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 you leverage Operations Manager to address common issues in cloud or datacenter environments, such as maintaining service levels and ensuring critical line-of-business applications are available and performing at optimal levels.

Operations Manager is a comprehensive monitoring solution that demands careful planning prior to deployment in any IT environment. You must understand the hardware and software requirements, 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, a thorough understanding of the number of monitored computers and devices is essential to appropriately size the databases.

This module introduces students to the components within an Operations Manager Management Group and describes the dependencies and relationships between them. 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, such as 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 to meet your monitoring needs.

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

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 important to understand the upgrade path to System Center 2012 R2 Operations Manager.

Upgrading 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 upgrading to System Center 2012 Operations Manager. Furthermore, 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. This module covers the correct upgrade order for migrating to System Center 2012 Operations Manager.

Before upgrading to System Center 2012 R2 Operations Manager, 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

Once Operations Manager is deployed and agents are installed on the computers hosting the applications and services you need to monitor, you must 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 the integration between Operations Manager and Virtual Machine Manager, as well as integrating Operations Manager with Windows Azure.

You should also know how to configure Management Packs to monitor applications running on your fabric, such as Microsoft SQL Server, IIS Server, and SharePoint Server. Finally, 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 websites. Since there will not be an available Management Pack for these custom applications, you should understand how to configure Application Performance Monitoring (APM) in Operations Manager. APM provides extensive monitoring for .NET and Java-based applications, including both server 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 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 critical 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 various application components. 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 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 insights into how the monitored environment is performing. For example, a Service Owner may require a high-level view showing whether end users can access a service, while an executive may need a view showing whether a service is in or out of 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 alerts by email, but they may still require access to important information about the health and performance of key applications and services. In this scenario, reports can be used to provide an interface into collected Operations Manager data.

Service and application owners must also know that the services supplied to the business are meeting 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 can use Operations Manager 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 when using the Operations Console, ranging 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 to relevant support teams.

While some team members may keep the console open constantly, others 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 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 Operators console.

However, it may be necessary to author a completely new Management Pack to monitor custom applications. To do this, you would author the Management Pack in Visual Studio, seal it, 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 foundational understanding of core concepts before proceeding. This module covers 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 complete management of the IT environment, including server and desktop infrastructure and the networking infrastructure that binds them. You can also manage client devices using System Center 2012 R2.

You should integrate 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 about several key features of other System Center 2012 R2 components, including 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 performance deterioration of the monitoring solution. In this module, you will learn how to optimize the data warehouse to ensure the correct volume of data is retained.

As with any critical system, 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