Cloud & Datacenter Monitoring with System Center Operations Manager (10964-C) Training Course

Module 1: Overview and Architecture

Before implementing Operations Manager, it is crucial to understand its key features and functionality. This knowledge helps in leveraging Operations Manager to resolve common issues in the cloud or datacenter, such as maintaining service levels and ensuring that critical line-of-business applications remain available and perform at optimal levels.

Operations Manager is a comprehensive monitoring solution that requires careful planning before deployment into any IT environment. You must understand the hardware and software requirements of the solution, as well as any security implications, such as monitoring computers within a trust boundary, perimeter network, or public cloud. When configuring storage for the Operations Manager databases, you should have a clear understanding of the number of monitored computers and devices to appropriately size the databases.

This module introduces students to the components contained in an Operations Manager Management Group and describes the dependencies and relationships between these various components. Students will learn how to plan for and design an Operations Manager Management Group.

Lessons

• Overview of Operations Manager
• Overview of Key Features in Operations Manager
• Overview of Core Components and Topology
• Addressing Cloud and Datacenter Issues by Using Operations Manager
• Planning and Sizing System Center 2012 R2 Operations Manager

Module 2: Deploying a new System Center 2012 R2 Operations Manager Management Group

When planning a new deployment of Operations Manager, in addition to hardware and sizing requirements, you should consider other factors. These include the security accounts required by Operations Manager and the design of the Management Group. For instance, you might need to install two separate Management Groups to scale Operations Manager according to your monitoring requirements.

After installing Operations Manager, you should be aware of common settings that need configuration, such as data retention (database grooming) settings and manual agent installation approval settings. You should also be familiar with the available agent deployment methods, specifically when to use the console (push) method versus the manual installation method.

Lessons

• Overview of Security Considerations
• Designing the Management Group
• Installing System Center 2012 R2 Operations Manager
• Configuring Operations Manager Default Settings
• Deploying the Operations Manager Agent
• Configuring Agentless Exception Monitoring (AEM)
• Configuring Audit Collection Services

Module 3: Upgrading Operations Manager

If you have already invested in Operations Manager 2007 R2, it is vital to understand the upgrade path from Operations Manager 2007 R2 to System Center 2012 R2 Operations Manager.

Upgrading the core components to System Center 2012 R2 Operations Manager can only be performed on an Operations Manager 2007 R2 or later environment. Earlier versions, such as Operations Manager 2007 SP1, must first be upgraded to Operations Manager 2007 R2 before they can be upgraded to System Center 2012 Operations Manager. Additionally, the Operations Manager 2007 R2 installation must be running at least Cumulative Update 4.

Before upgrading to System Center 2012 Operations Manager, several important tasks must be completed. In this module, we will cover the upgrade order to apply when upgrading to System Center 2012 Operations Manager.

Before the upgrade to System Center 2012 R2 Operations Manager can take place, the Management Group must be running System Center 2012 SP1 Operations Manager.

Lessons

• Overview of Migration and Upgrade Planning
• Upgrading to System Center 2012 R2 Operations Manager
• Migrating to System Center 2012 R2 Operations Manager

Module 4: Configuring Fabric and Application Monitoring

With Operations Manager deployed and agents installed on the computers hosting the applications and services you need to monitor, you must now install Management Packs to begin monitoring them. Before installing Management Packs, you should understand Management Pack concepts, including all elements of a Management Pack.

You should also understand how to configure fabric and application monitoring in Operations Manager for both private and public cloud environments, including how Operations Manager integrates with Virtual Machine Manager and how to integrate Operations Manager with Windows Azure.

You should also understand how to configure Management Packs to monitor applications running on your fabric, such as Microsoft SQL Server, IIS Server, and SharePoint Server. Finally, you should understand how to configure integration between Operations Manager and System Center Advisor to view Advisor alerts related to your fabric components and applications.

Lessons

• Introduction to Management Packs
• Configuring Network Device Monitoring
• Configuring Fabric Monitoring
• Configuring Application Monitoring

Module 5: Application Performance Monitoring

Most organizations use the Microsoft .NET Framework to build custom applications, such as intranet web sites. Since there may not be an available Management Pack for these custom applications, you should understand how Application Performance Monitoring (APM) is configured in Operations Manager. APM provides extensive monitoring for .NET and Java-based applications, including both server-side and client-side monitoring.

In addition to monitoring .NET applications directly through Operations Manager, it is important to understand how APM can be utilized with the full functionality of the Visual Studio IntelliTrace Collector for gathering complete application profiling traces. With System Center 2012, you can also integrate Operations Manager with Team Foundation Server. It is crucial to understand how this integration is configured so that Operations Manager can synchronize alerts with work items in Team Foundation Server.

Lessons

• Application Performance Monitoring
• Using IntelliTrace
• Team Foundation Server Integration

Module 6: End to End Service Monitoring

When monitoring key line-of-business applications, monitoring should be performed from both a datacenter perspective and an end-user perspective. In this module, you will learn how to create synthetic transactions to measure end-user performance.

You will also learn how to combine component monitoring with synthetic transactions in distributed application models that describe the relationships between the various components of an application. This provides a single view for identifying the root cause and impact of any potential service outage.

Finally, you will learn how to build rich Visio dashboards to display real-time health status to external users.

Lessons

• Management Pack Templates
• Distributed Application Models
• Global Service Monitor
• Real-time Visio Dashboards

Module 7: Scorecards, Dashboards and Reporting

Visualizing service and application health in Operations Manager is a key feature that enables quick and easy creation of at-a-glance views. These views (or dashboards) can instantly display performance and availability for one or more applications in a single pane.

It is important to understand how to create scorecards and dashboards to provide different types of users within the business with views into the monitored environment's performance. For example, a Service Owner may require a high-level view showing whether end users can access a service, whereas an executive may need a view indicating whether a service is within or out of the Service Level Agreement (SLA).

Reporting is also essential for understanding the performance of the monitored environment. Certain personnel may not have access to the Operations Console or receive email alerts but may still require access to important information about the health and performance of key applications and services. In such scenarios, reports can provide an interface into the collected Operations Manager data.

Service and application owners must also ensure that services supplied to the business meet service level agreements for performance and availability. Therefore, you must know how Service Level Tracking is configured and displayed in Operations Manager.

Lessons

• Configuring and Managing Reporting in Operations Manager
• Configuring Service Level Tracking
• Configuring the Operations Manager SharePoint WebPart
• Configuring Dashboards and Widgets
• Creating Custom Dashboards

Module 8: Configuring and Customizing the Console

Application support teams that use Operations Manager can do so via a locally installed console or through the Web Console. Typically, within an application support team, there are various roles requiring different levels of permissions in the Operations Console. These range from read-only users to advanced operators. Furthermore, all these roles must be limited to displaying data only about the computers and applications they are responsible for. In this module, you will learn how to use the built-in role-based security within Operations Manager to provide granular access to data, views, and tasks.

Application support teams typically require customized views within the console for their key applications. You will also learn how to design and provision these views for relevant support teams.

While some team members may always have the console open, other teams may require notifications when an issue is detected. Operations Manager uses Notifications and Notification Channels to achieve this functionality. This module describes how to configure these and send email alerts to key teams.

Finally, to reduce the workload on various application support teams, you will learn how to configure Diagnostic and Recovery tasks in Operations Manager. This provides a method for diagnosing and automating the remediation of detected issues.

Lessons

• Security, Scoping and User Roles
• Creating Custom Views and Alert Resolution States
• Configuring Notification Subscriptions
• Creating Diagnostic and Recovery Tasks

Module 9: Management Pack Authoring

For common applications such as Microsoft SQL Server and Microsoft Exchange Server, fully developed Management Packs are already available. You can extend the default monitoring in Operations Manager by creating rules, monitors, and groups within the Operator's console.

However, it may be necessary to author a completely new management pack to monitor custom applications. To achieve this, you would author the management pack in Visual Studio, seal the management pack, and then deploy it. The management pack should then automatically discover and monitor the components of the application.

Management Pack authoring is a detailed topic that requires a basic understanding of core concepts before proceeding. This module will cover these topics, including how to create a Management Pack in both the console and Visual Studio.

Lessons

• Management Packs Authoring Concepts
• Authoring Management Packs by using the Operations Console
• Authoring Management Packs by using the Visual Studio Authoring Extensions

Module 10: Integrating Operations Manager with Other System Center Components

System Center 2012 R2 consists of several components that provide comprehensive management of the IT environment. This includes server and desktop infrastructure, as well as the networking infrastructure that binds them. You can also manage client devices using System Center 2012 R2.

You should integrate the System Center 2012 R2 components to provide seamless management of the IT environment from both a cloud and datacenter perspective. This enables easier and more flexible management of the cloud and datacenter environment and allows for the automation of many manual processes.

In this module, you will learn several key features of other System Center 2012 R2 components. This includes the benefits achieved when integrating Operations Manager with them.

Lessons

• Service Manager Integration
• Data Protection Manager Integration
• Orchestrator Integration

Module 11: Troubleshooting, Tuning and Disaster Recovery

Your monitoring solution must be highly available to ensure your key line-of-business applications are available and performing at optimal levels at all times. Additionally, ensuring your system is fully optimized helps prevent outages and deterioration of the monitoring solution's performance. In this module, you will learn how to optimize the data warehouse to ensure the correct volume of data is retained.

As with all key systems, it is important to know where to look when troubleshooting problems. This includes using reports to understand performance and knowing which logs to investigate on both the management servers and agents.

To increase overall service availability, you may also consider configuring SQL AlwaysOn for Operations Manager. This will increase the availability of the database layer.

If a component within the Operations Manager environment fails, it is equally important to understand how to recover the failed component. In this final module, you will learn how to optimize, troubleshoot, and perform disaster recovery in Operations Manager.

Lessons

• Troubleshooting Operations Manager Core Components
• Tuning Management Packs
• Configuring SQL AlwaysOn for Operations Manager
• Configuring Data Retention in Operations Manager
• Disaster Recovery in Operations Manager