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Getting Started with the System Center Operations Manager (SCOM) On-Demand Assessment

The System Center Operations Manager (SCOM) Assessment is a proactive service to diagnose potential issues with your on-premises or Azure VM (IaaS) based Operations Manager environment. The assessment supports Operations Manager environments running System Center 2012 SP1 Operations Manager, System Center 2012 R2 Operations Manager, System Center 2016 Operations Manager, System Center Operations Manager Branch 1801, System Center Operations Manager Branch 1807, and System Center 2019 Operations Manager. The environment must be in a single Management Group to include one or more Management Server(s), one Operations Manager Database and one Operations Manager Data Warehouse.

The recommendations cover areas such as Operations Manager Management Group (Design, Specifications, and Management Pack Findings), Management Servers Health (Specifications, Event Log, and Performance), Data Layer Health (Instances, Databases, SQL Server Errors, Tables, Grooming, and Backup), and Operational Excellence.

This assessment is designed to provide you with specific actionable guidance grouped in Focus Areas to mitigate risks to your System Center Operations Manager environment.

The System Center Operations Manager Assessment focuses on several key pillars, including:

  • Operations Manager Management Group
    • Design, Specifications, Management Pack Findings
  • Management Servers Health
    • Specifications, Event Log, Performance
  • Data Layer Health
    • Instances, Databases, SQL Server Errors, Tables, Grooming, Backup
  • Operational Excellence

Run the SCOM Assessment

Prerequisites

To take full advantage of the On-Demand Assessments available through Services Hub, you must:

  1. Have linked an active Azure Subscription to Services Hub and added the System Center Operations Manager Assessment. For more information please see: Assessment Setup Guide or watch the how to link video.

  2. A domain account with the following rights:

    • Member of the local Administrators group on all servers in the environment (All Operations Manager Roles - Management Server, OpsMgr Database, Data Warehouse, Reporting, Web Console, and Gateway).
    • Operation Manager Administrator Role for the management group being assessed.
    • SysAdmin role on all Microsoft SQL servers or instances used by Operations Manager.

  3. Review the Pre-Requisites document for the SCOM Assessment. This document explains the detailed technical documentation of the SCOM Assessment and the preparation needed to run the assessment. It also documents the different types of data collected by the assessment.

Note

On average, it takes an hour to initially configure your environment to run an On-Demand Assessment. After you run an assessment you can review the data in Azure Log Analytics. This will provide you with a prioritized list of recommendations, categorized across six focus areas. This allows you and your team to quickly understand risk levels, the health of your environments, act to decrease risk, and improve your overall IT health.

Set up the System Center Operations Manager Assessment

Note

You will only be able to successfully setup the assessment once you have linked your Azure Subscription to Services Hub and added the System Center Operations Manager Assessment from IT Health -> Assessments On-Demand Assessments in Services Hub.*

  1. On the data collection machine create the following folder: C:\LogAnalytics\SCOM (or any other folder you want, besides C:\ODA which is reserved by the system).

  2. Open regular PowerShell (not ISE) in Administrator mode and run the following cmdlet:

    Add-SCOMAssessmentTask – ServerName  <YourServerName>  -WorkingDirectory <Directory> -LogAnalyticsWorkspaceId <WorkspaceID>

    Where <YourServerName> is the fully qualified domain name (FQDN) or the NetBIOS name of one of the management servers and <Directory> is the path to an existing directory used to store the files created while collecting and analyzing the data from the environment.

    <WorkingDirectory> is a path to an existing directory used to store the files created while collecting and analyzing the data from the environment.

    <WorkspaceId> - Provide ID for the Log Analytics workspace that will be used to store the uploaded data.

    Note

    If the directory does not exist, it must be created before you continue with the execution.

  3. Data collection is triggered by the scheduled task named “SCOMAssessment -ServerName <YourServerName>” within an hour of running the previous script and then every 7 days. The task can be modified to run on a different date/time or even forced to run immediately from the task scheduler library > Microsoft > Operations Management Suite > AOI*** > Assessments > SCOMAssessment.

  4. During collection and analysis, data is temporarily stored under the Working Directory folder that was configured during setup.

  5. After a few hours, your assessment results will be available on your Log Analytics and Services Hub Dashboard. You can go to see the results by going into Services Hub > IT Health > On-Demand Assessments and then selecting View all recommendations against the active assessment.

  6. If you wish to get a Microsoft Accredited Engineer to go over the issues about your Operations Manager environment with you, you can contact your Microsoft Representative and ask them about the Remote or Onsite CSA Led Delivery.

Agreement Remote Engineer Onsite Engineer
Premier SCOM Remote Datasheet SCOM Onsite Datasheet
Unified SCOM Remote Datasheet SCOM Onsite Datasheet