SCOM 2012: What’s new: Agent Config in SCOM2012
This post is part of a series What’s new: Check here for the other parts.
In SCOM2007R2 you could multihome an agent to different management groups but it was quite the hassle as there was no option in the management console to control this feature. In SCOM 2012 this has changed by including the Operations Manager Agent Application to the control panel when the agent has been installed. Pretty cool feature if you ask my because now you have full control over the homing or multihoming of the agents.
Although this feature is not that high on a lot of peoples list of great new features this really facilitates the work of those who are working with a complex environment with connected management groups.
So where is this feature actually.
You can do this semi automatic by pushing the agent from all the different management groups (the maximum is 4). This is in fact a recommende maximum and not hardcoded. So in theory it is possible to multihome an agent to more than 4 management groups but it’s not supported as Alexis Yakovlev kindly pointed out. In fact the agent will be detected and not reinstalled but the additional management group will be added…
Now there’s the option to do it manually on the server as well using the new Agent Configuration app in control panel.
Before you had to run the setup wizard of the SCOM 2007 R2 agent and choose the “add a management group” option when installing.
Now you can just open your control panel:
Navigate to System and Security
Open up the Operations Manager Agent
You’ll see your primary Management group where the client initially was pushed from:
Click add and fill in the name / primary server and port of the additional management group:
It’s added! Click apply and wait for the services to restart and your done.
So at this point your agent is multihomed to your 2 management groups and is happily sending it’s alerts to both of the management groups.
This convenient little adaption has changed the way you multihome an agent and has significantly improved the user experience of doing so.
Stay tuned