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Operations Manager

SquaredUp free of charge for six months

  • 02/04/202002/04/2020
  • by Martin Ehrnst

For many years I have used SquaredUp professionally and in private projects. Their dashboard solution for SCOM and Azure Monitor has transformed how we consume, view and interact with monitoring data.

Business continuity edition of SquaredUp

Free SquaredUp edition  to support business continuity during COVID-19

Today, as I browsed their website looking for some documentation. I noticed they have a free edition of SquaredUp for SCOM to support business continuity during the COVID-19 crisis.
From the looks of it, it seems to be the full version of their product, which lets you map applications and share dashboards to your entire organization.

Here is what they say:

Just like many companies around the world, here at SquaredUp we have switched to a fully remote workplace in an effort to protect our staff, customers and local communities from COVID-19. With the sudden shift to remote working, IT teams are under great pressure to ensure critical systems remain stable and available to end-users.

[…]

That’s why today we are announcing a new Business Continuity edition of SquaredUp dashboards for SCOM, completely free for 6 months.

Richard Benwell, Founder & CEO

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Operations Manager

Cookdown for SCOM monitor, extend and integrate

  • 08/04/201906/04/2019
  • by Martin Ehrnst

It’s been a while since I worked daily with SCOM. But I still get my hands dirty with my old friend from time to time. For many years I used most of my time extending SCOMs functionality and integrating with other enterprise systems. I created a REST API before the SCOM had this available, and I have also created alot of custom management packs with PowerShell script monitors.
SCOM is one of the most used enterprise monitoring systems around, and companies will rely on it for many years to come. Integrations with SCOM will still be a key for many organizations. Luckiliy, you got a friend.

Cookdown launch

Cookdown is a new initiative aiming to blow new life in to your existing investment in SCOM and deliver stuff like ServiceNow integration and Easy Tune to help you out with those pesky overrides.

The team behind Cookdown will host a launch webinar on April 10. And if you’re interested in integration and extensions for SCOM you should definitely attend.

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SCOM Azure monitor Azure Monitor

Microsoft killed SCOM internally

  • 11/03/201911/03/2019
  • by Martin Ehrnst

Microsoft no longer uses SCOM to monitor their own workloads. They have replaced their entire SCOM based monitoring stack with Azure Monitor. Allegedly reduced alert noise and administration overhead.

Even if I have moved from SCOM as my main responsibility, I am still very much involved in the whole monitoring and management scope. Over the last years we have heard alot of talk about Azure Monitor replacing SCOM, but that cooled off after a while, maybe until now?

Technology change or cultural change

Microsoft’s story on how they killed SCOM internally was released one day before the official announcement on Operations Manager 2019. But we first heard the story at Ignite in 2018. One may ask, why the re-initiate this topic now?
For SCOM 2019, the focus is to better support hybrid cloud environments, which is good. If Microsoft doesen’t want to use it, should you?

I have written and spoken about the use of SCOM as your hub for Azure Monitor, and my opinion hasn’t changed that much. I belive that transition to you a new monitoring stack will happen with changes to the infrastructure.

When you read the article you’ll see that this was the case for Microsoft as well. There are two quotes i find partculary interesting in the announcement.

“This is not just a technology change, but a culture change,” Baxter says. “It wasn’t only that we would remove SCOM central monitoring, but we had to tell our application teams, now you’re going to manage alerts..”

It was January of 2017 when Baxter got the call. “Our goal was not just to get rid of SCOM, but to move to a Software as a Service (SaaS) solution and retire Virtual Machine (VM) based infrastructure,” she says.


The key here is change in culture. Microsoft went full on DevOps for their internal IT, and by doing that technology will change, and your monitoring will follow.
Further, the showcase mention monitoring was desentralized, which is true. But ther’s another key part of this story. The monitoring team built an integration service between their monitoring stack (Azure Monitor, app insights) and their ITSM system. This system allows for more meta data on each alert etc before ending up as a ticket.

Final notes

If you’re organization runs most of your IaaS on premises, you don’t have to make change yet. Allow the culture to drive the change. A long the way, your SCOM environment can be that integration service between Azure PaaS, FaaS, XaaS and ITSM.

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Community

Speaking at SCOM Dagen 2018

  • 01/10/201801/10/2018
  • by Martin Ehrnst

I am speaking on SCOM dagen 2018 which this year focuses on multi cloud, on premises and hybrid monitoring using Azure and SCOM.

The event focuses on how organisations can leverage new technology, and use their existing systems to become a better IT organisation. SCOM day is hosted by approved.se

My talk will scratch the surface on custom management pack development. Custom MP developement is used by service providers and larger organizations to gain better visibility in multi and hybrid cloud scenarios.

The event will also feature much more seasoned presenters like Thomas Maurer and Marcel Zehner

Hopefully I see you at SCOM dagen 2018 in Gothenburg

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Windows Admin Center

Windows Admin Center with SquaredUp/SCOM

  • 03/05/201803/05/2018
  • by Martin Ehrnst

Windows Admin Center Extension manager

Windows Admin Center (WAC) (formerly Project Honolulu) is the new, modern tool for managing servers, Hyper-V, clusters and even Windows 10 clients. Other than being fully HTML 5 driven it can integrate with third-party software via an Extension manager. All components within WAC is an extension, this means you can install, update, and delete individual components without re-installing the whole application.

As announced WAC SDK is now in public preview, meaning you and everyone else can build integrations with WAC. Luckily I have tested one integration already, and I have to say that the future looks promising.

Windows Admin Center integration with SCOM

I’ve been fortunate to be able to work closely with the team over at SquaredUp for many years now. At some point early 2018 they reached out and asked if I had looked in to Microsoft’s new server management tool, project Honolulu. SquaredUp told me they where working closely with the Windows Server team to make an integration with SCOM/SquaredUp and Honolulu.

Working for a large service provider in Norway we have many tools to provide management for our clients and a big priority is to integrate them to provide better visibility. I was immediately interested to integrate SCOM with Windows Admin Center. After installing the extension through extension manager you can access monitoring and historic performance data directly within server manager.

 

Top 3 for integrating SCOM and Windows Admin Center

  • Alerts within Microsoft’s latest management tool
  • Historic performance data combined with live telemetry
  • Maintenance mode directly from server manager

Sign up for the integration with SquaredUp and Windows Admin Center and install the extension via Extension Manager.

 

This is another good reason to drop interactive logons and get Windows Admin Center and I expect more to come over the next couple of days. If rumors are true we have some cool extensions showcased in this Microsoft Build 2018 session.

 

PS:

One way integration is cool, but I don’t see any reason for not to integrate WAC in other applications. If you feel the same way, please add your vote over at UserVoice to make that happen

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