What happens when Operations Console, Web Console or Reporting Server is down?

Question

I am still trying to design a fault tolerant SCOM 2019 deployment.

There are enough information on the web regarding OM DB and DWH DB being on Availability Group. MS(s) being in resource group.

However, not much updated information was out there regarding HA/DR for Operations Console, Web Console and Reporting Server. Most of the information are for SCOM 2012.

What happens if my Operations Console is not available?
My monitoring and alerts will still work? I just have to install a new Operations Console and point to the management group?
I know I won't be able to configure alerts or install new management packs if the Operations Console is down.

What happens if my Web Console is not available?
I just can't view the graphs and alerts only right?

What happens if my Reporting Server is not available?
I won't see the Report workspace in my Operations Console only right? I will still get my reports right?
I just have to install SQL Reporting Service and the Reporting Server right?

I am thinking of
2 or 3 node WSFC with SQL AG for OM DB and DWH DB.

MS1 and MS2 in DC1
MS3 in DC2
The latency between DC1 and DC2 is < 5ms.

MS1, MS2 and MS3 in a resource group.

MS1 to add Operations Console, Web Console, SQL Reporting Services, Reporting Server
MS3 to add Operations Console, Web Console, SQL Reporting Services, Reporting Server

MS1 and MS3 to be NLB.

However, I read here
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/system-center/scom/plan-hadr-design?view=sc-om-2019
that Web Console does not support NLB.

If in the worse case my DC1 goes down. I can accept spending some time to install Operations Console, Web Console, SQL Reporting Services and Reporting Server. I just want to make sure there is no impact to my monitoring and alerts.

Also what if I put Web Console, Operations Console, SQL Reporting Services and Reporting Server in a VM and do a SRM to DC2 if DC1 goes down? Will this work?

Answer 1

Hi @ChongSunLimAP-4498,

Nothing happens to the SCOM functionality if the Operations Console, Web Console or Reporting is down.

What happens if my Operations Console is not available?
My monitoring and alerts will still work? I just have to install a new Operations Console and point to the management group?
I know I won't be able to configure alerts or install new management packs if the Operations Console is down.

The Operations Console will work as long as one of the SCOM Management servers to work (is online), if the SCOM management servers are not working then you've got problems.

What happens if my Web Console is not available?
I just can't view the graphs and alerts only right?

You simply won't be able to access the Web Console.

What happens if my Reporting Server is not available?
I won't see the Report workspace in my Operations Console only right? I will still get my reports right?
I just have to install SQL Reporting Service and the Reporting Server right?

You won't be able to create/view reports.

It is correct the the Web Console does not support the Microsoft Network Load Balancing (NLB), there's a uservoice request for adding NLB support for the Web Console over here:
https://systemcenterom.uservoice.com/forums/293064-general-operations-manager-feedback/suggestions/32107144-add-load-balancing-support-for-the-new-scom-1801-w

Also what if I put Web Console, Operations Console, SQL Reporting Services and Reporting Server in a VM and do a SRM to DC2 if DC1 goes down? Will this work?

I believe this is not supported, these components are not crucial to SCOM so I wouldn't worry much about them.

What really counts is that the following SCOM components are up and running and are highly available:

• SCOM Database
• SCOM Data Warehouse
• SCOM Management / Gateway Servers

---

(If the reply was helpful please don't forget to upvote or accept as answer, thank you)

Best regards,
Leon

Answer 2

Hi,

Leon provided really detailed reply here and I agree with all the points. I just want to add a few more things:

-All the data, which you see in the normal console, in the web console and also in the Reports is coming from a management server, which is querying the SCOM Databases for it. So the consoles are only an interface to display that monitoring data to the users. This tells us that those components are not critical and it is far more important to make your DBs highly available.
Even the Reporting Server and its databases (ReportSever and ReportServerTempDB) are only an instrument to get all the Reporting data from your OpsMgr or Datawarehouse DB.
Like Leon said it is far more important to make your DBs and your management servers highly available.

• The web console is actually an Microsoft IIS based web site, so you can have multilpe servers, runing it (IIS Web Farm) configure it to be highly available like described here:

Configuring IIS World Wide Web Publishing Service in a Windows Server failover cluster

or you can configure load balancing for it:

Configuring Step 3: Configure IIS Web Farm Load Balancing

• You don't have to worry about your Reporting Server going down. In the worst case you will lose your reporting capabilities untill you reinstall it. This can be done within 1-2 hours and then you can create reports again. Like already stated you don't lose any data, as it stored and pulled from your SCOM Datawarehouse.

Please go through this important article (MS Docs):
High Availability and Disaster Recovery

----------

(If the reply was helpful please don't forget to upvote or accept as answer, thank you)
Best regards,
Stoyan