Microsoft Monitoring Agent (MMA) being reinstalled by Automanage

Question

As MMA (Microsoft Monitoring Agent) will be retired on August 2024 I decided to go AMA (Azure Monitoring Agent) right away, even though it is known some of its functionalities still on preview.

So I uninstalled MMA via script below (with a foreach targeting all my machines), I also assigned Azure policies to not have MMA installed on my environment and all the policies for self-configuring AMA (DCRs, Workspaces, etc).

$app = Get-WmiObject -ClassName Win32_Product | Where-Object { $.name -eq "Microsoft Monitoring Agent"}
$app.Uninstall()

Problem is my machines were reinstalling MMA out of the blue. So I went all the way down to hunt the culprit of doing that: GPO, SCCM, Scripts, you name it. I finally found out Azure Automanage was the one reinstalling MMA so I had to disable it from my environment. 

 

Are any of you aware of this issue? 

 

Most important: is there a way to have Automanage working without reinstalling MMA?

 

In my case Automanage helps a lot as I don't need to apply lots and lots of settings manually but as it is reinstalling MMA I cannot enable it.

@Sena Gangbe @Alexandre Debargis

Answer 1

Hi Antonio,

Although it's possible to install AMA directly I've been installing Arc and then I use collections rules out of Azure to push out the features I need - eg. AMA, FIM, etc.

Have you considered installing Arc instead?

Or if you're just referring to VMs inside azure then you should just need to set up a data collection rule and there should be no need for running scripts.

Or if you can provide the steps to replicate your problem I'd be happy to try it.

Reference

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/azure-arc/servers/plan-at-scale-deployment

Answer 2

Same issue here. I have started to use automanage, but this still installs the old log analytics agents, causing my Azure Monitoring Agent migration to go haywire. I have disabled automanage for now.

To answer your question whether it is possible to use automanage without reinstalling MMA, yes that is possible, but you'll have to disable Machine Insights Monitoring autoconfig, Update Management, Change Tracking and Inventory, Azure Automation Account, Log analytics workspace in your configuration profile. This basically leaves you with Automanage for Backup, Antimalware, Boot Diagnostics, Windows Admin Center and security baseline.

Answer 3

Add "LogAnalytics/UseAma": true to your configuration profile.