July, 2011

Microsoft acquired AVIcode at the end of 2010.  Starting the day the deal closed we have been working hard to integrate the AVIcode technologies into Operations Manager 2012 and with the beta release you can start to use the first phase of our new .NET Monitoring features that are focused on IIS 7 hosted web applications and services:

• Monitor without having to write a management pack
• No requirement for the application team to add special instrumentation
• Consistent metrics for all monitored applications
• Application Diagnostics console that organizes and links events across application components
• Application Advisor console that provides rich, details reports highlighting the top issues within your applications and environment as a whole
• Monitoring both the server-side components and the client-side browsers

How do you use it?

.NET Monitoring is a part of OM, there is no additional infrastructure to roll out and maintain, the required service and modules are all installed as part of the OM installation/upgrade.  The only additional step you may need to do is importing the Windows Server 2008 Internet Information Services 7 MP.  The IIS 7 MP is used to discover the applications we will monitor.

Once you have the application inventory available, you need to know 2 things:

1. Which applications do you want to monitor
2.  What is the SLA you want to apply to the application response time

With this information, you use the .NET Application Performance Monitoring template wizard to configure monitoring.

1. Launch the wizard and define the application group
   
2. Select the applications to monitor using the configuration defined for the application group
   
3. Define the SLA you want to use for the application group
   

That’s it; you are now monitoring the appliction group.

What do you get? 

1. New application specific performance counters registered under .NET Apps for server-side monitoring and .NET CSM Apps for client-side monitoring:
• % Exception Events/sec – the % of monitored requests that result in an exception event being raised
• % Performance Events/sec – the % of monitored requests that result in a performance event being raised
• Avg. Request Time – the average amount of time it is taking for requests to be processed (.NET Apps only)
• Monitored Requests/sec – the number of request hitting the monitoring application (.NET Apps only)
• Average page request execution time - the amount of time it takes for a web page to load (.NET CSM Apps only)
• Requests/sec - the rate of requests made to web pages of the monitored application (.NET CSM Apps only)
2. Performance events that are raised when the applications takes longer than the configured threshold to respond to a request
   
3. Exception events that are raised when an application fails to process something correctly
   

Where to next?

This is just phase 1, we are adding additional configuration options as we move past beta and look to RC.  At RC you will have direct control over the monitor configurations, where we collect data, how we collect data and even customizing monitoring for specific web pages and service calls. These are exciting times for anyone who is interested in monitoring both the servers and the applications that rely on them.  Operations Manager 2012 provides deep, consistent views into both the infrastructure and the applications; making it much easier to find and resolve issues before they impact your end users.

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/copyright.htm.

Dear OpsMgr Users,

Highly anticipated Office 365 has been released. This blog explains how you can use Operations Manager to seamlessly integrate monitoring of the Office 365 functionality into your enterprise management. Please note that in order to enable the monitoring as described below you need to have Microsoft System Center Operations Manager (SCOM) 2007 R2 with CU4 installed. Please follow the CU4 installation instructions and make sure to import the management packs listed on the instructions page.

This management pack allows monitoring three end-user scenarios: login into Office 365, accessing Office 365 mailbox and accessing Office 365 team site. The tests monitor HTTP status and the content of the web pages to ensure that functionality was rendered correctly.

To enable monitoring of Office 365 you need to perform the following steps.

1. Create a user account to access your Office 365 environment. We recommend that you create a test user account: account login credentials are used in the tests.
2. Create a corresponding Run As account
1. In the Administration pane, under Run As Configuration right click on Accounts and choose Create Run As Account.
2. Choose Basic Authentication and some display name, for example Office365Account. Next.

c. Enter credentials for the test account you created in the step #1 above. Next.

d. For Distribution method you can choose a less secure option (account credentials will be sent to all the nodes) or a more secure option (you will need to distribute credentials specifically to the watcher nodes for Office 365). Create.

e. Please note that if you chose a more secure option, you will need to update the list of the nodes where account information is distributed every time you change the watcher nodes for Office 365 in the future.

3. Download this management pack, save, and rename the file to "Office.xml". Import Office.xml management pack into SCOM.

4. Add Run As account created in the step #2 to the Office365Profile.

1. In the Administration pane, under Run As Configuration/Profiles you should see Office365Profile.
2. Right click the profile and choose Properties.
3. Click on Run As Accounts in the dialog on the left-hand side.
4. Remove any account that appears in the dialog and add the account created in the step #2 to this profile. Save.

5. Now you need to configure Watcher Nodes for all the three tests (InboxOffice365, LoginOffice365, and TeamSiteOffice365).

Go to the Authoring pane and click on Web Applications under Management Pack Templates.

1. You should see three tests: InboxOffice365, LoginOffice365, and TeamSiteOffice365.
2. Double-click on one of the tests, say InboxOffice365.
3. Click on Configure Settings on the right and set the Watcher node. The watcher nodes should be the same as the nodes you selected in the step 2d, if you selected a more secure option.
4. We recommend that you don’t set the frequency of less than 10 minutes. InboxOffice365 test may display intermittent failures at higher login frequencies.
5. Click OK to save the changes.
6. Click Apply to start the test.
7. Repeat the above steps for the other two tests.

6. Now you are ready to monitor Office 365 health. Go to the Monitoring pane, open StateAlertsPerformance dashboard under Office365 folder. You will be able to see the health state, alerts and performance information for all the three tests.

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.

Like most companies today, you rely on your IT infrastructure to keep your business running. You need to find out about and fix IT problems before they lead to any downtime or loss of productivity and revenue. This becomes even more challenging when you depend on a combination of physical, virtual, and cloud resources to run a diverse mix of operating systems (Windows, Linux, and Unix) that support any number of critical business applications. Microsoft understands these challenges and is dedicated to helping customers address these issues.

System Center Operations Manager 2012 provides the solution to the challenges mentioned above by:

• Delivering flexible and cost effective enterprise-class monitoring and diagnostics while reducing the total cost of ownership by leveraging commodity hardware with standard configurations to monitor heterogeneous environments.
• Helping to ensure the availability of business-critical applications and services through market-leading .NET application performance monitoring and diagnostics plus JEE application health monitoring.
• Providing a comprehensive view of datacenters, and private and public clouds.

Here’s what’s new

• Rich application performance monitoring and diagnostics for .NET applications plus JEE application health monitoring
• Support for monitoring heterogeneous environments
• Integrated network device monitoring and alerts
• Simplified management infrastructure
• Common console across datacenter and clouds with customizable dashboards

Download the beta here.

For more information, visit the new Operations Manager 2012 beta page

• Documentation: http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=213297
• Forums: http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/category/systemcenteroperationsmanager
• Feedback: https://connect.microsoft.com/OpsMgr/Feedback
• Team Blog: http://blogs.technet.com/b/momteam/