Monitoring Windows Server 2012 R2

Microsoft just recently released a preview pack of a management pack that can be used to monitor Windows Server 2012 R2, good job Microsoft!

You can download the preview pack here –> http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=39375

The management pack includes monitors for most of the Windows Server features. Including some awesome feature for Hyper-v 2012 R2, including for instance Host Health Dashboard and Virtual Network Usage.

It also includes for other features such as Cluster, AD, ADCS, RDS, and even Server Essentials.

Now Microsoft should hurry up and release some management packs for System Center 2012 R2 as well that would be great!

#operations-manager, #opsmgr-2012, #system-center, #windows-server-2012r2

GSM monitoring with SCOM 2012 SP1

As a part of Service pack 1 for SCOM 2012, Microsoft has added a new feature called GSM (Global Service Monitoring) It allows you to monitor your services from Microsoft’s datacenters.
Lets say for instance that you have a large web-shop in Europe. You can use GSM to monitor your web-shop from various location in Europe, for instance London or Paris.
This would also pinpoint for instance if you have customers in France that have trouble accessing the web-shop but not in England you can view the GSM status to see if it has trouble accessing the service as well, or it is experiencing latency issues.
This type of feature requires that you have an subscription with Microsoft (Right now this service is a beta, if you wish to try it you can sign up here –> https://connect.microsoft.com/site1286/Survey/NominationSurvey.aspx?SurveyID=14053&ProgramID=7588 )

The installation is pretty much next, next finish. But after that you need to go into administration –> management packs and import the management packs.


After the installation is complete, you can go into the administration tab can you can see (Global Service Monitoring) there. It might appear a bit to the far right if you have low resolution on the server, in my case I had an VM where I forgot to adjust the resolution on the screen so I didn’t see all the settings on the right. Now for the purpose of this demo I’m going to setup a regular http monitoring request to www.microsoft.com and www.vg.no
This just does a regular HTTP GET request to the webserver and if the service is available as it should it should respond with at 200 OK.

First of I forgot to install the Identity Provider (If you haven’t installed it, it will say so in the console.
This is found via Roles and Features in Server Manager

After that is done we can setup a subscription

So from here you just enter the subscriptiob ID you got from MIcrosoft.

Next you need to state if the monitor requires to go trough an Proxy Server and which of the management servers have internet access.

Then click next and choose “Start Subscription”
Now I can choose to add a monitor

In my case Im going to choose Web Application –>

Give this monitor a name and place it into a management pack.

Next we add values to what websites we want to monitor.
And im going to monitor VG.no and Microsoft.com

Now I have to choose a location to setup this monitoring, since I’ve used London and Paris earlier in this post I’m going to continue using them
So I choose Paris and add both sites, and the same for London as well.

If I choose “Change Configuration” I can change what kind of reponse code from the HTTP server  I wish to have and how often to poll it.
Click then Next –> Finish.

Now after the services are set up I can go back the the GSM pane and on the right side I can press View GSM tasks.
Here I can now see that my monitoring for www.microsoft.com and www.vg.no are responding as they should on regular http get requests.

You can as well setup more complex monitoring such as TCP, services etc. if you wish.

#opsmgr-2012, #scom, #scom-2012, #sp1-operations-manager

Monitoring SCCM 2012 via SCOM 2012

Monitoring SCCM 2012 via SCOM 2012.

Quick blog, but im going to go trough the setup that is needed in order for your opsmgr to monitor your confmgr site.
First of you can download the MP either via the Console itself ( as we did for SQL server in my previous SCOM blog ) or you can go to this URL http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?id=29267

Easiest is via the console, but when you do that you don’t get the documentation included just the MP files.
So go the the Administration tab –> Management Packs –> choose the add button from catalog.

Here you can just type “Microsoft” in the search menu and all the available MPs from Microsoft will appear,
now I select those MPs I want to download and click OK.

I Also downloaded some Active Directory and other MPs for later preference.
After you have downloaded them you have to import them to OpsMgr.

SCCM 2012 consists of 4 files. So I’m going to import them.

So after I’ve imported them & they are installed I get a new monitoring view for (System Center Configuration Manager 2012)

For the Configuration Manager monitoring pack to discover objects, you must turn on Agent Proxy on every site server except for the primary site and the central administration site.
Then it might take some time before your CM components appear in the Opsmgr site.

After that is done, you can go back to the monitoring tab and choose under SCM 2012.
Hierarchy Diagram. This will give you a diagram over your SCCM site.

If you right click on one of the component servers and choose health explorer you can get a more detailed view of the OpsMgr monitors.

If we take a look at one of the components that OpsMgr monitors.

We can see that it’s the SMS_COMPONENT_STATUS_SUMMARIZER
Lets see if it works properly, so head over to the Configmgr server and stop the SMS_SITE_COMPONENT_MANAGER and lets see if OpsMgr reports as it should.

And there we go, the OpsMgr alert triggered. So we go back to the ConfigMgr server and start the service again, the alert should auto resolve.

#management-pack, #opsmgr-2012, #sccm-2012-monitoring