Alex Frankel (Operations Manager Engineering Blog)

To create an ALERT, simply execute a SEARCH QUERY and save it as an ALERT

You will get a configuration panel on your right – give it a name, schedule the time interval OMS checks for this ALERT, set a threshold to trigger the ALERT, indicate to send a NOTIFICATION and/or to execute a RUNBOOK from Azure Automation as remediation.

DONE !!!! AND HAPPY ALERTING !!!!

The OMS agent for Linux enables rich and real-time analytics for operational data (syslog, performance, alerts, inventory) from Linux servers, Docker containers, and monitoring tools like Nagios, Zabbix, and System Center Operations Manager. Onboarding a Linux server takes less than five minutes and can be done with our free tier OMS plans. Here are the many supported Linux operating systems:

If you are interested to test the new OMS agent in a lab and try some of its capabilities for the LAMP stack and its integration with Nagios, then you can follow the following steps to install the LAMP stack and Nagios on an Ubuntu server.

Installing the LAMP stack

Installing Apache and PHP
sudo apt-get install python-software-properties

sudo apt-get install wget apache2 apache2-utils php5 libapache2-mod-php5 build-essential libgd2-xpm-dev

Installing MySQL and adding PHP package
sudo apt-get install mysql-server php5-mysql

During the installation you will be prompt to set the secure password for MYSQL, however you can also execute the following command (after installing MySQL) for initial settings of MySQL server. This command will ask you to set root password and apply for many security changes.

sudo mysql_secure_installation

After installing all services on your system, start all required services.

sudo /etc/init.d/apache2 restart
sudo /etc/init.d/mysql restart

Now create a new nagios user account and setup a password to this account

sudo useradd nagios
sudo passwd nagios

Now create a group for nagios setup “g.nagios” and add nagios user to this group. Also add nagios user in apache group.

sudo groupadd g.nagios
sudo usermod -a -G g.nagios nagios
sudo usermod -a -G g.nagios www-data

After installing required dependencies and adding user accounts. Let’s start with Nagios core installation. Download latest nagios core service from official site (you should download the latest version).

cd /opt/sudo wget https://prdownloads.sourceforge.net/sourceforge/nagios/nagios-4.0.8.tar.gz
sudo tar xzf nagios-4.0.8.tar.gzcd nagios-4.0.8
sudo ./configure –with-command-group=g.nagios
sudo make allsudo make installsudo make install-init
sudo make install-config
sudo make install-commandmode

Now create nagios apache2 configuration file.
sudo vim /etc/apache2/sites-enabled/nagios.conf

ScriptAlias /nagios/cgi-bin “/usr/local/nagios/sbin” 
<Directory “/usr/local/nagios/sbin”>  
Options ExecCGI  
AllowOverride None  
Order allow,deny  
Allow from all  
AuthName “Restricted Area”  
AuthType Basic  
AuthUserFile /usr/local/nagios/etc/htpasswd.users  
Require valid-user
</Directory> 

Alias /nagios “/usr/local/nagios/share” 
<Directory “/usr/local/nagios/share”>  
Options None  
AllowOverride None  
Order allow,deny  
Allow from all  
AuthName “Restricted Area”  
AuthType Basic  
AuthUserFile /usr/local/nagios/etc/htpasswd.users  
Require valid-user
</Directory>

Configuring Apache Authentication

We need to setup apache authentication for user nagiosadmin. Untill more specific reason use this user name as “nagiosadmin” else you would required more changes in configuration.
sudo htpasswd -c /usr/local/nagios/etc/htpasswd.users nagiosadmin 

Now restart Apache service to make the new settings take effect.
sudo service apache2 restart

Installing Nagios Plugins

After installing and configuring Nagios core service, Download latest nagios-plugins source and install using following commands.

cd /opt

sudo wget https://nagios-plugins.org/download/nagios-plugins-2.0.3.tar.gz
sudo tar xzf nagios-plugins-2.0.3.tar.gz
cd nagios-plugins-2.0.3 

Now compile and install nagios plugins
sudo ./configure –with-nagios-user=nagios –with-nagios-group=nagios
sudo make
sudo make install

Access Nagios Web Interface

You will notice that there is a red X icon stating that Nagios is not running, and clicking on a CGI link will download the appropriate file – not the intended result.

The fix is simple – enable CGI!

sudo a2enmod cgi
sudo service apache2 restart
sudo service nagios restart

Now you have successfully installed and configured Nagios Monitoring Server core service in your system.

Enabling Apache HTTP Server Performance Counters

If Apache HTTP Server is detected on the computer when the omsagent bundle is installed, a performance monitoring provider for Apache HTTP Server will be automatically installed. This provider relies on an Apache “module” that must be loaded into the Apache HTTP Server in order to access performance data. The module can be loaded with the following command:

sudo /opt/microsoft/apache-cimprov/bin/apache_config.sh -c 

If you installed the Agent before installing Apache, then you need to install the provider:

Extract the Agent Package
sudo sh omsagent-1.0.0-47.universal.x64.sh –extract

install the Apache Provider
sudo sh ./apache-cimprov-1.0.0-675.universal.1.x86_64.sh –install

you can also install the MySQL Provider
sudo sh ./mysql-cimprov-1.0.0-438.universal.1.x86_64.sh –install

Use OMS Search

• AZURE NETWORKING ANALYTICS
• CONTAINERS
• APP DEPENDENCY MONITOR

AZURE NETWORKING ANALYTICS (ANA)
ANA will provide insights across the Azure network by providing visibility into network security rules.

CONTAINERS
This solution allows to have visibility into Docker Containers, and enables diagnostics analysis to troubleshooting failures across Public and Private Cloud environments.

APP DEPENDENCY MONITOR (ADM) – The coolest ever !!!!
ADM uses BlueStripe technology (Microsoft acquired BlueStripe-MSFT & BLUESTRIPE) to discover and map process-to-process connections for Windows and Linux servers with zero per-definition required. ADM shows your servers as you think of them – interconnected systems that deliver service and rely on other technologies. Dependency maps show a 360 view of your systems, including application components, service dependency, and infrastructure configurations.

The CDP adds a new way to rapidly provision DPs, especially
in situation you do not have the ability to scale out the current environment
or can’t provide new server workloads. CDPs also allow you to service
internet-clients without having to set up an internet facing ConfigMgr server
role.

In order to set up and use CDPs, you need the
following prerequisites:

• A Windows Azure Subscription (https://www.windowsazure.com/en-us/)
• A certificate for the management ofWindows Azure
• A certificate for the new cloud service
• ConfigMgr 2012 SP1

The current Windows Server version is Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1. Until today Windows Server was a great OS for a server and its devices, but the new Windows Server 2012 is a cloud optimized OS and represents a big leap forward, helping IT progress on virtualizing network and storage infrastructure for multitenant support.

Ever since Cloud Computing has becoming the new IT Paradigm, many companies are exploring this new frontier and many of them want to make their data center into private clouds, so they can leverage the advantages of faster, more flexible allocation and provisioning of server, storage, and software resources. EMC and VMware has long been the first choice for organizations looking for virtualization component saturating almost the entire market with their solutions, but Microsoft is investing a great deal of energy to be the go-to provider. It is not the first time that Microsoft has stepped in after other have already started and gained terrain; more than one occasion in past Microsoft has proved to eventually dominate the space it jumped into late: the enterprise server space, the internet browser space, the video game console space (xbox), etc..

Windows Server 2012 and its new hypervisor version (Hyper-V 3) will help Microsoft become that first stop for customers as it steps up to be extremely competitive with VMware than ever before. Along the biggest advantage related to its price, with Windows Server 2012 and System Center 2012, Microsoft has many new and better functionality story to tell.

Windows Server 2012 has the ability to scale in an efficient and cost-effective manner across a private cloud and securely connect to external cloud services, so that IT Pros can proficiently manage their infrastructure, maximizing uptime and minimizing downtime.

Using Windows Server 2012 Hyper-V, organization can delivery fully isolated, multi-tenant clouds, enable high scale and low data center and provide the most manageable, extensible and interoperable platform for cloud.

Following some new enhanced features:

· Multi-tenancy, Isolation & Quality of Service (QoS)

o Hyper-V Network Virtualization

o Hyper-V Extensible Switch

o QoS bandwidth management

o Resource Metering

· Massive Scale & Performance

o Support for up to 160 logical processors per host

o Support for up to 2 TB of memory per host

o Support for up to 32 virtual processors per virtual machine

o Support for up to 512 GB of memory per virtual machine

o New VHDX virtual hard disk format with support for up to 16 TB per virtual disk and support for next-generation hard disks with larger disk sectors

o Hyper-V Pass Through Disks have no maximum limit other than what is supported by the guest OS

o Hyper-V Single Root-I/O Virtualization (SR-IOV)

o Hyper-V Offloaded Data Transfer (ODX)

o Guest Fiber Channel

· Complete VM Mobility

o Live Migrate VMs with nothing but a network connection

o Live Storage Migration with no downtime storage

o Concurrent Live Migrations and Concurrent Live Storage Migrations

o Live Migration Prioritization

o Hyper-V support for SMB2.2 file based storage

o Hyper-V replica

After years of playing catch-up to VMware the upcoming version of Hyper-V is wowing the Microsoft faithful with unique new features, and gaining the attention of VMware users.

Hyper-V exceeds VMware in three areas: support for cheap server-attached storage and Just A Bunch Of Disks (JBOD) with features such as Share Nothing Live Migration; site-to-site failover for disaster recovery with a feature called Hyper-V Replica; and virtual networking with a feature called Hyper-V Extensible Switch. In addition, Hyper-V now scales to massive sizes, supporting more logical processors and allowing each virtual machine access to more virtual CPUs.

Right now, "you have to store virtual machines on a SAN This changes in Windows 8. Hyper-V will be able to store virtual machines on a file server. Microsoft invested in remote direct memory access (RDMA) and built a new version of the Server Message Block file server protocol, dubbed SMB 2.2, which uses RDMA. This lets Hyper-V access files on another machine's file server, and allows users to build an active/active cluster between server-attached storage devices. So if a file server fails, it automatically fails over to another one

Live Migration will be supported between the server-attached storage devices, too, a feature Microsoft calls Share Nothing Live Migration. This is something "no one else in the market is really able to do today," Schutz says. Share Nothing allows a virtual hard drive and a virtual machine to be transferred between server-attached disks over a network connection.

VMware disagrees that Share Nothing Live Migration is unique to Hyper-V but admits that the ability is not a feature included with vSphere. "VMware supports it through a product called vSphere Storage Appliance (VSA), which makes server-attached storage appear to the vSphere hosts as shared storage. VSA fully supports VMware vMotion and High Availability.

Microsoft is going to have to push hard to convince customer who are comfortable with VMware to switch, but it's obvious that the company is aggressively looking to do just that. Time will gladly award Microsoft has a company with the Cloud Computing solution that you can BANK ON IT!!!!

Probably many of you have installed Office Excel and Visio (2010) on the same server where Share Point Server 2010 is installed, so that facilitates development. Well, if it so maybe you have face my same issue when trying to publish the document directly to the Share Point library. Every time you try you'd get an error message "You can't open this location using this program".

The reason that it doesn't work is because you'll need to install the Desktop Experience Features on the server in order to perform this function.

Also if you try to save an Excel Workbook and getting the error "Unexpected Error" or " File cannot be saved to this location", you need to configure the Protected View security feature in Office 2010. When installing Office 2010 on the same machine as the Share Point Server you have to disable the Protected View as described next:

· Open Office Application Excel 2010

· File

· Options

· Trust Centre

· Trust Centre Settings

· Protected View

· Uncheck all 3 check boxes under protected view section

There are situation where you have changed the computer name and nothing happens to the original computer record in SCCM console. You wait few minutes an hour and even the next day but the System Device in SCCM still shows the old name. So you start wondering what could went wrong.

Well nothing went wrong .. You'll need to wait the next Heartbeat Discovery cycle in order to see the actual new name in SCCM, or you can just force an early Heartbeat Discovery (minimum 1 Hour).

Old on a minute .. it is not over yet…

If by any chance the computer is in domain – probably it is – and the AD System Discovery starts before the Heartbeat Discovery than a new record will be created instead of updating it, leaving you with 2 records that basically are the same computer. In this last case you need to delete the old one.

The conclusion is : I set the Heartbeat Discovery to run before the AD System Discovery.

As all of you know, one of the first installation steps is the Update Prerequisite Components.

If you don’t have access to internet on your SCCM server then you have to download the required updates on another computer, import the folder on the SCCM server and have SCCM setup pointing to the folder.

In the previous version (SCCM 2007) the command was Setup.exe /downloads <target dir>. In SCCM 2012 this has changed, and the new command is SetupDL.exe <target dir>.

The SetupDL.exe file is located in the SMSSETUP\BIN\X64 directory.

In its ongoing search for new products and new markets companies like Microsoft engage in growth by expanding the existing business units and by merge with others by acquiring other companies. During this process Microsoft has not stop delivering new products and line of products.

The value proposition delivered by most companies lies in the way they manage their business processes, not their technology. Technology is a mean to this end, but technology is not an end in itself.

Since the cloud is the new frontier for the new business era, Microsoft is developing new products and solution every day, making the company the number one partner for its business process, helping them to reach their goal with solid and reliable solution.

A new product that Microsoft has recently announce is System Center Advisor formerly known as Project Atlanta. SC Advisor is available in the Release Candidate version and soon will be available RTM. SC Advisor together with Windows Intune are making traditional in-house services like desktop management and monitoring available right from the cloud.

Taking right from the Microsoft site (https://www.microsoft.com/systemcenter/en/us/Advisor.aspx

) here a brief description:

System Center Advisor (formerly Microsoft codename Atlanta) is a cloud service that enables IT professionals to assess their server configuration and proactively avoid problems. With System Center Advisor, support staff are able to resolve issues faster by accessing current and historical configuration data, all with the security features that meet their needs. Additionally, System Center Advisor helps reduce downtime by providing suggestions for improvement, and notifying customers of key updates specific to their configuration.

Proactively avoid problems

· Increase awareness around the state of server deployment through assessment of configuration, and alerts for configuration-related issues.

· Resolve issues before they become critical through ongoing assessments of the server environment for undetected configuration issues.

· Assess and understand server configurations from virtually anywhere from a cloud service with security features that meet customer needs.

Resolve issues faster

· Decrease time to resolve issues by easily viewing configuration changes over time with historical data.

· Decrease time to resolve issues with the ability to share server configuration data with internal support staff or Microsoft Customer Support Services.

· Accelerate problem solving with instant access to step by step guidance , self-help information and community forums related to identified issues.

Help reduce downtime and improve performance

· Increase performance and availability of servers by understanding configuration state and receiving suggestions for improvement to help ensure availability.

· Help reduce server downtime by getting notifications for key updates specific to the configuration of the server environment.

· Increase collaboration between IT professionals through centralized data of an organization’s deployment configurations.