Get hands-on with System Center 2016 Operations Manager

Objective

In this lab, you will explore three new features that are available with System Center 2016 – Operations Manager.

1. Management pack updates and recommendations
2. Management pack tuning
3. Maintenance scheduling

You will learn how to:

• Discover computers.
• Deploy Operations Manager agents.
• Connect to the management pack service on the Internet.
• Import recommended management packs.
• Identify candidates for management pack tuning.
• Tune alerts in a management pack.
• Configure a maintenance schedule.

Scenario

The release of System Center 2016 – Operations Manager introduces a number of improvements and new features. New features include the following:

• Management Pack Updates and Recommendations: Operations Manager includes this new feature to help identify new technologies or components that are deployed in the infrastructure and that are not monitored or are not monitored using the latest version of a management pack.
• Alert Data Management: This feature provides better visibility of alerts and allows you to reduce alerts you do not consider relevant or actionable.
• Maintenance Schedules: This feature allows you to suspend monitoring of an object during regularly scheduled software or hardware maintenance. Although you could use maintenance mode in previous versions of Operations Manager, it was not possible to schedule the maintenance mode ahead of time.

Virtual Machines

1. WS2012R2-Router
2. DC01
3. SCOM

Exercise 1 : Deploy Operations Manager Agents

In this exercise, you will deploy an Operations Manager agent and begin to collect alert data for a domain controller.

1. Switch to the SCOM virtual machine.
   Ensure you are signed in as CONTOSO\Administrator using Passw0rd! as the password.
2. Open Operations Manager
   On the SCOM desktop, double-click the Operations Console shortcut.
   You can also launch the Operations Console from the Start menu or the taskbar.
   
3. Open Administration
   In the Operations Console, click Administration.
   
4. Launch the Discovery Wizard
   Below the navigation tree, click Discovery Wizard.
   
5. Set the discovery type
   In Discovery Type, click Windows computers, and then click Next.
   
6. Set advanced discovery
   In Auto or Advanced, accept the defaults, and then click Next.
   
7. Set the discovery method
   In Discovery Method, click Configure, click OK, and then click Next.
   The default search string will locate all computer accounts in Active Directory.
   
8. Set Administrator Account and discover computers
   In Administrator Account, accept the default settings, and then click Discover.
   The default action account was configured when Operations Manager was installed.
   
9. Select computers
   In Select Objects to Manager, check DC01.contoso.com, click Next, and then click Finish.
   
10. Complete the wizard
    On the Summary page, click Finish.
    Upon clicking Finish, the Task Status dialog box appears. Wait for the Task Output to change to The task completed successfully before proceeding. This will take a few minutes.
11. Close the Task Status window
    In Agent Management Task Status, click Close.
    

Exercise 2 : Management pack updates and recommendations

The new Updates and Recommendations screen in the Operations Manager console recommends management packs to download based on a scan of servers in your Operations Manager environment. This will help an Operations Manager administrator know when someone installs a new workload for which an Operations Manager management pack is available. The screen will also display a notification when updates are available to Microsoft-authored management packs that are already running in your environment.

1. Navigate to Updates and Recommendations
   In Administration, under Management Packs, click Updates and Recommendations.
   The console will connect to the management pack service automatically. The console must have Internet access for this to work.
   
2. Install updates
   In Tasks, click Get All MPs.
   The list of recommended management packs will vary from time to time, based on when you take this lab.
   
3. Install updates
   On the Select Management Packs page, click Install, and then click Yes.
   IMPORTANT: Wait for the updates to install before proceeding. This will take between 10 and 30 seconds per management pack.
   
4. Close the dialog box
   In the Import Management Packs dialog box, wait for all the management packs to complete importing, and then click Close.
   

Exercise 3 : Tune management packs

Tuning management packs enables you to identify noisy management packs which generate many alerts and then, using overrides, adjust the frequency and type of alerts generated. This will help ensure that only alerts which require action are surfaced, and that they are surfaced at an interval that enables them to be thoughtfully reviewed and acted upon. In this example, you will identify that Windows Defender is your noisy alert and disable it, as you do not want to be notified about it.

1. Navigate to Management Pack Tuning
   In Administration, under Management Packs, click Tune Management Packs.
   
2. Identify Management Packs
   In the Actions pane, click Identify Management Packs to Tune.
3. Configure alerts
   In Specify the minimum number of alerts for the management pack you wish to display, type 1, and then click OK.
   By setting the minimum alert value, you will only see monitors that are generating a high number of alerts in the defined period of time. This is key to identifying the alerts that are generating noise and tuning them correctly.
   
4. Tune Windows Defender
   Click Windows Defender, and then click Tune alerts.
   Depending on timing you may not have yet received alerts from Windows Defender. If you have not, wait approximately five minutes and repeat this process.
   
5. Select Scan Alert
   In the Alerts window, click Windows Defender Scan Alert, and then click Overrides.
   
6. Disable the Alert
   On the Overrides menu, click Disable the Monitor, and then click For all objects of class: Protected Endpoint.
   
7. Save the override
   In Override Properties, review the settings, noting the value in the Override column. In Select destination management pack, select Client Monitoring Overrides Management Pack, and then click OK.
   
8. Close the alerts window
   Close the Alerts window.

Exercise 4 : Configure maintenance schedules

Maintenance schedules are a new feature in System Center 2016 – Operations Manager. They enable you to suspend alerts for portions of your operations management deployment during times of known maintenance. You can create a number of scheduled maintenance cycles for different resources. In this exercise, you will create a maintenance schedule during the period in which you install weekly updates.

1. Navigate to Maintenance Schedules
   In Operations Manager, click Monitoring, and then in the navigation tree, click Maintenance Schedules.
   If an error related to SQL EXECUTE permissions is displayed, close the error dialog box, navigate away from the Monitoring workspace, and then repeat the step.
   
2. Create a schedule
   In the Tasks pane, click Create Maintenance Schedule.
   
3. Add objects
   Click Add/Remove Objects, and then click Search.
   
4. Select DC01
   Select DC01.Contoso.com, click Add, and then click OK.
   
5. Advance the wizard
   In the Create Maintenance Schedule wizard, click Next.
6. Configure a schedule
   On the Schedule page, use the settings to configure a weekly event, occurring on Sunday at 10 PM every week. Set the duration to 60 minutes with no expiration, and then click Next.
   
7. Save the schedule
   In Schedule Name, type Weekly Updates for DC01, and then click Finish.
   
8. End the lab
   Click Done to finalize and close the lab.
   If you click Done, the lab will close and you will not be able to review your steps. Please be sure that you want to end the lab.