System Center Operations Manager users may face the following common challenges during the lifecycle of a Management Pack (MP):

1. Continually reviewing the ever-changing IT environments (dynamic) for new workloads or updates to old workloads to add or update the requisite MP
2. Understanding which MPs were not installed or imported while setting up monitoring of a workload so that the missing MPs can be installed or imported to monitor the workload completely (a situation wherein not all MPs required to monitor a workload completely were installed, resulting in partial monitoring of the workload)
3. Tracking availability of updates from the Online Catalog (OC) to an already installed MP, corresponding to a Workload
4. Searching the desired MP on Online Catalog Manually (a time-consuming process)

The new management pack Updates and Recommendations feature in System Center 2016 Operations Manager of provides an indispensable solution to these challenges by introducing significant automation in these often cumbersome activities. At the same time, it provides a single location to perform these interrelated activities for ease of use.

The workloads listed here are supported by this feature. Also, for this feature to work, agents should be installed on the servers (on which workloads are running), and the machine hosting the console must be connected to the internet. This feature along with the Data Driven Alert Management feature provides a holistic solution to the challenges faced during Lifecycle Management of a management pack.

Feature Description

This feature enables allocation of a status relevant to the state a workload is in, from the perspective of MP Lifecycle Management. Based on the same following scenarios are enabled from a single end point/ screen:

1. Discovering: Recognizes supported workloads (whether new or old) that aren’t being monitored but are a part of the respective management group
2. Resolving partial installations: Recognizes which MP files are missing to enable complete monitoring of a Workload
3. Updating: Recognizes and indicates availability of updates to various MPs that have been installed
4. Finding: The above mentioned scenarios are empowered by the ability of the feature to leverage Microsoft Management Pack Catalog Web Service and pin-point the updates and missing MPs, so that users can resolve inconsistencies within a few clicks

Users can delve deeper on the action items by using the more information option which will help them understand why a recommendation was displayed and why a particular workload has a specific status, view the corresponding DLC page and guide by using the respective option, and install/ import or update MPs with respect to a selected workload or all listed the workloads listed on the main screen by using Get MP or Get All MPs options respectively.

Also, for users that rely on non-English management packs, the enhanced Get MP option includes language selection settings, if available.

Note: The discovery logic runs every 24 hours by default, and can be modified to run at a higher frequency using appropriate Cmdlets in Operations Manager Shell. One can also use the script that can be found here.

The detailed steps to use this feature can be found under Updates and Recommendations section of the corresponding Technet documentation.

You can find the System Center 2016 GA here.

We request you to try out MP Updates and Recommendation feature in Operations Console. You can submit your feedback at our SCOM Feedback site.

We have received feedback from customers like you to have an HTML-based web console and not Silverlight-based. We are happy to announce that we have transitioned to an HTML-based web console, with the exception of the dashboards views. Dashboard views today are still Silverlight-based, but we will continue our investments to provide you HTML5-based dashboards in the future. With this change, you can now access System Center 2016 Operations Manager web console from a variety of browsers, such as Google Chrome, Microsoft Edge and Mozilla Firefox.

As part of this HTML web console implementation we have also made significant performance improvements in loading data, views, monitoring tree, and tasks.

You can find the System Center 2016 GA here.

We request you to try this feature. You can submit your feedback at our SCOM Feedback site.

Performance improvements have been made to State views and Diagram views in the System Center 2016 Operations Manager console to increase responsiveness. You will now see the following improvements:

1. State view is optimized to load efficiently
2. Diagram view is optimized to load efficiently

These improvements will be more visible in an environment where the load on the Operations Manager database is high.

Improving the responsiveness of the UI continues to be a top priority for us, and this update follows the improvements from the System Center 2016 TP5 release, details of which can be found here.

You can find the System Center 2016 GA here.

We request you to try this feature. You can submit your feedback at our SCOM Feedback site.

Until System Center 2012 Operations Manager R2, you could get only basic monitoring for your network devices, such as “Availability Monitoring” and “Port/Interface Monitoring”. To get Extended Monitoring for your network devices, you had to work with Microsoft to get your devices supported in Operations Manager. This extended monitoring capability was limited to only processor and memory components, in addition to the basic monitoring.

With the release of System Center 2016 Operations Manager, you now have access to the new Network Monitoring Management Pack generator tool which provides you with extended monitoring for your SNMP-enabled devices by generating your own custom Management Pack.

Tool Description

Network Monitoring Management Pack generation tool includes an SNMP_MPGenerator UI tool and a NetMonMPGenerator.exe command line tool.

1. SNMP_MPGenerator UI tool has an inbuilt MIB browser. Users can load MIB files, search through the Object Identifiers (OIDs) of the component they wish to add workflows for and create rules and monitors.
2. Users can add workflows (monitors and rules) for device components such as processor, memory, fan, temperature sensor, power supply, voltage sensor and custom device components.
3. This tool can also support custom devices in addition to already supported devices like Switch, Router, Firewall and Load Balancer.
4. Users can define monitors and rules for multiple devices in the project file and generate a single Management Pack for all of their devices.
5. This tool includes the command line equivalent NetMonMPGenerator.exe for users who wish to generate MP through command line interface. Users need to define device information and workflows in an input XML file and use the commandline tool to generate custom management pack.

The tool and the user guide can be downloaded here. The management pack generated by this tool is currently supported by System Center 2016 Operations Manager and System Center 2012 R2 Operations Manager.

Before initiating the maintenance of IT infrastructure elements, one would want to initiate Maintenance Mode to suppress monitoring of infrastructure elements undergoing maintenance. This will prevent the monitoring tool from generating alerts and events pertaining to these elements, while they are under maintenance. Schedule Maintenance Mode feature (listed in Administration Workspace, earlier) allowed users to achieve this, but it was here that we identified the following gaps:

1. Typically, in large organizations, Operators who manage the designated hosts, would also intend to maintain them as part of planned and unplanned maintenance workflows, and hence they, not just Administrators, should be allowed to set Maintenance schedules from the console
2. Maintenance process is automated and is typically initiated from the client end (in batches)

Hence we have now enabled Maintenance Mode from Client side via agent, and moved “Maintenance Schedules” from the Administration pane to the Monitoring pane (which is accessible to Operators), so that operators can access this feature. These improvements have implemented in System Center 2016 Operations Manager.

Now, a machine can be put into maintenance from client side via agent, and operators will be able to access “Maintenance Schedules” from the Monitoring pane of Operations Console.

The detailed steps to use this feature can be found under How to suspend monitoring temporarily by using maintenance mode section of the corresponding Technet documentation.

You can find the System Center 2016 GA here.

We request you to try this feature. You can submit your feedback at our SCOM Feedback site.

We at Microsoft are committed towards understanding and solving the problems of our customers. Your response to this survey will aid us in that endeavor. With your inputs we will be able to make the required improvements to Microsoft’s IT Operations Management solutions (such as SCOM, OMS, etc.), this will help us serve you better.

Hence, we request you to take 5 – 10 minutes out of your busy schedule to respond to this survey.

Follow this link to the Survey:

https://microsoft.qualtrics.com/SE/?SID=SV_a5A41w7hE94LLj7

If you have any query, please post it as a comment below.

The Visual Studio Authoring Extension now allows you to create management packs for System Center 2016 Operations Manager. When creating a new management pack project in Visual Studio, you can now select the “Operations Manager 2016 Management Pack ” template. This template uses the same schema as System Center 2012 R2 Operations Manager (2.0 schema), but has all the latest libraries of System Center 2016 Operations Manager.

If you are importing an existing management pack, then this latest extension will allow you to select the System Center 2016 Operations Manager schema for the management packs chosen. 

The Visual Studio Authoring Extension can be downloaded from here. You can submit your feedback at our System Center Operations Manager Feedback site.

Are you worried about the health of your Operations Manager environment? Looking for a tool that can help keep Operations Manager up-to-date and run efficiently?

We present you the System Center Operations Manager Assessment solution that assesses the risk and health of your System Center Operations Manager Server environments. This solution is available to all 2012 SP1 and 2012 R2 Operations Manager users on Operations Management Suite (OMS) for free!

Solution Description

System Center Operations Manager Assessment solution on OMS assesses your Operations Manager environment against best practices that were collected over the years from Microsoft Knowledge Base articles and field engineers across multiple environments, industries and scenarios. This solution provides a health check and risk assessment of the Operations Manager environment and recommendations to fix the issues identified.

Installing and Configuring the solution

Use the following information to install and configure the solution

• Before you can use an assessment solution in OMS, you must have the solution installed. To read more about installing solutions, see Add Log Analytics solutions from the Solutions Gallery.
• Configure the System Center Operations Manager Assessment rule
• Set the Run As account for System Center Operations Manager Assessment

Configure the System Center Operations Manager Assessment rule

System Center Operations Manager Assessment Solution’s Management Pack consists of a rule by name “Microsoft System Center Advisor SCOM Assessment Run Assessment Rule”. This rule is responsible for the run of the assessment. To enable the rule and configure the frequency, follow the steps below.

Enable the assessment to run

By default, “Microsoft System Center Advisor SCOM Assessment Run Assessment Rule” rule is in disabled state. To run the assessment, this rule has to be enabled against a Management Server. To do this, follow the steps below:

• Enable the rule for a specific Management Server
  • In the Authoring workspace of the Ops Manager console, search for the Rule “Microsoft System Center Advisor SCOM Assessment Run Assessment Rule” in Rules pane
  • From the search results appeared, select the one with “Type: Management Server”
  • Right click on the above selected rule and click on Overrides  For a specific object of class: Management Server
  • Select the Management Server that this rule should execute on from the available Management servers
  • Make sure to change the property value of Enable to “True” as in the screenshot shown below:

While still in this window, to configure the frequency of the run, follow the steps below

Configure the frequency of the run

The assessment is configured to run 10080 minutes (or 7 days), the default interval. This interval can be overridden to a value of at least 1440 minutes (or 1 day). This value represents the minimum time gap required between successive assessment runs. To override the interval, follow the steps below:

• Override the interval of the assessment run
  • In the Authoring workspace of the Ops Manager console, search for the Rule “Microsoft System Center Advisor SCOM Assessment Run Assessment Rule” in Rules pane
  • From the search results appeared, select the one with “Type: Management Server”
  • Right click on the above selected rule and click on “Override the Rule  For all objects of class: Management Server”
  • Change the parameter value of Interval to the desired interval value.
    In the screenshot below, this value is set to 1440 minutes i.e. 1 day
    
  • Note that if the value is set to less than 1440 minutes, then the rule runs at a one day interval i.e. the rule ignores this interval value and runs at a frequency of 1 day

Set the Run As account for System Center Operations Manager Assessment

OMS builds upon management packs for workloads to provide value-add services. Each workload requires workload-specific privileges to run management packs in a different security context, such as a domain account. You need to provide credential information by configuring an Operations Manager Run As account.

Use the following information to set the Operations Manager run-as account for System Center Operations Manager Assessment.

• In the Operations Manager Console, go to the Administrations tab
• Under the Run As Configuration, click Accounts
• Create the Run As Account, following through the Wizard, creating a Windows account. The account to be used is the one identified and having all the prerequisites below
  • A domain account member of the local Administrators group on all servers in the environment (All Operations Manager Roles – Management Server, OpsMgr Database, Data Warehouse, Reporting, Web Console, Gateway)
  • Operation Manager Administrator Role for the management group being assessed
  • Execute the script to grant granular permissions to the account on SQL instance used by Operations Manager.
    Note: If this account has sysadmin rights already, then skip the script execution.
• Under Distribution Security, select More secure
• Specify the Management Server on which this account will be distributed
• Go back to the Run As Configuration and click Profiles
• Search for the System Center Operations Manager Assessment Profile
• The profile name should be, “Microsoft System Center Advisor SCOM Assessment Run As Profile”
• Right click and update its properties, and add the recently created Run As Account we just created in step 3

 SQL Script to grant granular permissions to the Run As account

Execute below script to grant required permissions to the Run As account on the SQL Instance used by Operations Manager

-- Replace <UserName> with the actual user name being used as Run As Account.
 USE master

-- Create login for the user, comment this line if login is already created.
 CREATE LOGIN [UserName] FROM WINDOWS

--GRANT permissions to user.
 GRANT VIEW SERVER STATE TO [UserName]
 GRANT VIEW ANY DEFINITION TO [UserName]
 GRANT VIEW ANY DATABASE TO [UserName]

-- Add database user for all the databases on SQL Server Instance, this is required for connecting to individual databases.
 -- NOTE: This command must be run anytime new databases are added to SQL Server instances.
 EXEC sp_msforeachdb N'USE [?]; CREATE USER [UserName] FOR LOGIN [UserName];'

Use msdb
 GRANT SELECT To [UserName]
 Go

--Give SELECT permission on all Operations Manager related Databases
 --Replace the Operations Manager database name with the one in your environment
 Use [OperationsManager];
 GRANT SELECT To [UserName]
 GO

--Replace the Operations Manager DatawareHouse database name with the one in your environment
 Use [OperationsManagerDW];
 GRANT SELECT To [UserName]
 GO

--Replace the Operations Manager Audit Collection database name with the one in your environment
 Use [OperationsManagerAC];
 GRANT SELECT To [UserName]
 GO

--Give db_owner on [OperationsManager] DB
 --Replace the Operations Manager database name with the one in your environment
 USE [OperationsManager]
 GO

ALTER ROLE [db_owner] ADD MEMBER [UserName]
 GO

Solution Details

After a successful assessment of the Operations Manager environment, recommendations are generated. Users can view these recommendations in their OMS workspace by clicking the System Center Operations Manager Assessment tile.

Each recommendation has a weightage assigned based on probability of occurrence, impact if occurred and effort required to fix. This will guide the user to prioritize the recommendations to act on.

Clicking on any of the recommendations, will open a new screen with details such as description of the issue, suggested actions, affected objects etc.

Next Steps

Try this solution today on your Operations Manager environment and we would love to hear your feedback on this.
Get started with Operations Management Suite and activate your free account

How to share feedback?

User Voice : To suggest any improvements/ideas on this solution, visit the SCOM UserVoice page
Email: Tell us at scompm@microsoft.com
OMS Forums: Good general discussion of OMS.  Visit the OMS Forums.

We’ve seen a tremendous amount of interest in System Center 2016 Operations Manager so I thought I’d take a minute and share a few resources that should help you get started on the right track. This isn’t a comprehensive list but they’re some of the resources that I’ve found most helpful. Whether you’re just starting to look at what OpsMgr 2016 has to offer or if you’re already rolled it out, this is a good starting point for questions you may have,

Getting Started

If you’re still in the investigative phase and looking to get more information on what Operations Manager 2016 has to offer, you can see what’s new and even download a free trial via the links below.

• What’s new in Operations Manager: https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/system-center-docs/om/get-started/whats-new-in-operations-manager
• Download a free evaluation: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/evalcenter/evaluate-system-center-technical-preview

Product Documentation

The core product documentation for Microsoft System Center 2016 Operations Manager can be found using the links below. Topics cover everything from planning your deployment to usage and troubleshooting.

• Getting Started with System Center 2016 Operations Manager: Written for customers who are either new to Operations Manager or are looking for “What’s New” information.
• Planning for System Center 2016 – Operations Manager: Review information to help you plan the deployment of Operations Manager into your organization.
• Deploying System Center 2016 – Operations Manager: Read these topics to learn how to deploy Operations Manager in your environment.
• Initial Monitoring After Operations Manager Is Installed: Read these topics to get started with monitoring your environment.
• System Center 2016 – Operations Manager Operations Guide: Read these topics once you have Operations Manager up and running and are looking for procedures for day to day operations.
• Management Pack Authoring Guide for Operations Manager: The Management Pack Authoring Guide for Operations Manager provides information on creating custom monitoring for your service or application.

Video Learning

If you were lucky enough to attend Microsoft Ignite back in September then you may have already seen our sessions on Operations Manager, but if not you can view them on-demand here:

• Monitor your changing datacenter using Microsoft System Center 2016 Operations Manager: https://myignite.microsoft.com/videos/3022
• Monitor and diagnose web apps & services with Application Insights & SCOM: https://myignite.microsoft.com/videos/2744

Staying Current

It’s important to stay up to date on what’s happening in Operations Manager and there are a few options available to do this. The best resource is our System Center Operations Manager Team Blog. Here you will find tips and tricks from our OpsMgr support engineers, announcements from the product team, information about the latest product updates and downloads, as well as notifications for every new piece of content/documentation we release.

If you subscribe to our blog via RSS (here), you will automatically be notified any time something new is posted. Personally, I use Outlook when subscribing to RSS feeds since I’m in there all day checking email already, so if you need a newsreader and already use Outlook then that might be a good solution for you. If social media is more your thing, we make the same announcements on Twitter and Facebook via the links below.

• Twitter
• Facebook

Getting Help

One of the best resources for finding answers is our Operations Manager support forum. There you will find a community of experts, MVPs, as well as members of the support team and the product group who collectively hold a wealth of information about to implement, use and troubleshoot OpsMgr in a virtually any kind of environment. If you need help with a problem or maybe just need some advice, the good folks there will get you pointed in the right direction. And of course, Microsoft product support is here 24/7 to help with any Operations Manager issue or question you may have. You can find more information on the support options available here.

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

We are releasing an updated version of Microsoft System Center Management Pack for Office 365. The new Management Pack(MP) has upgrades to subscription authorization method, the application to monitor can now be either automatic for which Microsoft Office 365 Global Administrator credentials are required or manual for which Azure application creation is necessary. New message center messages and categorizations have been added. The new MP supports two factor authentication, as the MP now inquires Office 365 Service Communications API V2. To support Chinese subscription, an ability to customize the endpoints and resources is also provided. Various customer bugs have been addressed, the MP guide has more details.

We encourage you to try this MP and provide us feedback on our user voice website.

We want to let you know that we are releasing an updated version of “Microsoft System Center 2016 Management Pack for Windows Server Operating System“. Some of the changes in this new MP are

• New object types have been added for Nano to help users differentiate and manage them accurately
• New monitor is added to alert when the Storport miniport driver times out a request
• Various bugs related to Nano server such as issues with Nano Server Cluster Disk and Nano Server Cluster Shared Volumes health discoveries, Free Space monitors on Nano Server are fixed
• Fixed multiple customer and regression bugs, please refer to the Management Pack guide for details

You can find all the details as well as a download link here: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=54303. Provide us feedback on our user voice website.

~ Chandra Bose | Senior Software Engineer

There are times when you may want to revert back to older version of a Management Pack (MP) for a given workload. Currently, the Operations Manager UI allows you to delete and re-import Management Packs from the “Installed Management Packs” screen, however there can be issues when there are multiple and multi-level dependencies on the MP that you are trying to delete.

To mitigate these potential issues, we have a new script available that will help you to revert Management Packs with ease.

Note that this script is an enhanced version  of an earlier script provided by its original author here (thanks to Microsoft’s own Christopher Crammond!)

Here’s how to use the script:

1. Open the Operations Manager Command Shell prompt in Administrator mode.

2. Download the script to remove a management pack with dependencies from here.

3. Run the script using the name of the Management Pack you want to remove. For example:

(Example 1) –> .\RecursiveRemove.ps1 <ID or System Name of the MP>

(Example 2) –> .\RecursiveRemove.ps1 Microsoft.SQLServer.2014.Discovery

You can see the ID or System Name of the MP that you want to uninstall by selecting it in the Installed Management Packs view by clicking Properties in the Actions pane. Simply copy the content in the “ID :” text box in the General tab.

Chandra Bose | Senior Software Engineer | Microsoft

OpsMgr 2012 R2 OpsMgr 2007 OpsMgr 2016

Update rollup version 8.0.11030.0 for Microsoft Monitoring Agent is now available. The article below describes the issues that are fixed and also contains installation instructions. For complete details please see the following:

3206063 – Update rollup 8.0.11030.0 for Microsoft Monitoring Agent (KB3206063) (https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/3206063)

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

OpsMgr 2012 R2

The Engyro Product Connector for Microsoft System Center Operations Manager 2007 will no longer be supported after July 11, 2017.  If you are using this product connector, please upgrade to System Center 2016 Operations Manager and integrate with a third-party connector as needed. Alternatively, you can use System Center Orchestrator and custom runbooks to integrate with third-party enterprise ITSM/monitoring systems using an integration pack from Microsoft or our partner Kelverion.  For more information about Engyro, please see the Engyro Support Bulletin from 2010.

Review these instructions for upgrading to System Center 2016 Operations Manager. If you are using Operations Manager 2007, this requires the following upgrade process: upgrade to Operations Manager 2007 R2, to System Center 2012 Operations Manager, to System Center 2012 R2 Operations Manager, then to System Center 2016 Operations Manager.

Microsoft System Center 2016 Operations Manager Integration packs

Kelverion Integration packs

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

The communication between System Center Operations Manager Management Server and the UNIX/Linux agents are secured with TLS/SSL. UNIX and Linux agents employ Server Authentication certificates (i.e. “agent certificates”) for the TLS/SSL channel and these certificates are signed by an Operations Manager Management Server’s “signing certificate.” As of System Center 2016 RTM, both agent certificates and signing certificates are generated with the sha1WithRSAEncryption signing algorithm. With System Center 2012 R2 Operations Manager UR12 and System Center 2016 Operations Manager UR2, use of SHA1 certificate would be deprecated with a default preference for SHA 256 certificate. Customers can now update and sign their certificates on currently deployed agents by following the below procedure.

1. Install SCOM 2012 R2 UR12 – https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/3209587/system-center-2012-r2-om-ur12 (or) SCOM 2016 UR2 – https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/3209591/update-rollup-2-for-system-center-2016-operations-manager
2. Import the UNIX/Linux Management packs for SCOM 2012 R2/SCOM 2016 UR2 – https://www.microsoft.com/en-in/download/details.aspx?id=29696
3. Certificate can be updated from SHA1 to SHA 256 in one of the following ways

Option1:

Use the powershell script UpdateXplatCertificates.ps1. This when used without any parameters will update the certificate for all the agents.

.\UpdateXplatCertificates.ps1

This script can be downloaded from here.

Option2:

To update the certificate for specific agents use the below command

.\UpdateXplatCertificates.ps1 -AgentsDisplayName “<Agent1>“,”<Agent2>”

Option 3:

Certificate can be updated through SCOM Console –

Console –> Monitoring –> UNIX/Linux Computers –> select the server.

On the right task pane under UNIX/Linux Computer Tasks there are two tasks that could be performed.

1. Verify Certificate Signature – This task is used to verify the Signature algorithm of the agent’s signed certificate. This can be helpful in identifying SHA1 certificates that requires an update.On clicking Verify Certificate Signature you would get the below screen and the results.

         2. UNIX/Linux Update Certificate Task – This task updates the certificate from SHA1 to SHA 256.Click the server you wish to update the certificate and click UNIX/Linux Update    Certificate Task in the task pane.     

Please note:

 Already existing certificate will not be invalidated or deleted. Once the customer updates the certificate for all their monitored servers, the old certificates should be manually deleted.

 Once SCOM 2012 UR12 or SCOM 2016 UR2 is installed, the SHA 256 certificate will be used by default for newly discovered servers.

 User would need to update the certificate the same way for high availably configuration too.

Summary

APM feature in SCOM 2016 Agent may cause a crash for the IIS Application Pool running under .NET 2.0 runtime.

Cause

Several callbacks within APM code of SCOM 2016 Agent utilize memory allocation that’s incompatible with .NET 2.0 runtime and may cause an issue if this memory is later accessed in a certain way. Those particular modifications were added in SCOM 2016 Agent and are not present in SCOM 2012 R2 Agent.

Resolution

The fix for this issue is to be provided with SC 2016 OM Update Rollup 3. The aforementioned code paths will not be executed if the Application Pool is running under .NET 2.0 Runtime. We are also evaluating to release a hotfix for this issue.

Workaround

There are several workarounds for this issue:

• Application pool can be migrated to .NET 4.0 Runtime;
• SCOM 2016 Agent can be replaced with SCOM 2012 R2 Agent, it’s forward-compatible with SCOM 2016 Server and APM feature will continue to work with the older bits;
• SCOM 2016 Agent can be reinstalled with NOAPM=1 switch in msiexec.exe setup command line, APM feature will be excluded from setup;

This is a special guest blog from Squared Up

Since founding Squared Up in 2011, we’ve been on a mission to transform the way enterprises interact with their monitoring data and, in doing so, have enabled hundreds of clients worldwide to unlock the full potential of System Center Operations Manager (SCOM).

 “Together with SCOM, Squared Up is a key component in our strategy to deliver end-to-end monitoring for our entire set of enterprise applications – Shawn Williams, Systems Engineer, ITaP, Purdue University.”

We’ve always believed that no other enterprise-class monitoring tool offers the same power, flexibility and sheer breadth and depth of cross-platform monitoring capabilities as SCOM. Because of this, we believed that by building on top of SCOM we could take on the huge challenges of application monitoring in the enterprise environment.

“Blackboard is one of our key-line-of-business applications and SCOM, together with third party Management Packs, is able to provide us with detailed insights across the entire stack, from our F5s at the front-end, all the way through to the virtualization at the backend, and all of that data is then surfaced via Squared Up – Shawn Williams, Systems Engineer, ITaP, Purdue University.”

First up, we delivered a blazingly-fast, multi-platform HTML5 web console, which we then enhanced with powerful new features like interactive performance reporting from the Data Warehouse, export to Excel, seamless Visio integration and, above all, the ability to easily build and publish custom dashboards.

“One of the first things Squared Up allowed us to do was much more easily expose availability and uptime reporting to the wider business, both at a managerial level and for our Service Desk –  Shawn Williams, Systems Engineer, ITaP, Purdue University.”

With the simultaneous release of SCOM 2016 and Squared Up Version 3.1, we’ve now taken things to the next level.

Working in close conjunction with the SCOM Engineering Team and leveraging the significant performance enhancements introduced in SCOM 2016, Squared Up is now faster and more powerful than ever.

Taking full advantage of SCOM’s extremely powerful capabilities, Squared Up goes far beyond just enabling HTML5 access, allowing you to:

–  Dynamically map your applications and view live health states across the full stack, irrespective of the underlying technologies, all powered by your existing SCOM Agent.

“VADA is a tremendously powerful tool, allowing us to get a definitive handle on the exact topology and dependencies of all of our applications, of which there are several hundred – Shawn Williams, Systems Engineer, ITaP, Purdue University.”

– Integrate OMS and unify SCOM and OMS data behind a single-pane-of-glass User Interface

“As our monitoring strategy evolves, OMS is now starting to supplement our SCOM data with things like Security & Audit and Change Tracking, which will provide us with value-add insights on top of our existing SCOM data. The key to realizing that value is being able to deliver the data to our users in a single-pane-of-glass UI thanks to Squared Up – Shawn Williams, Systems Engineer, ITaP, Purdue University.”

– Provide top-to-bottom, full-stack visibility via technology-specific, customised drilldowns

“The speed, ease of use and vendor-neutral nature of Squared Up means we’ve been able to successfully bring non-Microsoft engineering teams – such as our Linux teams – into our SCOM-centric monitoring strategy, with a common portal through which all of our cross-platform monitoring data is consumed. That really helps in our efforts to break down siloed thinking and “Us versus Them” mentality within the organization – Shawn Williams, Systems Engineer, ITaP, Purdue University.”

We’re now five years into our mission to radically change the landscape of enterprise monitoring and, together with the release of SCOM 2016 & Squared Up Version 3.1, we believe this marks the perfect moment to unlock the potential of SCOM for literally every customer worldwide.

So, together with the support of Microsoft, we’re delighted to unveil our new, completely free, Community Edition license, which supports both SCOM 2012 and SCOM 2016, and allows you to deliver;

– Full HTML5 Web Console for SCOM

– Unlimited custom dashboards

– Interactive Performance Reporting from the Data Warehouse

– Visio Integration

– Data on Demand

– Total Dashboard Architecture

– Mobile & Tablet Access

– and lots, lots more

You can read more about our Community Edition license and request one for yourself via our website.

We’re looking forward to welcoming you into our Community and to helping you solve the challenges of Enterprise Application Monitoring.