Category Archives: What’s New in Azure Management services

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.

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: