Wednesday, June 14, 2017

SCOM 2016 Must Haves

Good to know:
This posting is based on the power of the community since it advices MPs, Best Practices and so on, all publicly available for free, shared under the motto:  ‘Sharing is caring’. So all credits should go to the people who made this possible. This posting is nothing but a referral to all content mentioned in this posting.

Why this posting?
’SCOM 2016 is just a little bit more complex compared to Notepad’ I many times say to my customers. Just trying to get the message across that even though SCOM packs quite awesome monitoring power, it still needs attention and knowledge in order to get the most out of it.

Even with the cloud in general and OMS to be more specific, SCOM still deservers it own place and delivers ROI for the years to come. And NO, OMS isn’t SCOM! Enough about that, time to move on…

None the less, everything making SCOM 2016 more robust and/or easier to maintain is a welcome effort. And not just that, but should be used to the fullest extend.

Therefore this posting in which I try to point out the best MPs, fixes, workarounds, tweaks & tricks all aimed at making your life as a SCOM admin more easier. Since content comes and goes, this posting will be updated when required.

I’ve grouped the topics in various area’s, trying to make more accessible for you. There is much to share, so let’s start.


01 – SCOM Web Console REPLACEMENT
Ouch! If there is a SCOM component I really dislike it’s the SCOM WEB Console. Why? It’s too slow, STILL has Silverlight dependencies (yikes!) and misses out on a lot of functionality. As such it’s quite dysfunctional and quite likely to become a BoS (Blob of Software) instead of a many times used SCOM component… Therefore, most of the times I simply don’t install it Smile.

Still, a FUNCTIONAL SCOM Web Console would be great. And when done right, it could be used as a replacement for the SCOM GUI (SCOM Console). But what to use? And when there’s an alternative, for what price?

Stop searching! The SCOM Web Console (and even SCOM GUI) alternative is already there! And yes, it’s a commercial solution. But wait! It has a FREE version, titled Community Edition! It’s HTML5 driven, taps into BOTH SCOM SQL databases, enabling the user to consume both data in ONE screen. So can look at current operational data and cross reference it with data contained in the Data Warehouse!

And not just that, but it’s FAST as well! And I mean REALLY fast!

For many users this product has become a full replacement for BOTH SCOM Consoles. As a result the SCOM GUI is only used for SCOM maintenance by the SCOM admins. The consumption of SCOM data, state information and alerts however is mostly done by using the HTML5 Console.

Yes, I am talking about SquaredUp here. Go here to check it out. Click on pricing to see the available versions, ranging from FREE(!) to Enterprise Application Monitoring.

Oh, and while you’re at it, check out their new Visual Application Discovery & Analysis (VADA) proposition, enabling end users(!) to automatically map the application topologies they’re responsible for, all in the matter of minutes!

Advise: Download the CE version and be amazed about how FAST and good a SCOM Console can be!


02 – Automating SCOM maintenance & checks
I know. The name implies SCOM 2012. But guess what? SCOM 2016 is based on SCOM 2012 R2. As such the MP I am about to advice works just fine in SCOM 2016 environments as well.

Whenever you’re running SCOM 2016 I strongly advise you to import AND tune the OpsMgr 2012 Self Maintenance MP. It helps you to automate many things AND is capable of preventing SCOM MS servers being put into Maintenance Mode (MM). When that happens (and the MP is properly configured!), this MP will remove these SCOM MS servers from MM! Also it’s capable of exporting ALL MPs on a regular basis and keep an archive of these exports for just as many days you prefer.

Please know that ONLY importing this MP won’t do. It requires some tuning, otherwise nothing will happen. Gladly Tao Yang (the person who made this MP) provided a well written guide, explaining EVERYTHING! So RTFM is key here.

Advise: This MP is a MUST for any SCOM 2016 environment. Import and TUNE it.


03 – Prevent SCOM Health Service Restarts (on monitored Windows servers)
The name I am about to mention is of a person who has made SCOM a far more better product then it ever was. Without his efforts, time and investments SCOM would be far more of a challenge to master.

Yeah, I am talking about Kevin Holman. For anyone working with SCOM he doesn’t need any introduction. One of his postings is all about unnecessary restarts of the SCOM Health Service, the very heart of every SCOM Agent installed on any monitored Windows based system.

The same posting refers to TechNet Gallery containing a MP, addressing the causes of this nagging issue. Please RTFM his posting FIRST before importing the MP. As such you’ll differentiate yourself from the monkey in the zoo pushing a button in order to get a banana without ever understanding the mechanisms behind it…

Advise: Import this MP in EVERY SCOM 2016 environment you own.


04 – Registry tweaks for SCOM MS servers
And yes, he also wrote a posting about recommended registry tweaks for SCOM 2016 Management Servers. And YES, he also provided the commands in order to rollout those tweaks.

Again: RTFM first before applying them. Alternative: Press the button and be amazed when a banana appears out of thin air Smile

Advise: Make sure to run these registry tweaks on ALL your SCOM 2016 Management Servers.


05 – SQL RunAs Addendum MP
Like I already stated, we – the SCOM users – own one man in particular a lot of thanks, even when he doesn’t want to hear about it. So it’s the same person here as well we’re talking about.

Until now I haven’t seen any SCOM environment NOT monitoring SQL instances. The SQL MP delivers tons of good information and actionable Alerts on top of it. As such, the SQL MP is imported and configured. The latter WAS quite a challenge, all about making sure SCOM has enough permissions to monitor the SQL instances.

Luckily this difficulty is addressed with the SQL RunAs Addendum MP. Again RTFM! But when read, import the MP and be amazed! Sure, this MP came to be with the effort of many people, so a BIG word of thanks to all the people involved here.

Advice: IMPORT this MP and USE it! It makes your life much easier and saves you lots of time, to be used elsewhere.


06 – Agent Management Pack (MP)
Sure. When SCOM monitors something a Management Pack is required. Without it, NO monitoring. Period. But still, the SCOM Agent running on the monitored Windows Server is also crucial. So all available information on those very same SCOM Agents is welcome, combined with some smart tasks in order to triage or remedy common issues.

Therefore it’s too bad that SCOM out of the box, lacks many of those things. Sure the basics are covered, but that leaves a lot of ground uncovered.

Gladly, a community based MP solves this issue. Again RTFM first before importing this MP, to be found here.

Advice: RTFM, import this MP and soon you’ll find wondering yourself how you ever got along WITHOUT it.


07 – Enable proxy on SCOM Agents as default
Whenever SCOM wants to monitor workloads living outside the boundaries of a server (like SQL, AD and so on) it has to look ‘outside’ that same Windows server. By default the SCOM Agent isn’t allowed to do that, because of security reasons.

Sure, people can hack into anything. But to think that a hacker would impersonate a SCOM Health Service workload, is something else all together. Why? Well the moment a hacker is already that deep into your network changes are far more likely he/she will have found something far more lucrative AND easier to grasp.

None the less, by default the SCOM Agent proxy is disabled by default. Sure, you can enable the Agent Proxy with a scheduled script. But when you’re already applying that workaround (that’s what it is…), why not change the source instead and be done with it?

Go here and follow the advice and apply the scripts. From that moment on the SCOM Agent proxy is ENABLED by DEFAULT. Problem solved. Next!

Advice: Enable the SCOM Agent proxy and forget about it Smile.


08 – SCOM 2016 System Center Core Monitoring Fix
The System Center Core MP from SCOM 2016 (up to UR#3!) contains some issues, as stated by Lerun on TechNet Gallery: ‘…temporary fix for rules and monitors in the System Center Core Monitoring MP shipped with SCOM 2016 (UR3). Issues arise when using WinRM to extract WMI information for some configurations. The issue is reported to Microsoft, though until they make a fix this is the only workaround except from disabling them…’

RTFM his description and import the MP from TechNet Gallery.

Advice: Import this MP and forget about this issue.


09 – SCOM Health Check Report V3
Okay. This MP is written when SCOM 2016 was only a dream. But still this MP works with SCOM 2016. Again RFTM is required here. But again, the guide tells you all there is to know and to DO before importing this MP.

This MP gives you great insight into the health of your SCOM environment and is made by people I highly respect (Pete Zerger and Oskar Landman). Download the MP AND the guide from TechNet Gallery, RTFM the guide, do as stated in the guide, import the MP and be amazed about the tons of worthwhile insights you get.

Advice: Is the MP already in place? If not, please do so now Smile.


As you can see, for now there are 9(!) tweaks, advices, MPs and so on all enabling you to have a better life with SCOM 2016. Feel free to share your experiences, best practices, tweaks and so on.

When double checked, I’ll update this posting accordingly with your name as well of course!


 


1 comment:

Damian said...

Excellent post!!! Thank you for the information!!!