Last week I presented a session on Hybrid Management with OMS at the Chicago Systems Management Users Group (CSMUG). This meeting was held at the Microsoft Offices (MTC) in Chicago. The presenters for this session were Johan Arwidmark of ConfigMgr fame, System and datacenter management experts, Tom Lilly and Rich Lilly, and me. The meeting was sponsored by 1E. The CSMUG meets several times during the year to collaboratively share knowledge with the community about new products, features and capabilities for systems and enterprise management. Meetings will also feature experts in various technology areas. These experts will be available to field questions, and explore various scenarios and product use cases with attendees. Chicago System Management Users Group (CSMUG) is dedicated … Read More
Microsoft System Center and Azure Technical Guru – April 2015
The Technet Guru Awards for April 2015 were recently released, and I’m pleased to announce that my article on Azure Operational Insights won the Gold medal and bronze medals in the System Center and Azure categories respectively. This is my first participation in this event, and my first medals, so I’ll be back for more. The TechNet Guru Awards celebrate the technical articles on TechNet, contributed from valued wiki authors like YOU! Each month, the contributions are scored by a panel of judges (5 per category, 2-3 in each are MS experts), and the winners of each category are showered with love and attention from all corners of TechNet. You can enter articles for the May 2015 competition here You … Read More
Microsoft Operations Management Suite Introduced at IGNITE 2015
During his keynote speech, Microsoft’s Satya Nadella introduced the Operations Management Suite (OMS). This suite is the IT management solution for a mobile-first, cloud-first world. OMS is a single solution that is built to manage your entire enterprise environment regardless of operating system, hypervisors, their location or your choice of cloud providers. The Operations Management Suite manages your Windows and Linux workloads across your datacenter. Through this rich platform powered by Azure, Operations Management Suite delivers a unified IT Management solution enabling you to extend your System Center investments and simplify the management of your datacenter assets regardless of OS type, or what cloud provider you utilize. YES! You heard that right. This suite will enable you to manage assets … Read More
New System Center 2012 R2 Operations Manager Book
I am pleased to announce that a new book on System Center 2012 R2 Operations Manager, which I co-authored along with some other System Center experts, has been published. Overview: This resource will provide practical, and step-by-step guidelines on how to make the most of your investment in System Center 2012 R2 Operations Manager. About This Book Discover how System Center Operations Manager can help your business and how its deployment can deliver stunning ROI Learn how to optimize System Center 2012 Operations Manager and how to create an effective system architecture Learn best practices for creating effective configurations that will give you a deeper insight into your environment What you will learn Learn how to architect an … Read More
Disable Importing of Operational Insights Alerts into Operations Manager
[UPDATE]: The rules have been updated. If you are familiar with Azure Operational Insights (OpInsights), and have seen it in action, then you no doubt acknowledge that the presented configuration and usage data for your environment is rather useful and quite insightful (pun intended). One other thing we can agree on is that the configuration data, in the form of alerts that get synced back to OpsMgr can be rather miffing even in the best of times. By default, alerts generated by the configuration assessment intelligence pack in OpInsights will get synced up with your OpsMgr environment, when you connect your OpsMgr deployment to the OpInsights service. As seen below, these alerts show up in both OpInsights, and get imported … Read More
PowerShell Queries and Square Brackets
I recently encountered an interesting issue while trying to query class instances in SCOM. The class instances for certain classes will return the parent class as well as associated classes in the following format: [Parent Class Name].attribute. For instance the class instance for Microsoft.Windows.Computer returns the following: $SCOMClass = Get-SCOMClass -Name Microsoft.Windows.Computer (Get-SCOMClassInstance -Class $SCOMClass)[0] | Select-Object * Ok so this returns expected values. Now let’s return a specific object instead of all objects: (Get-SCOMClassInstance -Class $SCOMClass)[0] | Select-Object [Microsoft.Windows.Computer].LogicalProcessors This returns nothing, even though we clearly see values for the Logical Processors when we select all objects. After some checking, re-checking, and second guessing, I found an article that’s as short as the solution is simple. Apparently double-escaping … Read More
New Preview Build Released for Windows 10 Technical Preview
In the wake of the recently released Windows 10 Technical Preview, Microsoft has just issued an update. The update takes the form of a new preview build that’s available for installation from the update and recovery section of PC setting. This comes on the heels of the speculation around the updates KB3008956, KB3008931 and KB3008956 which were readily available for download in the 9841 build of Windows 10 Technical preview, but failed to install because of a build incompatibility. As Microsoft continues to develop Windows 10, the latest preview build (9860) refines a few of the already existing features, as well as adds some new features. Noteworthy is the Notification Center (Action Center) which collects alerts … Read More
New System Center 2012 – Service Manager Book Published!
A new System Center 2012 – Service Manager book has been authored by some renowned MVPs and SCSM experts including my colleague, Steve Buchanan. The authors include: Kerrie Meyler Kurt Van Hoecke Samuel Erskine Steve Buchanan This is the second book written for this specific major iteration of Service Manager – 2012, and the first book about this SCSM iteration from Sams Publishing, the outfit behind some other good books about System Center. I wish the authors a hearty congratulations on getting the book published. It’s no small feat. The book is available in both Kindle and paperback-version from Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/System-Center-Service-Manager-Unleashed/dp/067233707X