Better together: Integrating SCOM with OMS

Microsoft’s System Center Operations Manager (SCOM) gives you a lot of information about the status and health of your system. And the Operations Management Suite (OMS) takes that one step further with excellent analysis of log data your system generates. By integrating SCOM with OMS, you can get more control over your system. Integrating SCOM with OMS will allow the SCOM agents to send data (Windows Events and performance) to the Log Analytics component of OMS solution.

The Log Analytics architecture is simple: The data sources (SCOM agents) send the information to the OMS Repository in Microsoft Azure, and from that point on we can have alerts, dashboards, PowerBI and Export (to Excel for example). Let’s get started integrating SCOM with OMS.

Log Analytics architecture
Microsoft

Creating the OMS workspace

If you haven’t it that already, open the Microsoft Azure portal, and create a new Log Analytics, and on the new blade we can define the name for the new workspace. The recommendation is to create a Resource Group just for the OMS.

Creating a new OMS workspace

After the creation, we can click on the Resource Group and on the Log Analytics item. In the OMS Workspace item, click on OMS Portal. The main page is simple and easy to use. Here is a summary of the default buttons that come with the solution:

  • Home Page: Display the initial page that will have a tile for every installed solution.
  • New dashboard: The user can create a new dashboard using built-in queries or customize them. The information to be displayed can be configured to be numbers, different types of graphical information, and so forth.
  • Log Search: In this section, the sky is the limit. The administrator can enter queries or use existing ones to customize the information and get the pertinent data.
  • My Dashboard: Easy access to eixisting dashboards.
  • Solutions Gallery: All solutions available that can be added to the current OMS. Some of them will require additional configuration.
  • Usage: Basic information of the agents that are reporting to OMS containing number of agents, data transferred, computers that have not reported in the last 24 hours, and so forth.

Microsoft OMS dashboard

Integrating SCOM and OMS

The first step is once logged on the System Center Operations Manager console, click on Administration, expand Operations Management Suite and click on Connection. A page with an introduction about the OMS will be displayed, click on Register to Operations Management Suite link, located on the right side under the Get Started section, to start the registration wizard.

Register OMS connection in System Center Operations Manager console

In the Authentication tab, type in the credential information to access the Microsoft Azure that has the OMS workspace.

In the Workspace tab, select the OMS workspace existent. In our article it is called OMSY. Click Next.

In the Workspace tab, select the OMS workspace existent.

In the Summary page, a summary containing the account and the OMS workspace will be listed. Click on Create to start the process, and after a while click on Close.

The integration changes the landscape on both sides of the fence: OMS and SCOM. When we click on Settings, Connected Sources and System Center, we will have a list of the management group connected, as depicted in the image below.

Attached management groups appear under connected sources

Logged on to OMS web console, click on Settings, Accounts, and then Workspace Information. Let’s check the Workspace ID, and after that we can go back to the Operations Manager console. Click on Monitoring, expand Operations Management Suite, click on Health State and select any of the management servers, and on the Detail View we should have the field Authentication Service URI with the same value of the workspace ID.

Check workspaceID

Adding monitored agents to OMS

By default, all SCOM agents do not send information to the OMS through the Management Servers automatically. The agents need to be configured. To add an agent to report and send information to OMS, these steps can be used:

  1. Log on to the Operations Manager Console.
  2. Click on Administration.
  3. Expand Operations Management Suite.
  4. Click on Managed Computers.
  5. Click on Add a Computer/Group.
  6. Search (Item 1) the desired SCOM agent, and click on Search (Item 2). Select the list and click on Add (Item 3), and finally OK (Item 4).

Configure agents to send information to OMS

All computers reporting to OMS will be listed under Managed Computers item. This should mean we have been successful integrating SCOM with OMS.

All computers reporting to OMS will be listed under Managed Computers

Adding the first solution: Agent Health

After integrating SCOM with OMS, we will be adding a solution called Agent Health, which provides detailed information about the agents that are reporting to OMS.

To install a new solution, click on Solution Gallery icon, and on the new page click on the desired solution, as depicted in the image below.

Microsoft OMS Solutions Gallery

A new page with a brief description of the solution with some pictures will be displayed. If that is the right application, click on Add.

All new solutions will create a tile on the main page. Some solutions may require additional configuration, and if that is the case, the tile will provide a link to configure those additional steps.

The Agent Health blade has a lot of information about the agents

When we click on the tile, we will have the Agent Health blade that will bring a lot of information about the agents, such as: Agent count over time, count of the unresponsive agents, distribution by Operating System Type, Distribution by Agent Version, and so forth.

Agent Health information tabs

We can go deeper and gather more information by opening any of the charts displayed, and the Log Search will be displayed. Over there, we can create a variety of filters to narrow the results to the level desired by the administrator.

Gather more detailed information through the Log Search functionality
By integrating SCOM with OMS, you will have more information at your fingertips, and more control over your system.

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