At MMS last week I presented a session looking at various reporting scenarios based on the feedback we have received since we launched R2 last year.
The purpose of the session was to try and address the common problems and show the options available to Operations Manager users with regards to report creation. Some of the feedback we were looking to address is highlighted below:
We broke the session down into four main demonstrations that included samples that customers could take away and use. This blog includes those samples and instructions for using them.
Note: For those who attended the session at MMS, I stated the samples were attached to the deck but unfortunately after the deck was submitted the linked samples were removed.
• “Customer X needs to produce a report that shows the processor, memory, logical disk performance for his 100 servers and needs to see the average performance over multiple time ranges”
In this demo we showed how the Service Level Tracking feature combined with the Service Level Dashboard add-on could be used to create a self-service reporting portal.
The attached file PerformanceReporting.xml contains the sample service level rules required to create this. It also contains some additional collections rules for Disk Space targetted at the OS to make the viewing experience the same.
To use simply import the MP. This MP is targeted at Windows Server 2008 servers so to use you may need to adjust based on the servers you monitor. You may also want to adjust the service level objective goals to make them appropriate to your environment. Once imported you can go to the Service Level Dashboard and add the three service levels – Disk, Memory and Processor. This will create a portal as shown below:
• “Customer X needs to produce a report showing detailed information about how long servers spent in maintenance mode and what happened during that time”
This demo was about using other BI tools to take a query against the DW and create your own reports in a simple fashion. We used Report Builder 2.0 : http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=9f783224-9871-4eea-b1d5-f3140a253db6&displaylang=en
You can download this and take the query MaintenanceModeHistory.txt in the attached file to create something like the below:
• “Customer Y is looking for physical servers in his environment that may be suitable candidates for Virtualization, he needs a report that can show overtime the most suitable servers”
Again using the Service Level Tracking features we showed how you can create business rules(service level objectives) to drive decisions such as Virtualization Candidates and view this using the Service Level Tracking Summary Report. The VirtualizationCandidates.xml in the attached file contains the configuration to do this. Simply import the MP, adjust your service level objectives from the service level tracking node under authoring in the console and run the Service Level Tracking Summary Report.
Note: The Service Levels in this report are scoped to particular groups based on server hardware configuration. You should create your own groups based on your own hardware and link to Service Levels. The groups in the attached MP are Medium SKU Servers and Low SKU Servers and are targeted to Windows Server 2008. Once the MP is imported open the two service levels and on the scope settings page change to your own groups or reselect the two groups above:
On Import:
Change to correct group:
• “Customer X need to provide to his IT management proposed requirements for new hardware, he would like to produce a report that shows what servers in his environment may need additional SAN storage or will run out of resources in the next 6 months”
This demo is about using the data in the DW to do predictions and forecasting. The MP ForecastReport.xml in the attached file can be imported and should work without any changes. When you run the report(Reporting > Forecast Report) you will see the parameters you need to fill in. The date time ranges (To and From) are the input data from what exists in your DW and the days to forecast is how many days of prediction you need.
This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights. Use of included utilities are subject to the terms specified at http://www.microsoft.com/info/cpyright.htm.
Daniel Savage
I am pleased to announced that the collaboration of the Visio and Operations Manager teams has shipped two deliverables for the Office 2010 wave immediately following last Friday’s Office 2010 RTM. This release consists of two downloads:
1. Visio 2010 Add-in and Operations Manager 2007 R2
2. SharePoint 2010 Visio Services Data Provider
What’s new:
In addition to all the great functionality we added in the original Visio 2007 add-in, this adds,
The user can create a Visio-based view of an application, service or infrastructure – either based on an exported Operations Manager diagram view or a Visio diagram that was linked to Operations Manager managed objects (computers, web site, perspectives, etc.), just as with the Visio 2007 Add-in.
Visio diagram in Visio 2010:
After this, the user can now save the publish the diagram to SharePoint 2010 as a web drawing, and when you browse to the document in SharePoint, you’ll get the same experience of a seeing a live Visio based dashboard pulling health state from Operations Manager:
Same Visio diagram in SharePoint 2010: Wow!
Stay tuned at MMS, as the SharePoint Visio Services Data Provider will have some quick exposure in Kenon’s demo during the BobMu keynote. Also Rory McCaw’s and Maarten Goet’s sessions will feature this, and we are preparing to add this to the live monitoring of the labs.
Here’s a Visio diagram, shown in SharePoint 2010, hosted in an Operations Manager web page view from Bob Muglia’s keynote:
See http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/presskits/infrastructure/videoGallery.aspx?contentID=xinfra_MMS2010_day1Keynote to watch this keynote.
· Update (January 2012) These downloads are now available from the new visio.microsoft.com site:http://visio.microsoft.com/en-us/Samples_and_Downloads/Software_Add-ins/Pages/Visio_2010_Add-in_for_System_Center_Operations_Manager_2007_R2.aspx
· The documentation is available in the Operations Manager tech center.
Resources from the Visio 2007 add-in:
· http://blogs.technet.com/momteam/archive/2009/07/31/visio-2007-add-in-for-operations-manager-2007-r2-released.aspx
· http://blogs.technet.com/momteam/archive/2009/05/08/video-released-for-visio-add-in-for-system-center-operations-manager-2007-r2.aspx
Cool Tip for Visio Dashboards: Create a slide show in Visio in which Visio will show each tab of a Visio document for while then pivot to the next tab. See http://blogs.msdn.com/b/chhopkin/archive/2009/05/21/visio-slide-show.aspx for the how-to instructions from Visio guru Chris Hopkins.