Check the requirements and installation

Figure 8 – Initiation of the process of registration with the Recovery Service Vault

Figure 9 – Selection of login credentials to the vault

Figure 10 - Generate and save the passphrase

The Passphrase is used to encrypt and decrypt the backups, it is never sent to Azure, it is not recoverable in any way by Microsoft support personnel and it is essential to be able to perform restore operations, so you must keep it very carefully.

Figure 11 – Registration successfully

From Microsoft Azure Backup console, you can schedule a backup and for servers, in the selection of items to protect, there is the System State:

Figure 12 - Selection of the System State Protection

Figure 13 - Settings on the frequency of the backup

Figure 14 - Definition of the retention rules

Figure 15 - Final Step, activation of the System State backup

System State protection can also be automated with PowerShell. You also have the possibility to consult easily the backup jobs directly from the Azure portal, and you can configure notifications to be notified in case of failure of protection jobs.

The offsite backups is ensured with this solution without investing in infrastructure costs and saving time in operational activities. It is also good to keep in mind that the cost of this solution are really beneficial, in fact, typically the size of the System State for a single machine is significantly less than 50 GB then the System State protection pricing level falls within the lower cost band specified for the instances protected with Azure Backup. For more details on the cost of the solution you can consult the Azure Backup pricing page. No cost for any restore operations is also required.

Conclusions

The System State for Windows Server machines is a critical component that should be saved for a proper and effective strategy to protect its infrastructure. Azure Backup due to its defined approach cloud-first extend their potential enabling you to protect the System State of the machines easily, securely and with low costs. To try Azure Backup and other Azure services you can create a Azure free Account.

Azure Site Recovery: disaster recovery of Virtual Machines in Azure

In azure, there is the possibility of using Azure Site Recovery (ASR) to implement easily an efficient disaster recovery strategy by enabling replication of virtual machines among different regions of Azure. Although in Azure are present integrated mechanisms to deal with localized hardware failures, it may be appropriate to implement a solution that can ensure applications compliance , performed on virtual machines in Azure, against both catastrophic events, such as earthquakes or hurricanes, that software issues that may impact on the functioning of an entire region of Azure. This article will show you how to configure a virtual machine replication and how to enable a disaster recovery scenario.

This feature has been defined one-click replication because of its simplicity, it is currently in public preview and it is usable in all the Azure regions where ASR is available.

Before you enable this functionality is essential to ensure that the necessary requirements are met and to do that you can see the compatibility matrix for the replication scenario of virtual machines among different regions.

By accessing the Azure Portal it is possible to select the virtual machine that you intend to replicate and perform the configuration in the section Disaster recovery:

Figure 1 – Disaster Recovery Section of the VM

Selecting Disaster Recovery shows the following configuration panel:

Figure 2 – VM replication configuration panel

The first required parameter is the target region where you want to replicate the virtual machine. The replication activation process also create the necessary Azure artifacts (Resource Group, Availability Set if used by the selected VM, Virtual Network and Storage accounts) or you can select them at will if they were created earlier.

Figure 3 – The resources needed in the region target

The replication process also requires the presence of a Cache Storage Accounts in the source region that is used as a temporary repository to store changes before they are reported in the storage account defined in the target region. This is done to minimize the impact on production applications that reside on the replicated VM.

Figure 4 - Cache Storage Account in the replication process

Always in the configuration panel is required which is proposed Vault Recovery Services use creating a replication policy that defines the recovery point retention and the rate at which consistent snapshots are made at the application level.

By selecting Enable Replication will begin the creation process of Azure resources required, the VM is registered in the selected Recovery Services Vault and replication process is activated.

The Disaster Recovery section lists details about the replication and it is possible to perform a failover or a test failover:

Figure 5 - Details relating to the replication process of the VM and activation of the failover process

The procedure Test Failover Specifies which recovery point using between: latest, latest processed, latest app-consistent or custom. In addition it is possible to select in which virtual network attest the virtual machine during the test failover in order to perform the test without generating any impact on the production systems.

Figure 6 – Test Failover of a VM

Similar the Failover panel that allows you to specify only which recovery point to use as the network on which attest the machine has already been defined in the configuration phase.

Figure 7 – Failover of a VM

Only when you start the Failover process affected virtual machines are created on the target resource group, attested to the target vNet and configured in the availability set appropriate when used.

Figure 8 – Failover process

Conclusions

Thanks to this new feature introduced in Azure Site Recovery it is possible to activate with ease replication of virtual machines in different Azure regions, without the necessity of having expensive secondary infrastructure to activate a disaster recovery plan.

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.

Azure Backup Server v2 in Windows Server 2016

Azure Backup Server is a solution available on the market since October 2015 and in the spring of this year has been released the second version of the product, named Azure Backup Server v2 (MABS v2), that supports installation on Windows Server 2016. Actually Azure Backup Server has inherited the same capabilities of System Center Data Protection Manager, with the substantial difference that does not support backup to tape. Using Azure Backup Server v2 implemented on Windows Server 2016 allows the use of Modern Backup Storage that guarantees, thanks to the new technologies introduced in Windows Server 2016, to improve the performance of backups, to reduce the occupation of storage and to increase the resilience and safety with regard to the protection of virtual machines. This article describes how to implement Azure Backup Server v2 and contains the instructions to follow to take advantage of the benefits through native integration with Windows Server 2016.

Installation requirements

Deploy Azure Backup Server v2 (MABS v2) can be performed on a standalone physical server , on a virtual machine in VMWare or Hyper-V or on a virtual machine hosted on Azure.

The operating system can be Windows Server 2012 R2, but it is recommended Windows Server 2016 in order to benefit from the advantages of Modern Backup Storage. The machine must be joined to an Active Directory domain and should have the ability to access in Internet to Microsoft Azure even if you decide not to send the protected data to the cloud.

Regarding hardware specs Microsoft recommends the following.

Processor
Minimum: 1 GHz, dual-core CPU.
Recommended: 2.33 GHz, Quad-core CPU.

RAM
Minimum: 4 GB.
Recommended: 8 GB.

Disk space
Software installation: recommended about 8-10 GB.
Storage Pools: 1.5 times the data you wish to protect.
Scratch Location: at least the 5% of the total space of the protected data in the cloud.

With regard to the software requirements you must install Microsoft .Net 3.5 SP1, Microsoft .Net 4.6 and Hyper-V Powershell modules.

Finally you need to create on its own subscription Azure a Recovery Service Vault, which will be associated with the Azure Backup Server. The setup of Azure Backup Server will require the Vault credentials which can be downloaded by accessing the properties from the Azure Portal:

Figure 1 – Backup Download Credentials

 

Installation procedure

The download of the installation setup of Azure Backup Server v2 can be started directly by accessing this Microsoft page. After the download of different files you need to run the executable MicrosoftAzureBackupServerInstaller.exe to extract installer binaries in a single folder. Inside the chosen folder, you can run the Setup.exe file to start the installation process later documented.

Figure 2 – Select Install Microsoft Azure Backup Server

Figure 3 – Welcome page

Figure 4 – Check the prerequisites

azure backup server requires the presence of a microsoft sql server instance to host the related database. If you do not have an existing instance to use (required at least SQL Server 2014 SP1) the setup installs SQL Server 2016 Service Pack 1 (recommended by Microsoft). In this scenario you do not require the acquisition of a license for SQL Server as long as the instance is for the exclusive use of MABS v2.

Figure 5 - Choice relative to the SQL Server that hosts the DBs of MABS v2 anf check of the requirements

If you have not installed the Hyper-V Powershell module the setup will install it, but you will need to stop the installation setup to restart the system.

Figure 6 – Requirements not met and restart required for Hyper-V Powershell module installation

Figure 7 – Requirements met

Figure 8 – Choice of installation path

The setup of MABS v2 creates the account MICROSOFT$DPM$Acct local to the machine that will run SQL Server and SQL Server Agent services and the account DPMR$Servername used for the generation of reports.

Figure 9 – Choice of password for the MICROSOFT$DPM$Acct and DPMR$Servername

Figure 10 – Choice of deploying updates to MABS v2 via Windows Update

Figure 11 - Summary concerning the installation choices

At this point starts the setup of Microsoft Azure Recovery Services (MARS) Agent required to connect to the Recovery Service Vault in Microsoft Azure.

Figure 12 - Configuration of the proxy server if required for access to public services in Microsoft Azure

Figure 13 – Verification of the presence of the necessary requirements and installation of MARS

After installing the MARS, starts the registration process of the Azure Backup Server to the Azure Recovery Service Vault that requires the Backup Vault credentials (recoverable following the step documented in Figure 1) and the passphrase required to perform the encryption of stored data. You should save this key in a safe place as it is necessary during recovery operations and can not be recovered in any way by Microsoft staff.

Figure 14 -Choose Backup Vault Credentials

Figure 15 – Passphrase for encryption of backups

After completing these steps, you must wait the end of the installation process.

Figure 16 - MABS v2 installation completed successfully

Before proceeding with the configuration of MABS v2 it is recommended to apply the latest update available for Microsoft Azure Backup Server v2 which you can be downloaded from the Microsoft support site.

At this point, it is necessary to configure the SQL Server instance just installed according to their own needs, and it is recommended to apply thelatest Cumulative Update available for SQL Server 2016 Service Pack 1.

 

Features provided by the integration between MABS v2 and Windows Server 2016

Azure Backup Server v2 is natively integrates with the new technologies available in Windows Server 2016 so you can enjoy the following benefits:

  • Efficiency major in backups operations: using the technologies Refs Block Cloning, VHDX and Deduplication you can get a reduction of storage needed to protect data and improve performance in the execution of backup. The configuration of the Modern Backup Storage can be done by following the steps documented in official documentation, which although relating to DPM 2016 is identical for Azure Backup Server v2. Very interesting also the functionality Workload-Aware Storage that allows you to select which volumes use depending on the type of workloads are protected, having thus the opportunity to choose more efficient storage and dedicate it to more frequent backup tasks for which it is good to have high performance.
  • Reliability elevated in Hyper-V virtual machine protection, thanks to the integration with technology Resilient Change Tracking (RCT) can natively track changes made to VMs compared to backups, without the need to add filter drivers. This reduces the time-consuming tasks to perform consistency checks.
  • Security: ability to backup and restore Shielded VMs.

 

Costs of the solution

As regards the cost of the solution is good to specify that it is obviously necessary to contemplate the license of the machine's operating system on which you are installing MABS v2. An interesting aspect is that in order to implement Azure Backup Server is not require any licence concerning System Center, but you must have an Azure subscription . In the cost of the solution you should consider a fee for each protected instance and any storage occupied in Microsoft Azure. For more details on the cost of the solution, please consult the Official Microsoft page on the Pricing.

 

Conclusions

Azure Backup Server v2, with its approach cloud-first and through the integration with certain features in Windows Server 2016 , is a complete and functional solution for the protection of different workloads. For those using the first release of Azure Backup Server you can upgrade to MABS v2 keeping all the settings. The advice is still to implement MABS v2 on Windows Server 2016 so that you have a solution that allows you to perform backups with speeds up to 3 times and to reduce up to 50% storage utilization.

OMS Log Analytics: How to collect Virtual Machine Manager jobs

In OMS there is a new solution Virtual Machine Manager (VMM) Analytics that allows to centralize inside Log Analytics, jobs from one or more instances of Virtual Machine Manager to have an overview of all activities performed by VMM in the virtualization infrastructure.

In this article we will see how to enable and configure this new solution so you can use the tools offered by the OMS platform to more easily diagnose any issues related to the activities carried out on the virtualization hosts and virtual machines using Virtual Machine Manager. Furthermore, through the power of language to create queries in OMS you can search and correlate data collected by others OMS solutions in a simple and functional way.. Don't overlook the possibility of implementing automated tasks through runbooks in Azure Automation for the resolution of any issues.

In order to implement the solution Virtual Machine Manager (VMM) Analytics you will need the following requirements:

  • Azure Subscription.
  • OMS Workspace where to deploy the solution.
  • Azure Automation Account with the presence of the Hybrid Worker role able to communicate with Virtual Machine Manager.
  • Credentials with read permission on the VMM server from which you want to collect information.

It is an open-source solution that can be included in the workspace OMS following this steps.

First, it is necessary to access the Azure Portal and select the subscription that contains the OMS workspace which you want to add the solution. To start the deployment of the solution simply access to its GitHub page and press the button Deploy to Azure. Automatically compare the template that requires the inclusion of the following parameters:

Figure 1 – Parameters required by the template of the solution

The template of the solution requires you to select, in addition to the basic information such as the name of the Subscription and the Resource Group, the name and the region of the OMS Workspace on which will be deployed the solution. Are also requests information relating to the Automated Account that will contains everything needed for the automation allowing the solution to catch the information relating to the Virtual Machine Manager system, whose name is specified as the last parameter.

At the end of the deployment of the solution inside the specified Automation Account will be created the runbook called vmmanalytics, thanks to which is carried out the import in Log Analytics of VMM jobs.

Figure 2 – Runbook used by Virtual Machine Manager solution (VMM) Analytics

Now you need to set the variable LastRunTime in the Assets with a string expressed in the form “yyyy-MM-ddTHH:mm:ss.fffffffZ“. This variable specifies the time from which the runbook will begin to collect the jobs of VMM. At every execution of the runbook this variable is updated automatically. As you can see from the following image there are other variables already populated automatically by the process of deployment of the solution:

Figure 3 – variables used by the runbook of the solution

You also need to specify credentials with the appropriate permissions to read jobs from the instance of Virtual Machine Manager:

Figure 4 – Required credentials for collecting VMM jobs

The runbook vmmanalytics can be run manually, but to import in an automatic and recurring way the jobs of VMM in Log Analytics you can create a specific schedule to suit your needs:

Figure 5 – Schedule creation

Afterwards you must attach schedule created to the runbook vmmanalytics and set which Hybrid Worker use to contact the Virtual Machine Manager instance.

Figure 6 – Scheduling and execution parameters of the Runbook

After successfully completing the first run of the Runbook, using the OMS portal you can access the solution Virtual Machine Manager Analytics which includes a number of useful reports to display in a simple and intuitive way the data collected from instances of Virtual Machine Manager.

Figure 7 – Overview of VMM Analytics solution

The dashboard of the solution also allows you to define the time range to filter, more accurately and to suit your needs, the jobs collected from Virtual Machine Manager.

Figure 8 – Defining the Time Range

Conclusions

Thanks to this new solution is made available to the VMM administrators the potential of the OMS platform. This is very useful because you can hypothesize scenarios where are merged into a single OMS workspace jobs from more instances of Virtual Machine Manager. It may be possible to configure OMS alerts to notify working groups on the state of execution of the job performed using VMM and undertake remediations in the face of problems. Also by correlating jobs collected with this solution with information from others OMS solutions as Capacity and Performance and Change Tracking you can simplify troubleshooting and you can more easily identify the causes of any problems. Virtual Machine Manager (VMM) Analytics is an open-source solution so you can contribute to its development by directly accessing its GitHub page.

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.

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

Even the month of September is full of news and different updates have affected Operations Management Suite (OMS) and System Center, also thanks to Ignite 2017, the annual Microsoft conference of this week in Orlando. This article contains a summary accompanied by useful references for further study.

Operations Management Suite (OMS)

  • OMS Customers are using the solution Security & Compliance are given the option to use the features found in ’Azure Security Center in order to have a unified management of security and protection of their systems, all without additional cost. This is particularly useful to be able to manage workloads across hybrid environments, regardless of where they reside, on Azure, on-premises, or on other public clouds. Within the Azure Security Center will be automatically handle the security of the systems that are already connected to the solution OMS Security & Compliance and you can add additional machines simply by installing the Microsoft Monitoring Agent. To see details of the features offered I invite you to consult the publication OMS customers can now use Azure Security Center to protect their hybrid cloud workloads. In this regard it is worth noting that to enable the features just in time VM access, dynamic application controls and network threat detection of Azure resources you must select pricing tier Security Center Standard for the Subscription or the Resource Group.

Figure 1 – List of features for the protection of hybrid environments

  • The Azure portal now includes two features related to Operations Management Suite (OMS): Workspace Settings and View Designer. From the Azure portal you can access the settings of the workspace OMS as shown in the following figure:

    Figure 2 – Settings of the Workspace who are accessible from the Azure Portal

Also, the View Designer, that allows you to create custom views, is now accessible directly from the Log Analytics section of Azure portal:

Figure 3 – View Designer available directly from the portal Azure

  • As already announced in a dedicated article the update of Log Analytics has introduced a new powerful query language. In this useful article highlighted the main changes introduced by the new language.
  • Another interesting new feature is the ability to run query not only on single workspace OMS, but in a transversal way across multiple workspace. To learn more about you can see Query across resources.
  • Article Monitoring SQL Azure Data Sync using OMS Log Analytics returns the configuration to be carried out in order to monitor the solution SQL Azure Data Sync using a custom solution OMS. Azure SQL Data Sync allows you to synchronize data in both directions or unidirectional between different Azure SQL database andor to SQL database on-premises. With this procedure you can detect error conditions or warning in the synchronization process so simple, thanks to OMS.
  • To help you to track the Big Data application involving different technologies was announced in preview the ability to monitor cluster HDInsight with Azure Log Analytics . In this video there are the details of how HDInsight customers can monitor and debug Hadoop, Spark, HBase, Kafka, Interactive Query and cluster Storm.

Solutions

  • In OMS there is a new solution Virtual Machine Manager (VMM) Analytics for centralizing in Log Analytics the jobs of one or more Virtual Machine Manager to have an overall view of the health and performance of the virtualization infrastructure managed by System Center Virtual Machine Manager.

Figure 4 – Overview of VMM Analytics solution

Agent

  • Released a new version of the OMS agent for Linux systems that mainly has solved some bugs and introduced an updated version of some of the main components. For more details and to get the updated version please refer to the official GitHub page OMS Agent for Linux GA v 1.4.1-45

Figure 5 – Bug fixes and what's new for the OMS agent for Linux

 

System Center

System Center Configuration Manager

  • Released the Cumulative Update 6 for UNIX and Linux clients of Configuration Manager. It is a new version of the client that fixes several bugs and adds support for new Linux distributions. This release also removed support for Unix and Linux distributions even obsolete discontinued by vendor. Customers using the SCCM clients with these versions may continue to use the client updated to Cumulative Update 5. The release announcement and further details can be found in this article.
  • During Ignite 2017 was announced an interesting feature called co-management that interest the management of the device using either System Center Configuration Manager and Microsoft Intune. With Windows 10 Fall Creators Update there is the possibility to make the join of 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. To deepen this topic, you can look in the video section of the Ignite site the sessions with the following reference codes: BRK3057, BRK3075, BRK3076 and BRK2079.

Figure 7 – Co-management devices with SCCM and Intune

 

System Center Updates Publisher

By accessing this page you can select the way you find most suitable to test and evaluate free Operations Management Suite (OMS).

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

This article summarizes the main new features and includes upgrades, concerning Operations Management Suite (OMS) and System Center, that were announced during the month of August.

Operations Management Suite (OMS)

Log Analytics

  • For Log Analytics was published what may be called the most significant upgrade from the date of issue. Among the main changes introduced by this update there is a new powerful query language, the introduction of the new Advanced Analytics portal and greater integration with Power BI. For more details, I invite you to consult the specific article Log Analytics: a major update evolves the solution.

Figure 1 – Upgrade of Log Analytics

Agent

  • The agent who for Linux systems is constantly evolving and we released a new version that has fixed some bugs and improved error handling during onboarding of agent for easier troubleshooting: OMS Agent for Linux GA v 1.4.0-45

Figure 2 – Bug fixes and what's new for the OMS agent for Linux

Solutions

  • The OMS solution Network Performance Monitor has been improved and enhanced with the following new features:
    • The diagnostic agent: the solution now provides the ability to monitor in a specific view the health status of various agents deployed on the network and in case of problems NPM reports useful diagnostic information for troubleshooting.
    • Hop-by-hop latency breakdown: the topology map of the network has been enriched with details of timings found between two specific points.
    • Availability on the Azure Portal: as well as continuing to be available from OMS can be added from the Marketplace Azure and used directly by the Azure Portal.
    • Presence in additional region of Azure: the solution is now also available for the region Azure West Central US.

For more details see the announcement Improvements to the who Network Performance Monitor.

  • The emerging technology is becoming more widespread and monitor containers Docker becomes an essential component. For this reason the OMS team announced the availability of the new solution Container Monitoring that allows you to:
    • Display in a unique location information for all hosts container.
    • Learn which containers are running, where I am and with which image.
    • See audit information concerning action taken on container.
    • View and search logs for troubleshooting without needing access to hosts Docker.
    • Locate the containers that are consuming an excessive amount of resources on the host.
    • Display performance information centrally about the container about CPU usage, of memory, storage and network.

Figure 3 – Synthesis pathway of solution Container Monitoring

Full details on the solution Container Monitoring you can consult them in the document Container Monitoring solution in Log Analytics.

  • Released in preview the new solution for the monitoring of Azure Logic Apps. The solution displays various information about the status of logic app and then drill down to see details useful for troubleshooting. All aspects of this solution you can consult them in Microsoft's official documentation.

Security and Audit

  • The baseline assessment of OMS Security is enhanced with functionality Web security baseline assessment that was announced in public preview and lets you scan the web server with Internet Information Services (IIS) to check for security vulnerabilities and provides useful recommendations regarding the correct environment setup. The document Baseline Assessment in Operations Management Suite Web Security and Audit Solution shows additional information about.

Figure 4 – Assessment dashboard of Web security baseline

 

System Center

System Center Configuration Manager

  • Last month it was released version 1706 for the Current Branch (CB) System Center Configuration Manager as described in the article OMS and System Center: What's New in July 2017. In date 8 August was released a package update to correct some errors that were encountered during the first deployment, but this package introduced problems therefore on 11 August has been replaced with a new version. For those who have updated SCCM to version 1706 between August 8 and August 11 you need to install an additional update as documented in Microsoft knowledge base article Update for System Center Configuration Manager version 1706, first wave. This update can be installed by accessing the node "Updates and Servicing" of the SCCM console. A further update will be released in the coming week to who made the SCCM update to version 1706 prior to August 8.
  • Released version 1708 for the branch Technical Preview of System Center Configuration Manager: Update 1708 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

Following the news about the SCOM Management Pack 2016:

  • Advanced Threat Analytics 1.7 Management Pack version 1.7.1.1.
  • Service Map Management Pack in public preview: Thanks to this new MP you can integrate maps are created dynamically by the OMS Service solution Map with diagrams of the Distributed Application in Operations Manager to ensure that the latter are dynamically generated and maintained.

For more information I invite you to consult related documentation available online.

Figure 5 – Integration of the Service Map of who and the SCOM Distributed App

  • Available a hotfix to solve some problems related to the WMI monitor health.

Log Analytics: a major update evolves the solution

Last week Microsoft began releasing what may be termed the most significant update Log Analytics from date of issue. Among the main changes introduced in the new version of Log Analytics are a powerful new query language, the introduction of the new Advanced Analytics portal and greater integration with Power BI. In this article we will see how to upgrade and the main features of the new features.

How to update Log Analytics

The upgrade process is very simple and is gradually affecting the workspace who present in all region of Azure. When the update is available for your workspace you will see a notification in the portal banner OMS or directly in the Log Analytics of the portal Azure:

Figure 1 – Banners that notifies the availability of Log Analytics

With a simple click on the banner leads to the following summary screen that summarizes the changes introduced by the update and that you use to start the upgrade process by selecting the appropriate button:

Figure 2 – Upgrade of Log Analytics

The upgrade must be performed by an administrator of the workspace who and the upgrade process takes a few minutes, at the end of which all artifacts like saved searches, the alert rule, computer groups and views created by using the View Designer are automatically converted to the new language of Log Analytics. The research included in the solution are not converted automatically during the upgrade, but would like to convert on the fly and transparently to the user at the time of the opening of the same.

During the upgrade process creates a full backup of the workspace, useful in case there is a need to revert to the previous version. Recovery is possible directly from the portal OMS:

Figure 3 – Restore the workspace Log Analytics legacy

When this update is optional, but in the future will be forced by Microsoft by talking to advance the date of the conversion of the workspace.

New query building language

After upgrading you can take advantage of the potential of the new language for creating queries. We carry the main features:

  • This is a simple and easy-to-understand language where you can use constructs closer to natural language.
  • The output of a query can be correlated (piped) with other commands in order to create more complex queries than was possible with the previous language.
  • Supports the use of extended field calculated in real time and can be used to compose complex queries.
  • Improved advanced features that allow you to join tables based on multiple fields, inner join, outer joins and join using the extended field.
  • Are made available more functionality for operations involving functions based on date and time.
  • Use advanced algorithms for evaluation of patterns in dataset and compare different sets of data.
  • Supports inserting comments in queries, always useful when troubleshooting and to facilitate understanding of queries written by others.

Listed above are just some of the many new features that are introduced, but for more details about the new build Log Analytics query language I invite you to consult the official site specially created that contains a complete guide, tutorials and examples.

Figure 4 -Example of query written in the new language that creates a chart with daily alerts by severity

For those who already have a good familiarity with the previous generation of query language, you can use the converter that is added when upgrading your workspace and that converts queries written with language legacy in new language:

Figure 5 -Example of converting a query

Useful also Legacy to new Azure Log Analytics Query Language cheat sheet that allows you to make a quick comparison between the two languages bringing some statement of the most widely used.

Advanced Analytics Portal

With the introduction of new Advanced Analytics you can perform useful tasks when writing code that cannot be done directly from the portal of Log Analytics. Access to the portal Advanced Analytics can take place by selecting one of the following icons from Log Analytics Portal:

Figure 6 – Advanced Analytics Portal login

Thanks to this portal you get a better experience in interactive writing queries using a multi-line editing, emphasis on the context-aware syntax and a powerful integrated Viewer. The whole thing is very useful when troubleshooting, Diagnostics, trend analysis and to generate reports quickly.

Figure 7 – Query that computes and graphically displays the result of the CPU usage of a specific machine

With ease you can also create a quick visualization of the portal Advanced Analytics and make the pin in the same on a shared Azure Dashboard.

Integration with Power BI

Following this update you get even closer integration with Power BI, like Application Insights:

Figure 8 – Log Analytics integration scheme with Power BI

Through this integration you can use Power BI reports, publish and share them on PowerBI.com and enable automatic generation. For more details about I invite you to read the document Export Log Analytics data to Power BI.

 

Conclusions

This major upgrade of Log Analytics increases the potential of the tool allowing you to perform complex searches in a targeted and easy thanks to the new language introduced and enhances the potential of the solution due to better integration with Power BI. This new language and Advanced Analytics are already being used in Application Insights and this allows a homogeneous and consistent monitoring experience for different Azure services.

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

We inaugurate a new series of articles that will be published on a monthly basis and that will reflect the main changes, updates and information released within the last month about System Center and Operations Management Suite (OMS). It will be a summary accompanied by references for any insights.

Operations Management Suite (OMS)

Agent

  • Released the updated version of the OMS agent for Linux systems that solved some bugs and introduced some new features useful to extend the capabilities of OMS: OMS Agent for Linux GA v 1.4.0-12.

Figure 1 – Bug fixes and what's new for the OMS agent for Linux

 

Protection and Disaster Recovery

  • In Azure Backup introduced the ability to instant recovery of files and folders using the VM backup Azure. This feature is available for both Windows and Linux virtual machines and allows you to act quickly without having to restore the entire VM to retrieve only certain items: Instant File Recovery from Azure VM backups is now generally available.

Figure 2 – Instant File Recovery

 

System Center

System Center Configuration Manager

  • Released the version 1706 for the Current Branch (CB) of System Center Configuration Manager that introduces new features and major improvements in the product.

Among the various new products made by this update mainly these issues emerge:

  • Ability to manage driver updates for Microsoft Surface.
  • Improving the user experience for Office updates 365.
  • Added the ability in hardware inventory to collect information about how to enable the SecureBoot and ownership of the TPM.
  • Important new capabilities in mobile device management in SCCM architectures associated with Microsoft Intune.

For more details about it you can see the article: Now Available: Update 1706 for System Center Configuration Manager.

The update will be available starting from the coming weeks and it will appear a notification on node "Updates and Servicing" the SCCM console when it was performed on automatic download. To force the update you can use this PowerShell script.

  • If you try to install a new Cloud Management Gateway (CMG) in Configuration Manager current branch version 1702 You may not be able to complete provisioning. In this regard has been released the hotfix described in KB 403015 (Provisioning not completed when creating a Cloud Management Gateway in System Center Configuration Manager version 1702).

 

System Center Operations Manager

Several SCOM Management Pack 2016 We released a new updated version: