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How to Use Active Directory Domain Services to Assign Computers to Management Servers

 

Updated: May 13, 2016

Applies To: System Center 2012 R2 Operations Manager, System Center 2012 - Operations Manager, System Center 2012 SP1 - Operations Manager

The Operations Manager Agent Assignment and Failover Wizard creates an agent assignment rule that uses Active Directory Domain Services (AD DS) to assign computers to a management group and assign the computers' primary management server and secondary management servers. Use the following procedures to start and use the wizard.

Important

The Active Directory Domain Services container for the management group must be created prior to running the Agent Assignment and Failover Wizard.

The Agent Assignment and Failover Wizard does not deploy the agent. You must deploy the agent to the computers using MOMAgent.msi.

Changing the agent assignment rule can result in computers no longer being assigned to, and therefore monitored by, the management group. The state of these computers will change to critical, because the computers no longer send heartbeats to the management group. These computers can be deleted from the management group and, if the computer is not assigned to other management groups, the Operations Manager agent can be uninstalled.

To start the Operations Manager Agent Assignment and Failover Wizard

  1. Log on to the computer with an account that is a member of the Operations Manager Administrators role.

  2. In the Operations console, click Administration.

  3. In the Administration workspace, click Management Servers.

  4. In the Management Servers pane, right-click the management server or gateway server to be Primary Management Server for the computers returned by the rules you will create in the following procedure, and then click Properties.

    Note

    Gateway servers work like management servers in this context.

  5. In the Management Server Properties dialog box, click the Auto Agent Assignment tab, and then click Add to start the Agent Assignment and Failover Wizard.

To use the Operations Manager Agent Assignment and Failover Wizard to assign computers to a management group

  1. In the Agent Assignment and Failover Wizard, on the Introduction page, click Next.

    Note

    The Introduction page does not appear if the wizard has been run and Do not show this page again was selected.

  2. On the Domain page, do the following:

    Note

    To assign computers from multiple domains to a management group, run the Agent Assignment and Failover Wizard for each domain.

    • Select the domain of the computers from the Domain name drop-down list. The management server and all computers in the AD Agent Assignment resource pool must be able to resolve the domain name.

      Important

      The management server and the computers that you want to manage must be in two-way trusted domains.

    • Set Select Run As Profile to the Run As profile associated with the Run As account provided when MOMADAdmin.exe was run for the domain. The default account used to perform agent assignment is the default action account specified during Setup, also referred to as the Active Directory Based Agent Assignment Account. This account represents credentials used when connecting to the specified domain’s Active Directory and modifying Active Directory objects, and should match the account specified when running MOMAdmin.exe. If this was not the account used to run MOMADAdmin.exe, select Use a different account to perform agent assignment in the specified domain, and then select or create the account from the Select Run As Profile drop-down list. The Active Directory Based Agent Assignment Account profile must be configured to use an Operations Manager administrator account which is distributed to all servers in the AD Agent Assignment resource pool.

      Note

      For more information about Run As profiles and Run As accounts, see Managing Run As Accounts and Profiles.

  3. On the Inclusion Criteria page, either type the LDAP query for assigning computers to this management server in the text box and then click Next, or click Configure. If you click Configure, do the following:

    1. In the Find Computers dialog box, type the desired criteria for assigning computers to this management server.

      The following LDAP query will only return computers running the Windows Server operating system and exclude domain controllers - (&(objectCategory=computer)(operatingsystem=*server*)). This example LDAP query will only return computers running the Windows Server operating system and excludes domain controllers and servers hosting the Operations Manager or Service Manager management server role - (&(objectCategory=computer)(operatingsystem=*server*)(!(userAccountControl:1.2.840.113556.1.4.803:=8192)(!(servicePrincipalName=*MSOMHSvc*))))

      For more information about LDAP queries, see Creating a Query Filter and Active Directory: LDAP Syntax Filters.

    2. Click OK, and then click Next.

  4. On the Exclusion Criteria page, type the FQDN of computers that you explicitly want to prevent from being managed by this management server, and then click Next.

    Important

    You must separate the computer FQDNs that you type with a semicolon, colon, or a new line (CTRL+ENTER).

  5. On the Agent Failover page, either select Automatically manage failover and click Create or select Manually configure failover. If you select Manually configure failover, do the following:

    1. Clear the check boxes of the management servers to which you do not want the agents to failover.

    2. Click Create.

      Note

      With the Manually configure failover option, you must run the wizard again if you subsequently add a management server to the management group and want the agents to failover to the new management server.

  6. In the Management Server Properties dialog box, click OK.

    Note

    It can take up to one hour for the agent assignment setting to propagate in AD DS.

When complete, the a rule is created in the management group and targets the AD Assignment Resource Pool class. This rule includes the agent assignment configuration information that you specified in the Agent Assignment and Failover Wizard, such as the LDAP query.

To confirm if the management group successfully published its information in Active Directory, search for Event ID 11470 from source Health Service Modules in the Operations Manager event log on the management server the agent assignment rule was defined on. In the description it should state that it successfully added all the computers that were the added to the agent assignment rule. In Active Directory, under the OperationsManager<ManagementGroupName> container, you should see the service connection point (SCP) objects created.

See Also

Integrating Active Directory and Operations Manager
Using Active Directory Domain Services to Assign Computers to Operations Manager Management Groups
How to Create an Active Directory Domain Services Container for a Management Group
Changing the Active Directory Integration Setting for an Agent