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SCOM 2012: Overview link blog

This post will be my (and hopefully yours) one stop to post all the relevant info to SCOM 2012. I will try to generate an overview of all the different steps you need to start from scratch and continue to build your environment to a level that suites your environment.

If you feel there are things missing or you’ve found dead links please do not hesitate to leave a comment and I will update this post. This post has grown out of my favourite list of SCOM related topics and info I found on forums, technet and blogs.

Note:

• I’ll sometimes post more than 1 link at a topic so you can combine the different blogposts to get the bigger picture.
• Most of the info is relevant for SCOM 2012 and SCOM 2012 SP1 (if there’s specific info for a specific version it will be pointed out.)
• This is a link post to relevant info I found on the web. All credits and copyright belong to the respective authors.

SCOM 2012 R2:

• What’s New in System Center 2012 R2 Operations Manager (Technet)
• Release Notes for Operations Manager in System Center 2012 R2 (Technet)
• System Requirements for System Center 2012 R2 (Technet)
• OM12 R2: What’s New?
• Evaluation guide

General information:

This section lists all links that will give you a general overview of SCOM.

• Getting started with SCOM
• Getting to know the key concepts of SCOM
• Technet library with info for SCOM
• Download the most up to date guides for scom
• Forums:
  • Official Technet forum
  • SystemCenterCentral
  • Myitforum
• System Center Self study guide part 5 Operations manager
• Opsmgr 101 document by Kevin Holman
• FULL list of Technical Documentation for System Center 2012 Operations Manager

Design and Topology

This section lists all links that will help and guide you to make a proper design and take the correct decisions concerning topology

• Official SCOM product team design guide
• Minimal requirements for SCOM 2012
• Minimal requirements for SCOM 2012 SP1
• Clean installation of SCOM 2012
  • Single server install
  • Distributed servers install
• Supported firewall scenarios
• Scom 2012 sizing helper calculator

How to install

This section lists all links to the install walkthroughs and possible issues.

• walkthrough single server install
• Installation of distributed servers
  • Walkthrough to install first management server
  • Walkthrough to install additional management servers
  • How to Install the Operations Console
  • How to Configure the Operations Console to Use SSL When Connecting to a Reporting Server
  • How to Install the Operations Manager Web Console
  • Web Console Security in Operations Manager
  • How to Install the Operations Manager Reporting Server
• Using SQL Server 2012 Always On Availability Groups with System Center 2012 SP1 – Operations Manager
• Quick start depoyment guide SCOM 2012 (Kevin Holman)
• My installation failed. What log files do I read and where can I find them?
• Upgrade guide from SCOM 2007 to SCOM 2012
• Official info on upgradign from SCOM 2007 to SCOM 2012
• Different upgrade paths to SCOM 2012
• Getting and keeping the SCOM agent on a Domain Controller
• Installation of SCOM2012 SP1 walkthrough
  • Jan Meivenne (SCUGbe): http://scug.be/jan/2012/12/21/system-center-2012-sp1-is-rtm-how-do-i-upgrade-my-scom-environment/
  • Stefan Stranger: Installing a new OpsMgr 2012 the fast way

Configuring scom

This section lists all links to help you quickly setup scom after you have succesfully installed it.

• Setup initial monitoring after installation
• Managing Discovery and agents
• Configuring Agentless monitoring in SCOM
  • How to configure a computer for agentless management
  • How to configure a proxy for agentless monitoring
• Managing access in SCOM
• Different accounts needed by SCOM
• Different agent installation methods
• Configuring and understanding heartbeat failures
• How to run tasks in SCOM
• How to  configure notifications
• How to configure command notification in SCOM 2012 with Powershell Script
• How to test notifications
• Run a powershell script through notifications
• Why enable the SCOM proxy agent

 

Specific configuration

This section lists all the different aspects of SCOM that need additional installation or configuration

Dashboards

• Introduction to Scom 2012 dashboards
• Scom dashboard Visio plugin demo
• Create your own widget for SCOM dashboards
• Configuring the SCOM Service Level Dashboards

ACS

• Deploying ACS and ACS Reporting
• How to install ACS
• ACS series by Stefan Roth:
• Part1: http://blog.scomfaq.ch/2013/02/18/scom-2012-sp1-part-1-audit-collection-services-acs-setup/
• Part2: http://blog.scomfaq.ch/2013/02/18/scom-2012-sp1-part-2-audit-collection-services-acs-cross-platform-setup/
• Part3: http://blog.scomfaq.ch/2013/02/19/scom-2012-sp1-part-3-audit-collection-services-acs-testing-cross-platform-logging/
• Planning your ACS environment and explanation of the different parts of installation
• ACS capacity planning tips
• ACS dbase and disk sizing calculator for SCOM 2007 (can also be used for SCOM 2012 & SP1)
• How to enable ACS forwarders
• Monitor ACS performance
• Using ACS across trusted boundaries
• How to enable ACS role on Gateway server
• How to change the retention period of the ACS dbase

APM (Application Performance Monitoring)

• What is APM?
• All you need to know about APM transactions
• I’ve deployed APM now what?: Summary for Geeks
• How to configure Application Performance Monitoring (APM) (Tutorial by Kevin Greene):
  • Configuring Application Performance Monitoring (APM) Part 1
  • Configuring Application Performance Monitoring (APM) Part 2
  • Configuring Application Performance Monitoring (APM) Part 3
• Discovering the Application Performance console (Kevin Greene):
  • Discovering the Application Performance console Part 1
  • Discovering the Application Performance console Part 2
• APM Throttling settings
• Forum to ask questions about APM

Gateway configuration

• Deploying a Gateway Server
• 10 reasons to use a Gateway Server
• Quick guide: Monitoring non-domain members with SCOM2012 (stefan stranger)
• Forum to ask questions about installing gateway servers
• Configure Gateway server / agent failover with PowerShell
• How to chain or cascade Gateways to monitor servers accross multipl trust boundaries
• Avoid orphaned Gateway servers with Powershell

Network Monitoring

• Official Technet article about Network Monitoring
• Network devices supported for discovery by SCOM
• Download excel sheet with devices with extended monitoring capability
• How to discover network devices in operations manager
• How Network Device Discovery works
• Tuning Network Monitoring
• Runas Account for network monitoring in SCOM
• Quick setup guide network monitoring
• Network Device No Response Ping in Pending Management
• Forum to ask questions about Network monitoring

Azure Monitoring:

• 15 part series "Kicking the tires on windows Azure"
• Configuring SCOM to monitor Azure
• Download the Azure management pack
• Monitor your Windows Azure applications (Part 1)
• Monitor your Windows Azure applications (Part 2)
• Monitor your Azure SQL dbase
• Monitor your Azure cloud performance with Metricshub Azure Monitoring
• Global Service monitor explained
• Azure performance counters in SCOM 2012
• Configure web endpoint monitoring

Management pack basics

This section lists all the links to give you the basics about management packs

• Technet Management pack Basics
• Understand the Management pack Life Cycle
• Different authoring tools
• Screencast: Scom Management pack Tuning Wars Mission briefing
• Management pack formats
• SCOM 2012: Authoring options
• Download official management pack guide
• Create your first management pack for SCOM
• Difference between rules and monitors
• Is there a management pack for it? A list of non MS management packs.
• Community management pack Catalog (SystemCenterCentral)
• Forum to ask questions about SCOM management packs

 

Management pack advanced

This section liste all the links to the more advance management pack tips and tricks.

• The best practices poster regarding targetting
• How to seal a management pack
• How to monitor events logged by another computer or cluster
• Enable agent proxy via management pack

Community Management packs

A list of must have community management packs to increase your productivity and solve some gaps and functionalities in scom.

Note: These management packs are written by members of the community so no warranty is given. Test before you use in production!

• Let SCOM check for updated MP’s

Integration possibilities

This section lists links to different integration possibilities between the different System Center products.

• Official SCOM integration guide
• Monitoring SCCM 2012 with SCOM 2012
• Managing and monitoring DPM 2012 with SCOM 2012 part 1
• Managing and monitoring DPM 2012 with SCOM 2012 part 2
• How to connect VMM 2012 with SCOM 2012
  • How to enable PRO tips in VMM
  • How to configure SQL Server Analysis Services for VMM
• Using Scom Connectors

 

Usefull blogs and sources for this list (In random order of importance)

• Official Scom / mom team blog
• Cameron Fuller (Catapult Systems)
• Kevin Holman
• Marnix Wolf
• Authoringfriday
• Kevin Greene
• Bob Cornelissen
• Jonathan Almquist (old blog + new blog)
• Christopher Keyaert
• Jan Meirvenne
• Tao Yang
• System center support team blog (old)
• Stefan Stranger
• Stefan Roth

Note: System Center Blogs: Now on iPhone, Android and Windows Phone

Tips & Tricks

• How to change the retention period of the datawarehouse db
• Tuning Tip – Turning off some over-collection of events
• Update custom fields of alerts generated by monitors through subscriptions
• Collection of Powershell scripts for scom
• Adding a product key after the eval period expired
• Is my datawarehouse running behind.
• Performance optimizations for Operations Manager
• Database maintenance jobs and processes in SCOM
• Authoring console can’t find reference mp
• Download the SCOM 2012 specific Visio Stencils
• How to change port of SCOM reporting
• Comparison of the PowerShell command let sets of SCOM 2007 and SCOM 2012
• Installing both SCOM 2007 and SCOM 2012 consoles on 1 machine
• Updating SCOM alerts using Orchestrator
• Backup unsealed management packs
• Resolve Failed to store data in the Data Warehouse
• Automate the SharePointMP.config configuration with Powershell
• Migrate Subscriptions between different SCOM environments
• Create enhanced HTML mail notifications
• SCOM speak powershell script: Let scom read the alerts out loud on a remote computer
• Sync management packs across the System Center environment
• Cannot delete agents on cluster nodes
• SCOM 2007 daily health check script
• Scom timed script vs windows task scheduler
• Scom Tasks collection management pack by Stefan Roth
• Automate the Proxy enable automatically through notifications

Cool Showcases with SCOM

• Monitoring the weather conditions with SCOM
• Coffee pot monitoring management pack

Partner solutions for SCOM (in random order)

• Derdack: Receiving SCOM alerts on handheld devices
• Opslogix: Management packs for Oracle, Blackberry, Capacity intelligent planning,…
• Veeam: Management packs for VmWare
• Bridgeworks: Management packs for Hyper-V, VMware, mysql,…
• Squared-up: simplified web and mobile access for scom
• Savision Live maps: Creating interactive dashboards
• Infront: Different management packs to extend scom

Videos

• Scom 2012: Overview, Setup and configuration
• Scom 2012 APM
• Scom 2012: Prepare yourself to move to SCOM 2012
• Scom 2012: Should I upgrade to SCOM 2012?
• Management pack tuning wars mission
• Edge Show 9: Managing and monitoring the fabric with System center 2012
• How microsoft deployed SCOM 2012