A complete makeover
For those of you that come here frequenty, last few days a lot has happened. First, the looks of of the blog has changed completely from a blue colourful the...
Posts by Year
2021
Sponsored: Top 7 challenges with Azure Monitor and how you can fix it.
In the cloud adoption era, organizations urge to deploy their system to a modern cloud for a competitive edge. Microsoft made great strides in providing ente...
2020
ARM Templates: Deploying Azure Monitor Alerts
In my series of blog posts about working with ARM templates I have gone through a lot of different use cases. In the last post I covered how to deploy a nest...
ARM Templates: Working with nested templates in Azure
Working with nested templates in Azure ARM templates is something that not all are using, and I don´t think everyone knows about it either. Nested templates ...
ARM Templates: Working with parameters in Azure
Working with parameters in Azure is something I want to discuss a bit more than what I´ve done earlier. Azure tags have recently been covered on this blog, m...
ARM Templates: Working with tags in Azure
Working with tags in Azure is a really important thing. It´s something that everyone should do as soon as they start to move workloads to Azure. In my last t...
ARM Templates: Working with naming conventions
In my last post which you can find here, I wrote about how to get started writing ARM templates for you Azure deployments. In the end I provided an ARM templ...
Getting started with Azure ARM templates
The first time I heard about JSON and ARM templates together with Azure in the same sentence, was in Chicago at Microsoft Ignite back in 2015. My first thoug...
New challenges on the horizon
A lot has happened since my last blog post, and my motivation to write new blog posts has not really been on top. Due to the fact that my personal focus has ...
2019
Azure Governance – What´s that and why should I care?
Ever since Azure was a new thing and before it “went live”, we´ve been fed with how easy it is to get started using different services. One of my first exper...
Get notified on Azure service health issues
More and more services are moving to the cloud, Azure is one of the larges players but AWS and Google Cloud are also two large players. But just because reso...
Looking at the available Azure Monitor data sources
The available Azure Monitor data sources is an interesting topic. Azure Monitor is a really powerful monitoring solution solely based in Azure, with a lot of...
Azure Monitor - Getting started with alerting
Azure Monitor is a quite new addition to the monitoring sphere when talking about monitoring Microsoft technologies. Traditionally it has been System Center ...
Migrating lots of agents to Azure Log Analytics
A while ago we were involved in a project with one of our customers where our goal was to connect a large amount of servers to Azure Log Analytics. They had ...
The OMS portal is retired
Last week on January 15th was the last day of the OMS portal before its retirement. It has now completely moved to the Azure portal instead. Since Operation...
2018
What´s new in SCOM 2019 and 1901
A few weeks ago, we held our annual event called SCOM Day in Gothenburg with about 80 attendees. This year we focused on hybrid monitoring using SCOM 2019/19...
Monitoring the VMware environment – Part 1
Lately I have been working a lot with monitoring VMware using SCOM for some of our largest customers and have gotten to think about this more and more. Even ...
Looking at the news in SCOM 1807
As I said in my last post, SCOM 1807 was released a few weeks back and I explained a little about the news and what they meant. This time it´s about showing ...
SCOM 1807 has been released
So, the summer is almost over and I´m back from my vacation. In other words, time to dig into things again. A couple of weeks ago Microsoft launched System C...
SCOM 1801 has been relased
Yesterday the news finally came, System Center 1801 has been relased. An with that, of course SCOM 1801. This is the first release in the new Semi-Annual Ch...
2017
News about SCOM 1801
Earlier this year, Microsoft announced a coming big change for the System Center suite. Instead of launching new versions every fourth or fifth year as befor...
Load-Balancing the SCOM Web Console - Part 2
It´s time for the second post about load-balancing the SCOM Web Console that I started publishing last week in this two-post series. In the first post I show...
Load-Balancing the SCOM Web Console - Part 1
A lot of companies that uses SCOM as a part of their processes wants to delegate control over certain areas to certain teams responsible for different servic...
Measure SCOM Tasks using PowerShell
Sometimes when working with SCOM, one hears that “SCOM is slow” or “the console is taking forever to do this and that”. I won’t be speculating about the reas...
Start Maintenance Mode directly from the server
UPDATE 2018-09-07 I have rewritten parts of the script to function with SCOM 1801 and newer as well. The script in this post is meant to run on SCOM 2016, b...
Installing OMS and Service Map Agents with PowerShell
Back in January this year I wrote a post about how you can install the OMS agent using PowerShell. Now the time has come to include the Service Map agent in ...
Update your alert custom fields with SCOM notification channels
A while back I got a question from a customer who wanted to update some of their alerts with the name of the server generating the alert. This can somewhat b...
Getting started with Azure Automation DSC
One of the things I work with in my role as a product manager for Operations Management Suite (OMS) is the automation part of the suite. In this case, it mea...
A deeper look at OMS Service Map
A while back I wrote a post where I went through the basics and how to get started with the new feature Service Map, which is a part of OMS nowadays. Read th...
Update Rollup 2 for System Center 2016 Operations Manager
So the time has come for the second update rollup of this generation of System Center 2016 Operations Manager to be released. Microsoft made it available tod...
Creating dynamic Distributed Applications in SCOM
For the past two years or so I have been talking a lot about how to monitor business services, and most of the time I have done this with Savision Live Maps ...
A first look at OMS Service Map
A couple of months back, Microsoft made Service Map available as a part of OMS. It all began about 18 months ago when Microsoft acquired Bluestripe and their...
Installing OMS agent with PowerShell
Operations Management Suite (OMS) is a great thing and easy (and fast) to getting started with just installing an agent on a server. However, installing OMS ...
2016
Monitor VMware with OMS
One of the better releases in a while has been the ability to monitor VMware with OMS. Earlier this year a new solution was released for OMS Log Analytics fo...
Windows Server 2016 and System Center 2016 has been released
Yesterday Microsoft Ignite started with a big bang and during the keynote several cool things were shown, some for the first time and some that we´ve seen be...
Create your own solutions in OMS
My last big blog post about monitoring Nano server is dated May 17th which makes it approximately 6 weeks since then. Out of that 6 weeks, 3 weeks have been ...
Set up and monitor Nano server
It´s been a while since I wrote anything now (5 weeks approximately, which is not okay) and it´s time to monitor Nano Server again. Due to some really annoyi...
Visualizing OMS data in Power BI
If you just like me have been using OMS now for a while and collected a serious amount of data, collecting everything from a ton of events to the update stat...
Monitoring Nano Server using SCOM
This post is covering Windows Server 2016 and SCOM 2016 TP4. A new post covering Windows Server 2016 and SCOM 2016 TP5 can be found here. So its time for so...
Getting started - Nano Server
When Windows Server 2016 is launched later this year, we will be able to choose from three versions to deploy, the full version including the complete user i...
Real time performance monitoring and visualization in OMS
So it´s that wonderful time again. The sun is shining, it´s almost spring here in (the southern parts of) Sweden and I´m getting into a new role in a new com...
Use Run as accounts with hybrid worker groups in Azure Automation
In my earlier posts about what you can do with Azure Automation and OMS I have been using the Hybrid Worker Role for some, and for others I have run them dir...
Reset AD user password using Azure Automation
So the time has come, holidays are over and we have stepped into another year. This time it says 2016 and I think we are looking into a great year with tons ...
Summary of the year 2015
Now that my blog has been up and running for a complete year, the time has come for a summary of the year 2015. Of course this statistic should be shared wit...
2015
A first look at SCOM 2016 Technical Preview 4
And so that beautiful time has come again (I admit I´m a little late with this one as its been out for about three weeks now) when a new technical preview ha...
Create Service accounts using Azure Automation and OMS
The last weeks I have blogged more about what you can do with Microsoft Operations Management Suite (OMS) and Azure Automation. This have ended up in three p...
Delegate automation rights in Azure Automation
If you have been following my blog for a while, you might remember two of my later posts which concerns the creation of AD users, both on-prem and in Azure A...
Create Azure AD users with Azure Automation
A few weeks back I wrote this post about how you can use OMS and Azure Automation to create new users in your on-prem AD. That solution uses the Hybrid Worke...
Import new modules into Azure Automation
When you start working with Azure Automation, you will most likely run into the fact that not all of the PowerShell modules you are used to is available in t...
Introducing the OMS Linux agent
Earlier this week while I was busy writing the post about OMS and Azure Automation, Microsoft made the Linux agent for Operations Management Suite (OMS) avai...
Automatically create AD users with Azure Automation and OMS
Every time a new employee starts its employment in a company, a new user should be created, a new mailbox should be created etc. Does this seem familiar? Hav...
Microsoft Operations Management Suite in your pocket
Until today, I haven’t been able to run Microsoft Operations Management Suite on my phone since I´m still an Android user (I know, shame on me). There has be...
Near real time performance monitoring in OMS
When it comes to monitoring servers, traditionally SCOM has played a big part in taking care of it. Nowadays, Operations Management Suite works as a compleme...
Separate servers based on site in Operations Manager
In times of the cloud and when everyone is more or less considering moving to the cloud, often there is a need to separate what is deployed in the cloud and ...
Connect your on-prem servers to Azure
For a while now, my on-prem lab environment have been almost at its max capacity and since I have moved from an apartment to a house by the sea for the summe...
Creating custom fields in OMS
Operations Management Suite (OMS) is great in gathering data about your environment and letting you dig into the data gathered to find intrusions for example...
Analyzing Linux Syslogs in OMS
In my earlier posts regarding Operations Management Suite (OMS) I have covered how to get the information from the servers both directly from the agent but a...
Onboarding Operations Management Suite: Part 2
In my last post which you can find here, I showed how you can connect your on-prem SCOM management group to Operations Management Suite. The procedure is the...
Onboarding Operations Management Suite: Part 1
During the keynote at Microsoft Ignite on May 4th in Chicago, Satya Nadella announced the availability of Microsoft Operations Management Suite. To those of ...
A first look at the SCOM 2016 Technical Preview 2
As I mentioned in my last post which you can find here, SCOM 2016 has quite a lot of nice new features such as the scheduled maintenance mode. What I will sh...
System Center 2016 Operations Manager - What´s new
So as i mentioned in my last post, I was one of the lucky 23.000 persons who got to attend Microsoft Ignite in Chicago where IT professionals, exhibitors and...
Meet the Microsoft Operations Management Suite
This monday during the keynote of Microsoft Ignite in Chicago, Satya Nadella announced the new “Operations Management Suite” which is the new name for Azure ...
Microsoft Ignite 2015
When i wrote my last post about Microsoft Ignite which you can find here, the event were 30 days away. Now it’s only 2 days away and I’m writing this post on...
Send mail from SCOM
Have you ever wanted to send mail from SCOM just to notify someone of an alert and to easily provide them with all the information they need? Do you wish you...
User rights in SCOM
One thing that I often come across in my projects of implementing SCOM at customers is the ability to assign user rights in SCOM to specific users or groups....
Sessions to attend at Ignite
It is now only 30 days until I fly out from Copenhagen to New York and then Chicago to attend Microsoft Ignite. Ignite is a new event which merges several di...
Send SCOM reports through e-mail
One thing that might not be as obvious as you would wish in SCOM is how to send reports through e-mail. Inside SCOM there is no possibility to configure a SM...
Microsoft Ignite
About 10 months ago i flew out to Houston, Texas to attend TechEd North America 2014. Now, I´ve been given the possibility to also attend this years event. T...
Capacity planning in Azure Operational Insights
When i moved my blog around new years eve i mentioned that I´m going to look more into Azure in this blog and one thing that I´ve written about earlier is Az...
Using your onprem AD account with Azure Operational Insights
Besides from moving my blog to my own again, I´m also broadening the scope of what I´m going to write about from only covering Operations Manager which will ...
2014
Connect servers directly to Azure Operational Insights
If you´ve been around my blog for a while, you might have seen my post about how to onboard the new System Center Advisor Preview which Microsoft made availa...
System Center Advisor is now Azure Operational Insights
Yesterday during the keynote at TechEd Europe in Barcelona, Microsoft announced the preview of Azure Operational Insigts. For those of you that saw the prese...
Installing SCOM technical preview
Earlier this week Microsoft announced Windows 10 at an event in San Francisco, this has later been seen a lot in media and in blogs etc. and from what I´ve s...
Test the perfomance of a SQL query using SCOM
When it comes to replacing an old monitoring solution with SCOM, quite often there are some custom built monitors used in the old system. Since the monitors ...
Setting up the brand new Office 365 Management Pack for SCOM
During TechEd North America which took place in Houston in May, the OpsMgr product team gave us a sneak peek of the upcoming Office 365 Management Pack. This...
Group your virtual machines in SCOM
For a while, I´ve been struggling with a problem when configuring Operations Manager. As a consultant, I run into a lot of different issues to solve and one ...
Setup Veeams coming Management Pack for Hyper-V
For those of you that have read my blog for a while, it may not come as a shock that I´ve earlier looked into Veeams Management Pack for VMware. I´ve written...
Set up the new System Center Advisor preview
For those of you who were attending or following TechEd North America I Houston last week, it may not come as a surprise that during an Operations Manager br...
TechEd North America 2014, day 1 has come to an end
So, finally TechEd North America 2014 has begun. This time, we´re in Houston, Texas (The lone star state) and the event goes on from today until this thursda...
Backup unsealed Management Packs in SCOM
When Operations Manager has been up and running for a while, a couple of overrides MP’s are created that we don´t want to lose. A while back, I wrote a blog ...
Let Powershell install the SCOM Prerequisites for you
Every time i get to install SCOM at a new customer, I get very excited because it´s a world of opportunities that opens up. One of the heaviest tasks before ...
Let Powershell configure the SQL Server MP
When i install SCOM for a new customer or just reinstall my lab environment, among the first Management Packs to be imported is the SQL Server Management Pac...
Operations Manager 2012 R2 Update Rollup 1 is available
And so the time has come for the first Update Rollup to be released for System Center 2012 R2. The Update Rollup 1 is available for the whole System Center s...
Schedule Operations Manager Maintenance Mode
One of the most common tasks for a SCOM administrator is perhaps managing Maintenance Mode for servers. Setting a server into Maintenance Mode is really easy...
2013
Create a nice SCOM dashboard for your helpdesk personnel
After Operations Manager has been installed and configured, there is often a lot of alerts to tune and there are several overrides to be made. This process m...
Set up Operations Manager AD Integration
In this post i will guide you in how to integrate Operations Manager with the AD to automate the agent assignment process. The easiest way to deploy agents i...
Upgrading Operations Manager 2012 SP1 to 2012 R2
As most people (at least IT people) knows, Microsoft made System Center 2012 R2 generally available about two weeks ago and now the time has finally come for...
Veeam Management Pack for VMware 6.5 is released
For those of you that have been around since i started this blog about 10 months ago, you will know that I´ve previously written about Veeams Management Pack...
Monitor Remote Desktop Services 2012 R2 with SCOM
So, after about three months off the blog it´s time to get it going again. The blog is soon going through a major change which hopefully will get both the vi...
System Center Operations Manager 2012 R2 Preview is out
This morning during the TechEd Europe 2013 keynote with Brad Anderson, Microsoft released several preview versions as promised. Windows Server 2012 R2 is one...
Create a custom view for SCOM alerts in SCSM
In my last post I wrote about how to connect Operations Manager to Service Manager. The default settings after this has been done and following my guide to s...
Connecting Operations Manager to Service Manager
Some time ago, I wrote a post about why you should connect Operations Manager to Service Manager. The reason why you would want to do this is to make life ea...
Veeam Management Pack for VMware 6 update available
In my last post that you´ll find here, you could read about Veeams updated Management Pack for VMware. What´s happened since they released the updated integ...
Veeam Management Pack for VMware 6
Earlier this year, I wrote a blog post about how to monitor your VMware environment. The solution that Veeam has come up with consists of three components; t...
Update Rollup 2 for System Center 2012 SP1 is out
Yesterday, Microsoft released Update Rollup 2 for System Center 2012 SP1. This is an update covering Operations Manager, App Controller, Service Manager, Orc...
Monitor your environment using Operations Manager and Service Manager
Sometimes, System Center Operations Manager can look like a very complex and difficult system to learn. There are a lot of rules and monitors to watch out an...
Set up SMS notifications in SCOM
When you have implemented Operations Manager and imported the Management Packs that gives you the monitoring you want, the next step should be setting up not...
Monitor your VMware environment using Veeam MP
As you already know, Operations Manager is a great product that resides on Management Packs to provide monitoring for our servers and applications. Among the...
Rename your custom Management Packs
When importing a new Management Pack, a custom Management pack should always be created for containing overrides for det imported Management Pack. This is no...
Monitoring DMZ Agents in Operations Manager
Quite often, i run into customers that are using a DMZ for hosting their web servers and sites. Since they don´t share the domain with the other servers, suc...
Create a certificate template for monitoring Non-Domain members
To monitor servers that aren´t in your domain but in a DMZ, a server certificate is required. In order for this to work properly, a Certificate Template need...
Update Rollup 1 for System Center 2012 SP1 is released
Today, Microsoft released Update Rollup 1 for the System Center 2012 SP1 suite. Since this is an Operations Manager blog, I´m only listing whats new for SCOM...