This blog is a continuation of “Managing JBoss Application Server 7 with System Center Operations Manager 2012 R2: Part 1 - Standalone Mode” found here.

As a reminder, JBoss Application Server 7 can be booted in two distinct operating modes: standalone and domain mode. The first blog covered a walkthrough of the standalone mode and this blog covers a walkthrough of domain mode.

Originally the plan was to use the JBoss Application Server 7.1.0.Final for both walkthroughs, but what better way to celebrate the new management packs than with the new Widlfly 8.2 - Generally available since November 20^th, 2014.

Important to note: most of the steps detailed for Wildfly translate to JBoss Application Server 7 and JBoss Enterprise Application Server.

Basic Setup

My environment in this walkthrough consists of three Ubuntu 14.04 LTS 64-bit servers managed by System Center Operations Manager 2012 R2 w/ Update Rollup 4 installed. For more details on managing a Linux machine with System Center Operations Manager please refer to the following blog post.

Additionally, all the new JEE Management Packs for JBoss Application Server and Wildfly have been imported. For steps on obtaining and importing the JEE Management Packs refer to the previous blog post section - “Obtaining the Java EE Management Pack and JBoss MP Guide - found here

Planning the domain configuration

Background

Domain mode for JBoss Application Server and Wildfly allow multiple application server instances to be managed from a single control point. The application servers managed from that control point are referred to as members of the domain. Domains have the ability to span application servers running on single or multiple OS instances. A domain configuration is made up of the following entities.

Planned Setup

My environment consists of three Ubuntu 14.04 LTS 64-bit servers: ubuntu-wildfly-1, ubuntu-wildfly-2, and ubuntu-wildfly-3. The server ubuntu-wildfly-1 acts as a domain controller while ubuntu-wildfly-2, and ubuntu-wildfly-3 are host controllers each with two application servers - for a total of four application servers.

The profile we use for our setup is the default “full” profile and the server-group the four application servers belong to are the default “main-server-group”. Finally the data enumerated in Operations Manager console are four independent application server instances.

Obtaining the Wildfly installation: all servers

• The first step for setting up the environment is retrieving the application server installation files
• Run the following command , or download the file and transfer it to the server

• Once downloaded, extract the contents

Setting up the domain controller:ubuntu-wildfly-1

• change into the domain configuration directory of the installation

Removing the application servers from the domain controller

Traditionally a domain controller’s only role is to manage and govern the domain. A default Wildfly installation includes two application servers when a domain instance is started. For our setup we remove these two default application servers from the host configuration file.

• Open up the host.xml file in the domain/configuration directory
• Under the servers tag remove all default servers

Before

After

• Once all servers are removed save and quit the host.xml file

Creating the management user for the domain

The management user is created on the domain controller for use with the host controllers. Each host controller uses this management user to connect to the domain controller.

• Change into the bin directory of the Wildfly installation

• run the add-user.sh application and enter the following

• Add a management user (a)
• Enter username -- anugup
• Enter password --password
• Enter groups -- leave blank
• Confirm adding user -- yes
• Confirm “Is this new user going to be used for one AS process to connect to another AS process?” -- yes

• At the end note down the message defining the secret value for server-identities definition. 
  • The secret value is a base64 encoding of the management users password
  • In our case the secret value is equal to "cGFzc3dvcmQ="

Starting the server

• Once we have completed the setup in the host.xml file change into the bin directory and start the domain controller
  • Replace 10.30.68.91 with the IP address you wish to bind with the domain controller 

• As the domain controller does not have any application servers running we do not see any enumerations for Wildfly on the ubuntu-wildfly-1 server in the Operations Manager console

Setting up the host controller: ubuntu-wildfly-2, ubuntu-wildfly-3

Modifying the host.xml file

• Change into the domain configuration directory in the host controller’s installation

• Replace the host.xml file with the preconfigured host-slave.xml file
  • Backing up the original host.xml is recommended

• Open and edit the host.xml file
• On line 58 we see the preconfigured domain controller settings. These are settings the host controller uses to connect to the domain controller with the specified security-realm “ManagementRealm”.
  • Add an attribute named username with the value of the user created on the domain controller
    • In our case the username is “anugup”
  • As the user was created in the ManagementRealm we can leave the security-realm property alone
  • We can either replace the jboss.domain.master.address here or specify it through the commandline when the Wildfly host controller is started
    •  I specify these settings when I start the Wildfly host controller 

• In the same host.xml file go to line 10 where the <secret value=””> is defined
• As the comment says replace this with the base64 password for the added management user.
  • In our case the value is “cGFzc3dvcmQ=”

• the last change we make to this host.xml file is to name this specific host controller
• On line one add the attribute ‘name’ and give it a unique value for the domain
  • ubuntu-wildfly-1 has the name wildfly-host-1.
  • ubuntu-wildfly-2 has the name wildfly-host-2.

Adding the servers in host.xml file

• On line 86 we see the preconfigured servers in the host.xml file
• To create the architecture we defined in the ‘Planned Setup’ section of this blog post, change the second server to the main-server-group and name it server-two
  
  • For ubuntu-wildfly-2 we rename server-one and server-two to server-three and server-four, respectively

Starting the Wildfly host controller

• Change into the bin directory of the Wildfly installation

• start the server with the following parameters for specifying the domain controller
  • -Djboss.domain.master.address=<ip of domain controller>
  • -Djboss.bind.address.management=<ip of host controller>

• Ensure that the host  controller and domain controller can communicate with each other
  • Note: firewall settings might need to be adjusted for the host controller to connect to the management port
• Repeat these same tasks with ubuntu-wildfly-3 and ensure that a different name is used for the server name

Viewing the environment in Operations Manager

• If we go to the OpsMgr management server we can see the four servers enumerated in the console

• This base level of monitoring allows us to see some basic information as well as determine if the process is running. For a deeper level of monitoring we need to deploy BeanSpy.

Deploying BeanSpy to the domain

One of the advantages of having a domain environment is it is easy to deploy an application to multiple application servers

• We can deploy BeanSpy through the JBoss command line utility or through the management console for the domain controller
  • In this blog I use the JBoss command line utility (jboss-cli.sh)
  • I am using the BeanSpy.HTTP.NoAuth.war module which requires no authentication
    • refer to the ‘Part 1’ blog post for using the authentication BeanSpy module
• Move BeanSpy.HTTP.NoAuth.war to the domain controller host Linux server
• change BeanSpy.HTTP.NoAuth.war name to BeanSpy.war

• On the domain controller change into the Wildfly bin directory
• From here run the following command where the text following “--controller” is the domain controller ip address and management port

• Run the following command in jboss-cli to create the opsmgr security domain
  • For the full profile we add the security-domain ‘opsmgr’.
  • These commands are also documented in Microsoft’s management pack guide for the JBoss Application Server management pack

• In the JBoss command line utility issue the following command to deploy BeanSpy to all servers in the main-server-group
  • main-server-group includes server-one, server-two, server-three, and server-four
  • There is no output indicating success or failure

• Issue the following command in the JBoss command line utility to get deployment info

• If we receive “STATE” of “enabled” we are ready to enable deep monitoring!
• For each of the Configurations in Operations Manager console select the configuration in the OpsMgr console and run the OpsMgr task “Enable deep monitoring using HTTP”
• That’s it! you now have a managed domain configuration with OpsMgr

Side Note: Manual Discovery

Out of the box JBoss standalone and domain mode are supported when using default files domain.xml, standalone.xml, and host.xml. If you are using specific configurations specified during boot time such as alternate bind-addresses or configuration files the easiest work around is to manually discovery the application server. Manual discovery has been available since 2010 and has allowed non-standard Java EE installations to be monitored. For more information on Manual discovery check out Christopher Crammond’s blog post

Wish we have more help to leverage Operational Insights' powerful log search capabilities?

Well, help is here and it's called Search Autocomplete! Operational Insights can now give us search suggestions and automatically complete our search terms as we type!

There are 3 categories of suggestion: 1) recent searches, 2) saved searches and 3) available fields & commands (kind of like IntelliSense)

Based on what you have typed, OpInsights dynamically changes its suggestions to give you what's most relevant in real time.

We often need to search for information that we have previously looked for, so being presented with recent or saved searches can save us a lot of time.

Autocomplete can also give us "fields" that are available to search on and provide "commands" to summarize/aggregate search results (like sort them or group them by a particular field and provide a count). This is similar to IntelliSense. It makes searching far easier without having to remember all the commands and fields.

We have also improved the Filter experience to help you Narrow your results on the left hand side. There are more space to view the Field values because we made the experience to add additional Fields to display on demand.

To add new fields, simply click +Add at the lower left hand corner of the Search screen.

Another improvement we made is to intelligently add relevant fields based on the type of data you searched for. If OpInsights recognized that the search results primarily contain IIS log entries, then it will show relevant fields like SiteName and Status.

We hope you will enjoy the new experience and keep giving us feedback (Click on the Feedback button in the portal)

-Joseph

Follow @jochan_msft on Twitter to get the latest about Operational Insights

We are excited to share that we will have 5 SCOM & OpInsights sessions led by the engineering team at Ignite Chicago. If you are attending the conference please join us at these sessions. We would be happy to answer any questions you have on our products before and after the presentation. If you have any questions on the sessions post a comment below and we will respond.

Looking forward to meeting you all in person!!!

We are also going to have a customer meet up on Wednesday May 6^th, details on that event will be posted on the blog next week, so keep a look out for that.

-Satya Vel

We would like to invite you to join us for a discussion on the future of System Center. This is an opportunity for you to meet the System Center leadership team and influence the direction of the product. We will have dedicated tables to discuss various topics with members of the product team and you will get a chance to speak directly with Jeremy Winter and Angie Anderson the Directors of System Center. This is a FREE event for all Ignite attendees and drinks will be provided.

Please RSVP by clicking “Accept” on the meeting invite and sending us a response. We would like to gather a headcount as we have limited capacity.

We are looking forward to meeting you.

Satya Vel

A map of the meeting room can be found here. The meeting room is located in the Lakeside center building, second floor, room E271A in the McCormick Convention Center (Chicago).

Hello Customers

At Microsoft we believe in helping customers get the best possible monitoring solutions. In addition to Microsoft-provided management packs and MP authoring solution, there is a substantial ecosystem of Microsoft partners providing various solutions such as management packs, MP authoring solutions and dashboards. In order to help you easily discover such solutions from our partners, we are making that information available in System Center Operations Manager console itself. Products/solutions displayed in the console go through a light-weight certification process and are free to download and use. If you are satisfied with the solutions, you can purchase upgraded versions from the partner’s website. Microsoft continuously updates the list of partner solutions displayed in the console without the need to update System Center Operations Manager itself.

This feature is available in System Center 2012 R2 Operations Manager UR8 onwards and System Center 2016 Operations Manager. We encourage you to try out this feature and provide feedback on user voice website. Here is a snapshot of System Center Operations Manager console:

Ravi Chivukula | SCOM Program Manager | Microsoft
Get the latest System Center news on Facebook and Twitter
Main System Center blog: http://blogs.technet.com/b/systemcenter/
Operations Manager Team blog: http://blogs.technet.com/momteam/

We have received feedback form customers like you about seeing a lot of alerts in your environment with some of them being unwanted. One of the major reasons for seeing this kind of behaviour is not tuning the monitors/rules in a management pack to suit specific monitoring requirement. The default setting (configuration of monitors and rules) in a management pack have been designed to cater to wider set of customer monitoring requirements. Since each customer environment is different, it is ideal to tune the default settings of a management pack to suit your specific environment needs. The Management Pack Life Cycle article outlines the best practices/tips to review/tune/customize a management pack to your environment.

To help you tune management packs to suit your specific monitoring requirements, we have come up with “Alert Data Management” feature in System Center 2016 Technical Preview 5 – Operations Manager. You would no longer need to analyse Ops DB or generate reports to understand which management pack/monitors/rules/sources have been generating a lot of, with this feature you would get quick insights on the alerts being generated by different management packs/monitors/rules/sources and have the ability to take action right away by tuning the thresholds or disable a monitor/rule based on the environment specific requirement.

You can find the System Center 2016 Technical Preview 5 here.

Your continuous feedback helps in shaping SCOM features become more productive for you. We request you to use this feature and let us know if you would like to see anything else added to it. You can submit your feedback at our SCOM Feedback site @ http://systemcenterOM.uservoice.com.

Aditya Goda | SCOM Program Manager | Microsoft
Get the latest System Center news on Facebook and Twitter
Main System Center blog: http://blogs.technet.com/b/systemcenter/
Operations Manager Team blog: http://blogs.technet.com/momteam/

The first version of the new “Management Pack Updates and Recommendations” feature was introduced in Technical Preview 4 release of System Center 2016. This feature recommends Management Packs for downloading based on a scan of servers in your SCOM environment. You can read about the TP4 feature here. Since then we received a lot of feedback from customers like you and based on it enhanced the feature to make it work harder for you. Here are the changes we made to the feature in TP5.

More Workloads Supported

Added support to recognize 80+workloads and recommend Microsoft Management packs to monitor them.

 “More Information” screen

We enhanced the “View Machine details” screen and are now calling it the “More Information” screen. This shows more information about why a recommendation was displayed. For recommendations with status “Not Installed”, it displays the list of machines where the workload was discovered. For status “Update Available”, it displays a list of management pack files for which updates are available along with their version numbers. For status “Partially Installed”, it not only displays the list of MPs that may be required for all the capabilities of the MP to work but also displays the list of machines where the workload was discovered.

View Download Center Page

We were told that users would like to see the download center page associated with the recommendation so we added a feature to launch the DLC page associated with the management pack being recommended.

Language Settings

In order to better help users that use non-English management packs, we enhanced the “Get MP” experience to include language settings. If the user wants specific language MPs to be imported, the user can select the language needed and the needed MP files will get added to the list of MPs being imported.

Improved Performance

Our team was extremely cautious of the overheads involved with this feature so they worked very hard to reduce cycles required to discover the workloads. The design to discover the presence of 65+ Windows Server roles was debated many times over until it only made 3 operations instead of the 65 it originally required. We also improved the load time of the screen by caching data that doesn’t change frequently.

Up-to-date MP Catalog

We have enhanced the MP catalog to ensure that it stays up-to-date with Download center and always displays the latest version of management packs.

Recursively delete MPs

On a related note, if you’ve had difficulty deleting a management pack because of needing to recursively track down and delete all of the dependent management packs before deleting the originally intended management pack, please check out this blogpost.

For more information about Updates and Recommendations see the Updates and Recommendations section of How to Import an Operations Manager Management Pack. You can find the System Center 2016 Technical Preview 5 here.

Your continuous feedback helps in shaping SCOM features become more productive for you. We request you to use this feature and let us know if you would like to see anything else added to it. You can submit your feedback at our SCOM Feedback site @ http://systemcenterOM.uservoice.com.

Aditya Goda | SCOM Program Manager | Microsoft
Get the latest System Center news on Facebook and Twitter
Main System Center blog: http://blogs.technet.com/b/systemcenter/
Operations Manager Team blog: http://blogs.technet.com/momteam/

We have made performance improvements to alert views in the Operations console to increase responsiveness. With this feature you will see the below improvements:

• Alert view is optimized to load efficiently
• Alert tasks and alert details in alert view is optimized to load efficiently
• Context menus of an alert in alert view is optimized to load efficiently

These changes will be more visible in an environment having high load on OM database.

You can find the System Center 2016 Technical Preview 5 here.

Your continuous feedback helps in shaping SCOM features become more productive for you. We request you to use this feature and let us know if you would like to see anything else added to it. You can submit your feedback at our SCOM Feedback site @http://systemcenterOM.uservoice.com .

Aditya Goda | SCOM Program Manager | Microsoft
Get the latest System Center news on Facebook and Twitter
Main System Center blog: http://blogs.technet.com/b/systemcenter/
Operations Manager Team blog: http://blogs.technet.com/momteam/

Today we’re happy to announce a preview of Microsoft’s new documentation service: https://docs.microsoft.com. The preview is launching with a showcase of content for Enterprise Mobility, which consists of Advanced Threat Analytics, Azure Active Directory, Azure Remote App, Multi-factor Authentication, Azure Rights Management, Intune and Microsoft Identity Manager. In the future, as our platform matures with the help of your feedback, we will migrate more of our documentation to this new experience.

Why docs.microsoft.com?

In short, content matters. We interviewed and surveyed hundreds of developers and IT pros and sifted through years of website feedback, and it soon became clear that we needed to make a change and create a modern web experience for content. The first thing we did was evaluate our existing content infrastructure: TechNet and MSDN. Both sites are built on a 10-15 year-old codebase with an archaic publishing and deployment system that was never designed to run on the cloud. For our new documentation service, our focus was not only on the experience, but also on the content we create and how each of you consume it. For years you have told us to go beyond walls of text with feature-level content and helps you implement solutions to your business problems. We knew that the content we delivered and the platform we built must make it easy for you to learn and deploy solutions. We realized that to get the overall experience right we needed to start from scratch, and from this effort comes https://docs.microsoft.com.

If you’d like to see a detailed walkthrough of how docs.microsoft.com works then head over here for an in-depth look at all the new features, including the cool new social integration as well as the new feedback options available for each article. We hope you enjoy the preview version of docs.microsoft.com, and please send us your feedback to https://aka.ms/sitefeedback.

Hello Folks,

We would like to let you know that we updated DNS and IIS preview management packs to support monitoring of those server roles running on Nano Server Technical Preview 4. We will soon be adding support for Technical Preview 5 also. The IIS MP also supports monitoring of W3C logging service. The MPs can be downloaded from https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=48256. We encourage you to try these MPs and provide us feedback on our user voice website.

Ravi Chivukula | SCOM Program Manager | Microsoft
Get the latest System Center news on Facebook and Twitter
Main System Center blog: http://blogs.technet.com/b/systemcenter/
Operations Manager Team blog: http://blogs.technet.com/momteam/

With the recent release of the new OMS Microsoft Monitoring Agent (MMA) for Windows that allows multi-homing support, we’ve been getting a few questions about the approach and guidance that we have for customers using the regular Operations Manager agent for their on-premises end points. For example, take the case of the Operations Manager customer who is on OpsMgr 2012 R2 UR9 and has those agents reporting into an OMS workspace. The agent that came with OpsMgr is not able to do OMS workspace multi-homing so what can they do to enable this functionality?

For these customers, we would suggest that they consider not using the agent that comes with OpsMgr and start using the MMA from Microsoft Update instead. The current MMA version is backwards compatible and supported with all OpsMgr 2012 R2 management groups.

Note that the update on MU will only upgrade the previous version released for OMS (currently 7.2.10375.0) and it will not show up for OpsMgr 2012 R2 agent versions.  Those will remain on the Update Rollup cadence. This means that if you want to switch from the OpsMgr 2012 R2 version of the agent you will need to use your standard software distribution mechanism to push it out. For example:

For more information regarding the various agent installation options, please see https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/mt429786.aspx.

J.C. Hornbeck, Solution Asset PM
Microsoft Enterprise Cloud Group

Hello folks

We have an updated version of System Center Management Pack for Microsoft Azure (Technical Preview). Version 1.3.22.0 can be downloaded from https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=50013. It is upgradeable on top of the previous version 1.3.18.0.

This version of the MP pulls in Azure Application Insights alerts for web tests,  and supports Azure China subscriptions. In addition, several bugs such as performance stability issues when monitoring very large subscriptions (having 1000+ objects), issues related to Azure storage account state views and performance collection rules, Service Type page not displaying all instances in the Authoring wizard are now fixed. The full list of updates is present in the management pack guide available in the above link. Please try out the MP and let us know your feedback on our user voice website.

Ravi Chivukula | SCOM Program Manager | Microsoft
Get the latest System Center news on Facebook and Twitter
Main System Center blog: http://blogs.technet.com/b/systemcenter/
Operations Manager Team blog: http://blogs.technet.com/momteam/

Hello folks

Since the release of version 6.0.7303.0 of Windows Server Operating System MP, many of you have reported regression bugs in the management pack. We now fixed all those issues in the latest released version 6.0.7316.0: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=9296. The MP guide available in this link has details about the various bugs that were fixed. If you have any feedback on the MP, please provide it on our user voice website. 

Ravi Chivukula | SCOM Program Manager | Microsoft
Get the latest System Center news on Facebook and Twitter
Main System Center blog: http://blogs.technet.com/b/systemcenter/
Operations Manager Team blog: http://blogs.technet.com/momteam/

Hi everyone, my name is Mihai Sarbulescu and today I wanted to share a quick support tip with you. Please be aware that some Management Packs for Microsoft System Center Operations Manager have workflows that need to connect to the Internet in order to perform various actions. The Office 365 Management Pack is a good example of this as it needs to connect to the Internet to complete certain actions related to discovery and monitoring. In such situations, if a proxy server is needed to connect to the Internet from the System Center Operations Manager Management Servers, the proxy configured in Internet Explorer or WinHTTP will not be taken into account by the System Center Operations Manager processes – here MonitoringHost.exe processes which are running the actual workflows.

In order to configure the correct proxy server, the MonitoringHost.exe.config file needs to be modified on all management servers from the All Management Servers Resource Pool. The MonioringHost.exe.config file can be found in the System Center Operations Manager installation folder under %ProgramFiles%\Microsoft System Center 2012\Operations Manager\Server\. Make a backup of the MonitoringHost.exe.config file and then add these lines in the <configuration> section of the config XML:

<system.net>
  <defaultProxy enabled=”true” useDefaultCredentials=”true”>
    <proxy proxyaddress=”http://<PROXYADDRESS>:<PORT>” bypassonlocal=”true” />
    <bypasslist>
    </bypasslist>
  </defaultProxy>
</system.net>

Make sure that you replace <PROXYADDRESS> with the correct proxy server address and <PORT> with the correct proxy server port. When done, simply save the MonitoringHost.exe.config file and close it and you’re all set.

Mihai Sarbulescu | Escalation Engineer | Microsoft

Microsoft System Center Operations Manager, along with the Service Manager management packs, provides an excellent monitoring platform for Service Manager. Many important pieces that are vital to Service Manager health can be monitored, including:

• Checking SQL Server to be sure the Broker Service is enabled
• Checking the Service Manager Grooming History to be sure cleanup of the CMDB is taking place
• Checking workflows for problems
• Checking MPS sync for failures

…and much more. The full list of rules and monitors can be found in the Service Manager Management Pack Guide that you can download along with the Management Packs, and I would encourage you to read that guide thoroughly before deploying the Management Packs and bringing your Service Manager monitoring online.

One key note in the guide is where it says “This management pack requires agentless monitoring…” It’s been a while since the guide was released, and that, along with the fact that the SP1 release for System Center 2012 introduced a Control Panel applet for the Microsoft Monitoring Agent (HealthService), has contributed to some confusion over Agent versus Agentless monitoring. This post addresses one of the possible drawbacks of using Agent-based monitoring and then receiving the following events in your Service Manager management server’s Operations Manager Event log:

Event ID 6024
LaunchRestartHealthService.js : Launching Restart Health Service. Health Service exceeded Process\Handle Count or Private Bytes threshhold.

Event ID 6060
RestartHealthService.js : Restarting Health Service. Error: Failed to Terminate Health Service

Event ID 6062
RestartHealthService.js : Restarting Health Service. Service successfully restarted.

For more information on this, see https://blogs.technet.microsoft.com/omx/2013/10/17/health-service-restarts-on-service-manager-servers-with-scom-agents/.

In Service Manager, the Microsoft Monitoring Agent’s primary role is managing all the Service Manager workflows, including workflow subscriptions, group calculations, connectors, configuration, etc. Adding the Service Manger HealthService as an Operations Manager agent can result in a negative impact on the Service Manger workflows when the Operations Manager workflows run on their configured schedules.
So how do you find out whether you’re agent managed or not, and how do you switch?

First, check in Control Panel on your Service Manager Workflow Management server. If you have anything listed under Management Groups you’re probably Agent managed:

You can also check in Operations Manager. Open the console and navigate to Administration –> Device Management –> Agent Managed and search for your Service Manager Workflow Management server. If it’s in there, you’re definitely Agent managed.

The good news is that it’s easy to switch. First, clear everything from Control Panel on your Service Manager Workflow Management server, including the Automatically update management group assignments from AD DS check box. Next, select the Service Manager Workflow Management server from Operations Manager and click Delete from the task pane.

Give everything a few minutes to settle in, and then from Operations Manager, right-click Device Management and open the Discovery Wizard:

At this point I’m going to assume you’re familiar with Operations Manager and skip to the important part; the Select Objects to Manage page. Select your Service Manager Workflow Management server from here, then at the bottom of the wizard dialog, choose Agentless from the Management Mode: dropdown list:

After you choose Agentless, you’ll have the option to choose your Proxy Agent:

The proxy agent should be an Operations Manager Management Server or another computer in your environment (not one running Service Manager!) that is running the Microsoft Monitoring Agent and reports to the desired Operations Manager management group. The MP deployment guide has more details about what is required of your proxy agent.

One more thing before closing: The MP deployment guide section on the Service Manager Database Account profile in Operations Manager has an omission. One of the rules uses a function within SQL which requires Execute permissions in SQL. Instead of choosing the db_datareader role in SQL, you can choose something in SQL that includes Execute permissions, or much better, just give your data reader account permission to execute that single object in SQL.

Start with the Database User you created. Select the user and then Properties:

Select the Securables page and then click Search. You will get the dialog below. Select Specific Objects, then click OK.

From Select Objects, click Object Types, and then click OK, then select Scalar functions, and click OK.

Click, Browse and locate the dbo.fn_GetEntityChangeLogGroomingWatermark function, select it, and click OK.
Note that after you click OK, you have the option to check names. You can use this if you wish to be sure you have the correct name. When done, click OK again.

Give the user Grant->Execute permissions on the object, then click OK and you’re done.

You can confirm that you set the desired permissions by opening SQL Management Studio as the user you created for DB Reader. Expand the Functions Folder under the Database, and then expand Scalar Functions. You should only see the one for which you granted permissions. You can also test by running this query using the user account for which you granted permissions.

SELECT dbo.fn_GetEntityChangeLogGroomingWatermark() AS HighWaterMark

Now, you’re agentless!

REMINDER: Be sure you go through the MP deployment guide to get the correct security configurations for all the pieces of this monitoring solution.

The good news is that there’s a solution for monitoring your Service Manager environment, and you probably already have it: Microsoft System Center Operations Manager. Go forth and monitor, and go agentless, this will keep you informed of many known issues in Service Manager and help keep your HealthService healthy.

Scott Walker, Senior Support Escalation Engineer
Microsoft Enterprise Cloud Group

We recently published a new KB article that lists all of the cumulative updates that were released for Microsoft System Center 2012 R2 Operations Manager (OpsMgr 2012 R2). The updates are listed according to release date and include the associated build number. Also note the following:

• Cumulative update build numbers with a larger numeric value include the fixes from all previously released cumulative updates.
• Any version of OpsMgr 2012 R2 can be updated to a later cumulative update.
• You cannot uninstall a later-version cumulative update to downgrade to an earlier-version cumulative update.

For the complete list, please see the following:

3193857 – Cumulative update releases for Microsoft System Center 2012 R2 Operations Manager (https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/3193857)

J.C. Hornbeck, Solution Asset PM
Microsoft Enterprise Cloud Group

We recently published a new KB article that lists all of the cumulative updates that were released for Microsoft System Center 2012 Operations Manager Service Pack 1 (OpsMgr 2012 SP1). The updates are listed according to release date and include the associated build number. Also note the following:

• Cumulative update build numbers with a larger numeric value include the fixes from all previously released cumulative updates.
• Any version of OpsMgr 2012 Service Pack 1 can be updated to a later cumulative update.
• You cannot uninstall a later-version cumulative update to downgrade to an earlier-version cumulative update.

For the complete list, please see the following:

3193856 – Cumulative update releases for Microsoft System Center 2012 Operations Manager Service Pack 1 (https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/3193856)

J.C. Hornbeck, Solution Asset PM
Microsoft Enterprise Cloud Group

Microsoft System Center Reporting Manager 2006 has reached its end of support date as of October 11, 2016. System Center Reporting Manager 2006 was built as a Microsoft SQL Server-based data warehouse that integrated management data from Microsoft Operations Manager (MOM) 2005, asset information from Microsoft Systems Management Server (SMS) 2003, and business context data to create customized queries and reports. No subsequent versions of this product were released. 

For monitoring and reporting capabilities available today, learn more about Microsoft System Center Operations Manager and Microsoft System Center Configuration Manager.

Have questions about supported products? Visit Microsoft Support Lifecycle to view a list of supported products and related policies.

Just a quick note to let you know that Update Rollup 1 for System Center 2016 Operations Manager (OpsMgr 2016 UR1) is now available. For all the details regarding UR1for OpsMgr 2016, please see the following:

3190029 – Update Rollup 1 for System Center 2016 Operations Manager (https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/3190029)

J.C. Hornbeck, Solution Asset PM
Microsoft Enterprise Cloud Group

A critical problem that IT Professionals face today is separating critical alerts and non-essential alerts. They are flooded with alerts, many of which do not warrant concern, or should be the center of focus in one scenario or environment and inconsequential in another. Data Driven Alert Management, a new feature of System Center 2016 Operations Manager, can come in handy while breaking through the clutter.

One typically sees such behavior if monitors or rules in a management pack haven’t been tuned to suit the specific scenario or environment dependent monitoring requirement. The default settings (configuration of monitors and rules) in a management pack have been designed to cater to wider set of customer monitoring requirements. Since each environment is different, the default settings of a management pack should be tuned to suit specific environment needs. The Management Pack Lifecycle article outlines the best practices to tune and customize a management pack.

The process to tune management packs comes with the following challenging tasks:

1. Analysis of data from Ops DB
2. Generation of reports to understand which management pack, monitors, rules, or sources have been generating a lot of noise (non-essential alerts)
3. Modification of parameters associated with MP

With the inclusion of this feature one can get a single view to gather quick insights on data pertaining to alerts that are being generated at different levels: management packs, individual monitors and rules, or sources. It also empowers the user by providing the ability to take requisite actions from the same pane:

1. Tuning the thresholds
2. Disabling a monitor/rule
3. Overriding parameters of a monitor/rule

Based on the requirement, the tuning can be done at different levels, as described below.

This feature, along with the management pack  Updates and Recommendations feature completes the full Management Pack Lifecycle process.

Feature Description

The Tune Management Packs screen displays different Management Packs (MPs) and the counts of alerts associated with each; management packs are listed only if the total number of alerts associated with them exceeds a certain threshold. The threshold and the time period during which alerts were captured can be adjusted by using Identify Management Packs to Tune option. One can view relevant information pertaining to the listed MPs by selecting the properties option (this information is useful to understand the respective management pack). Based on the information at hand, one can decide which management pack seems to be noisy and must be tuned. One can then use Tune Alerts option to delve
deeper into the tuning process.

Once there, one can use the following information (listed in bullets below) along with the information available under View or edit settings of this Monitor/ Rule option to tune individual alerts:

1. Alerts associated with the Management Pack
2. Corresponding counts
3. Severity of the corresponding alerts
4. Priority of the listed alerts
5. Source of the alerts (Monitor vs Rule)
6. Name of the corresponding Monitor or Rule

Additionally, the tuning feature also lets users identify the sources of an individual alert, and associated counts per source. Alerts can be tuned per source as well as at different levels – for all objects of the target class, for a group, for a specific object of a class, and for all objects of another class.

Tuning involves enabling/ disabling individual alerts or overriding associated parameters such as priority, severity, etc.

The detailed steps to use this feature can be found under Data Driven Alert Management section of the corresponding Technet documentation.

You can find the System Center 2016 GA here.

We request you to try out Data Driven Alert Management feature in Operations Console. You can submit your feedback at our SCOM Feedback site.