SCOM and OMS: The agents

Both SCOM and OMS are in most ways dependent on agents installed on each server being monitored. If you have SCOM today you probably run Microsoft Operations Manager Agent (MOM) which is shipped with SCOM 2012 media and installed through the SCOM console or a SW deployment tool ConfigMgr etc.

OMS on the other hand uses the new Microsoft Monitoring Agent (MMA) which is available for download within your OMS workspace or through MSFT download center. MMA is said to be the mother of all agents which should be used by every Microsoft software that require an agent.

NB: At some point (SCOM 2012 SP1?) the agent actually got rebranded to Microsoft Monitoring Agent. It is stil not the same you get from OMS

 

The reason for looking in to the agents is that we one situation wher we lost contact with one server belonging to a customer (a customer of my employee Intility).

It turned out that they had signed up for OMS and configured the MMA agent to. At some point this deleted our SCOM configuration and we lost monitoring on that server.

As OMS is fast forwarding these days we will have to be proactive and support agent/servers directly reporting to other OMS workspaces than the one connected to our SCOM environment.

 

After some testing here is what i found is the main differences on these agents:

Supports MOM/SCOM Agent

OMS Agent (MMA)
SCOM Workgroup X X
Multihome SCOM Workgroup X X*
OMS Reporting X (through SCOM) X
Multihome OMS Workspace X*
Hybrid Worker support X

*I do not know if there is a limitation on how many connections an agent can have, but I have tried 5 in total. 3 OMS workspaces and 2 SCOM work groups.

 

Screenshots showing MMA

Microsoft Monitoring Agent Properties Operations Manager Azure Log Analytics (OMS) Proxy Setüngs Properbes An agent can report to mulbple management groups. If you use Operations Manager integration with Active Directory Domain Services (AD DS), the list of management groups can be updated automabcally. Automabcally update management group assignments from AD DS If you select this opton, the agent will query AD DS for the list of management groups to which it has been assigned. If any are found, they are added to the ist. Managementgroups thathave been found in AD DS cannot be removed by using this property sheet. Managemen t Groups: Primar y Management Ser.. Port •e Assignmen t Agent Action

 

MOM rebranded

Microsoft Monitoring Agent Properties Operations Manager Properties An agent can report to multipla management groupe f you use Operations Manager integration with Active Directory Domain Services (AD DS). the list of management groups can be updated automatically r Automatically update management group assignments from AD DS f you select this option. the agent will query AD DS for the list of management groups to which t has been assigned f any are found. they are added to the list Management groups that have been found in AD DS cannot be removed by using this property sheet Management Groups: Prim Man Ser Port

 

At this point we plan to upgrade all agents making sure customers are able to report to their own OMS workspace without interfering with our central SCOM and OMS installations.

SCOM 2016 is also shipped with the MMA agent and is likely the same but with a different version.

 

Let me know if you have something to add and I will update my post accordingly.

 

 

Bombshell:

If you extract the .MSI from MMASetup******.exe you end up with a MSI which installs the “old” MOM agent

Related articles

Theme by Colorlib Powered by WordPress