What’s new in System Center 2016 Technical Preview 5

Overall, System Center 2016 will be a significant upgrade over System Center 2012 R2 to manage key aspects of your applications and infrastructure, including client and server configuration management, monitoring and alerting, orchestration and automation, event and incident management, data protection, and virtual machine and infrastructure fabric management.
Here’s a summary of some of the key innovations in this latest version of System Center.

 

Manage your virtualized datacenter using Virtual Machine Manager

System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2016 will provide a comprehensive solution for deploying and managing your Windows Server 2016-based software-defined datacenter. With Virtual Machine Manager, you will be able to manage your fabric as well as workloads in one place. You can try the following with Technical Preview 5:

Compute

• Deploy compute and storage clusters from bare metal machines
• Manage the lifecycle of the new, minimal-footprint Nano Server-based hosts and VMs
• Perform rolling upgrade of Windows Server 2012 R2 clusters to Windows Server 2016 clusters with no downtime for the hosted workloads
• Take application-consistent VM checkpoints (production checkpoints)
• Change memory and virtual network adapter configuration of a running VM

Networking

• Easily deploy Software Defined Networking (SDN) components like Network Controller, Gateway, and Software Load Balancer (SLB) using pre-defined and customizable service templates
• Create and configure all SDN entities, such as virtual networks and virtualized network functions (e.g., gateways, SLB) via the Network Controller
• Create and manage flexible gateway pools instead of traditional gateway clusters to achieve higher availability with fewer virtual machines
• Control network traffic coming in and out of a VM using port access control lists (port ACLs)

Storage

• Deploy and manage storage clusters with Storage Spaces Direct (S2D) in disaggregated and hyper-converged topology. S2D reduces storage costs by building highly available and scalable storage systems using industry-standard servers with local storage
• Replicate storage volumes synchronously using Storage Replica (SR) instead of expensive storage-based replication
• Enforce Quality of service (QoS) for virtual machine storage to avoid the noisy neighbor problem.

Security

• Manage the lifecycle of guarded hosts that provide the infrastructure for shielded VMs; these hosts protect VM data against snooping and tampering by fabric administrators or malicious software
• Create shielded VMs using the Virtual Machine Manager console and Windows Azure Pack (WAP)
• Convert non-shielded virtual machines to shielded virtual machines using the Virtual Machine Manager console and WAP

Monitor your datacenter infrastructure and applications using Operations Manager

System Center Operations Manager 2016 will expand the surface area of monitoring, and enhance the experience of monitoring infrastructure and applications across public and private clouds. The new version of Operations Manager will also ease the discovery and maintenance of management packs, provide better support for Linux environments, and integrate with the Operations Management Suite to provide richer analytics and improved diagnostics. You can try the following with Technical Preview 5:

• Monitor a broad range of network devices without requiring Operations Manager certification
• Monitor Nano Server deployments, including DNS and IIS roles
• Realize more than 2X scale improvement in monitoring UNIX/Linux servers
• Experience a more responsive application console, including the ability to navigate across different views and pivots without having to wait for the data to load
• Seamlessly discover, install and update required management packs right from the administration console
• Tune management packs, and alter the monitors and alerting rules – either at source level or group level – to reduce alert noise
• Plan and schedule maintenance windows for workloads without generating spurious alerts in Operations Manager console
• Utilize the Preferred Partner program to discover third-party management packs, authoring tools, dashboard utilities, etc., right from the Operations Manager console

Deploy, configure, and keep your Windows and mobile devices up to date using Configuration Manager

System Center Configuration Manager provides a unified management console with an automated set of administrative tools to deploy software, protect data, monitor health, and enforce compliance across all devices in your organization. New enhancements in Configuration Manager make deploying and managing Windows easier than ever before with new improvements including the support of the latest Windows 10 features, Windows in-place upgrade, more frequent and easier updates, unified end-user portal, and more. You can try the following with Technical Preview 5:

• Deploy, upgrade, and provision Windows with modern methods such as in-place upgrade and provisioning packages and profiles
• Keep Windows up to date with new configurable deployment rings, servicing dashboard, and cluster-aware settings
• Manage Windows in a way that works the best for your business through the Configuration Manager agent, on-premises MDM, and the cloud when Configuration Manager is connected with Microsoft Intune
• Manage iOS, Android, and Windows devices via MDM with improved mobile device and application management capabilities when Configuration Manager is connected with Microsoft Intune
• Get more frequent and easier to install updates directly in the management console to support new Windows, Configuration Manager, and mobile device management capabilities
• Allow users to access all of their applications from a unified end user portal
• Run Configuration Manager in Azure Virtual Machines
• Manage Office 365 desktop client updates using the Software Update Management (SUM) workflow

Automate your datacenter tasks using Orchestrator and Service Management Automation

You can choose to use System Center Orchestrator or Service Management Automation to automate your datacenter tasks. Service Management Automation will incorporate improved experiences for authoring, testing, debugging and executing runbooks. You can try the following with Technical Preview 5:

• Create runbooks with native PowerShell scripts and execute runbooks more predictably without heavy pre-compilation steps
• Utilize an Integrated Scripting Environment (ISE) plugin for authoring and testing runbooks locally
• Utilize Windows Management Framework 5.0 for authoring runbooks with PowerShell 5.0 scripts

Protect your datacenter using Data Protection Manager

Windows Server 2016 Hyper-V includes new features that improve security, stability and availability, and helps in reducing overall TCO of private cloud deployments. System Center Data Protection Manager has introduced support for protecting VMs deployed on these new Windows Server 2016 Hyper-V scenarios in Technical Preview 5. You can try the following with Technical Preview 5:

• Continue doing VM backup in the presence of Hyper-V node crash or VM storage migration using the new Resilient Change Tracking (RCT) protection technology
• Maintain Hyper-V VM backup even as Windows cluster upgrade is in progress
• Backup and recover shielded VMs
• Protect VMs deployed on Storage Spaces Direct configuration

Automate Service Delivery using Service Manager

The main focus of System Center Service Manager 2016 is improved performance and usability, which are key customer asks. You can try the following with Technical Preview 5:

• Deploy HTML5 based self-service portal with updated UX and better performance
• Experience up to 10x improvement in console performance when creating/updating work items, up to 2x gain in workflow processing, and up to 4x improvement in incident processing capacity
• Get Configuration Manager and Active Directory (AD) data through connectors up to 67% and 50% faster, respectively, with Entity Change Log (ECL) log disabling
• Complete incident workflows up to 50% faster
• Be able to schedule AD group expansion workflows and get up to 75% faster performance
• Perform ECL grooming up to three times faster
• Create rich reports and slice data based on Year, Quarter, Month, and Day using new date dimensions in Service Manager data warehouse cubes
• Use Lync 2013 and Skype for business with Service Manager

More Information on :
https://rcpmag.com/articles/2016/04/27/windows-server-system-center-tp5.aspx

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How to install and configure Azure PowerShell - Microsoft Azure

What is Azure PowerShell?

Azure PowerShell is a set of modules that provide cmdlets to manage Azure with Windows PowerShell. You can use the cmdlets to create, test, deploy, and manage solutions and services delivered through the Azure platform. In most cases, the cmdlets can be used for the same tasks as the Azure Management Portal, such as creating and configuring cloud services, virtual machines, virtual networks, and web apps.

Step 1: Install

Following are the two methods by which you can install Azure PowerShell. You can install it either from WebPI, or the PowerShell Gallery:

Installing Azure PowerShell from WebPI

Installing Azure PowerShell 1.0 and greater from WebPI is the same as it was for 0.9.x. Download Azure PowerShell and start the install. If you have Azure PowerShell 0.9.x installed, version 0.9.x will be uninstalled as part of the upgrade. If you installed Azure PowerShell modules from PowerShell Gallery, the installer automatically removes the modules before installation to ensure a consistent Azure PowerShell environment.

Run the File

 
PowerShell for Azure has been Installed

Reboot,
Power has Azure Modules Imported, you can also verify the version

Make sure that you update PowerShell
PS C:\> update-help –Force
Check some of the Azure Commands with using the noun


PS C:\Add-AzureAccount
This opens a windows which will prompt you to enter the credentials


Once you enter the credentials, you would see your subscription information

View Additional Information on your subscription, Always check this before executing any commands
Currently I am using a trail Subscription and it shows the details below


If you Wish to sign out of this Azure Account, use the command Below :-
PS C:\Remove-Azureaccount -name v_2maxa@live.com

Thanks for Reading

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Azure DevTest Labs available in new Canada, India, and US regions

Azure DevTest Labs is available in the following new regions of Canada, India, and the US that support the required Azure resources used in the labs:

• Canada Central
• Canada East
• US West 2
• US West Central
• India Central
• India South

Customers can use DevTest Labs to create a lab in any of these locations, in addition to the other 15 regions that are supported.
Azure DevTest Labs is a service that helps developers and testers quickly create environments in Azure while minimizing waste and controlling cost. You can test the latest version of your application by provisioning Windows and Linux environments through reusable templates and artifacts. Easily integrate your deployment pipeline with DevTest Labs to provision on-demand environments. Scale up your load testing by provisioning multiple test agents, and create pre-provisioned environments for training and demos.

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Preparing for the Azure Exam 70-533

Prepare to pass the Microsoft Azure 70-533 exam

So the Primary focus should be on the topics mentioned below, this is as per the blue print listed on the Microsoft website for the certification 70-533

• Implement Websites
• Implement Virtual Machines
• Implement Cloud Services
• Implement Storage
• Implement an Azure Active Directory
• Implement Virtual Network

You need to have a good Understanding of  Cloud Computing and Microsoft Azure

Microsoft has several Datacenter accross the world, these are listed on the azure portal

Services offfered :-
On-Demand Self Service
-Don't have to be an admin
-end user can do it, create, Delete, provision
-App Developers can use this

Broad Network Access
Requires LAN/WAN
-You need High speed Network Connection on premises

Resource Pooling
Cloud Provider abstract Infrastructure
-Cloud computing tenant
-pay as you need (Disk, Memory, CPU)

Rapid Elasticity
Scale up and down to meet demand
Automatically- you can host business website online and  do not pay for tha less load
pay for load as per usage
-pay only for the services

Measured Service
Pay for the resources you use
if you buy a Computer-OEM, also gets junk software that get them money


Cloud Computing –Some of the Leading Providers

• Microsoft Azure
• Office 365
• Amazon Web Services
• Google Cloud Platform (Developer focused)
• Salesforce (Pioneer of the public cloud)..SAAD
• Dropbox (generated a lot of business-Cloud based storage)

Cloud Service Models
SaaS
Audience :  End Users
Examples :

• Office 365
• Dropbox

PaaS
Audience : Software Developer
Examples :

• Mobile Apps (iOS, Android, Windows)
• API Services

Back-end VMs are abstracted away, developers can use its seemlessly

IaaS
Audience: System Administrator
Direct access to VMs and Virtual networks

Premises is a location
Premise is an Idea

Cloud Deployment Types
Microsoft Describes Azure as a combination of IaaS and PaaS
Public Cloud
Azure, AWS

Private Cloud
Take as much of the Public cloud ideas,

• scale
• self service
• resource pooling

Replicate a public cloud in your data center would be expenses
System center or Azure Stack could be used here
Hybrid Cloud

• on premises
• Domain Controller
• Exchange
• File Services
• Extending on premises to cloud

Demo:
Registering a Azure Account
Search for Azure Credit
Trail :
You need a credit card for subscription
You could avail around $200 a month during the trail period to evaluate and user the Azure services
Microsoft Certified Trainers, MVP also get these free credits as a reward

There is a Calculator you could use,
Spending limit to control your expenses on your subscription
Let’s sign-up
https://azure.microsoft.com



Sign-Up with a Credit Card
MS will not accept Prepaid cards
Post Completion of Phone Verification
Remember you will not be charged till you explicitly  upgrade to a paid offer
it will take you to Portal.azure.com

the other one that you need to know is manage.windowsazure.com
you can always keep a track of the credit status, this will get used up based on the services you use





Understand the Difference Between ASM Vs ARM

Azure Service Managementmanage.windowsazure.com	Azure Resource Manager portal.azure.com
XML-based REST API	JSON-based REST API
Separate Xplat-CLI modes, Portals, PowerShell modules	Resources are JSON template-based container     Taxonomic tagging(Costs)      Download pre-build services (ARM templates)
Resources are created and managed separately in cloud services	Role Based access control (RBAC)
Look for “Classic” in the new portal	you can manage resource groups  as a single unit

Azure Resource Manager*
Focus more in Production


Demo:

Visit the Classic Azure Portal
and then compare it with the new Azure Portal
manage.windowsazure.com

know the console better
Global Navigation  on  the  left
portal.azure.com

a lot of java script libraries are present
Dashboard and tiles are customizable
the list is customizable


the options on the navigation bar and sub categories are awesome, Microsoft call them blades
always keep an eye on the Bell Icon to read the notification

Tip : Understanding Cloud Computing and PowerShell Automation ensures your future viability in the IT Market place

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PowerShell-Day7

Understanding the GM,
When you run the command Get-Service,  you get the results as mentioned below

you can see the only three columns displayed are Status, Name and DisplayName,
Now this is because Microsoft has configured some configuration files which tells the command only to display certain columns, this could be cause certain commands have a lot of data
that can be displayed and will fill the entire screen with the  output.
There other Columns that are hidden for the service, Eg : Dependent service, Logon  Name, Etc.
if you want to see those columns then you need you need to know their property names
this is only possible using the Get-Member Command


Method : A way of telling an object of doing something /Actions, Eg : telling a service to Stop/Start
Event  : Fire off when something happens with service
Property : Columns available with the commands
TypeName : ServiceController,
Every different object will have a different Type Name associate with it, So the get-Service produces objects related to service Controllers.

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PowerShell-Day6

Using the Get-Member Command (gm)
Lets look at an example

Now look at the output above, the command will give you the output as per the instructions of the config file, you need to decide and filter or sort the data as per you need
So we need to know what are the columns available that are available for use with the above command

Each Row in an Object

and each Column is a Property

So lets see the Property using the same cammand
Get-EventLog -LogName System -Newest 50 | Get-Member
or
Get-EventLog -LogName System -Newest 50 | gm
The output would be the same

Even if it says ScriptProperty it’s still a Property
EventID is InstanceID as shown below

you can use the GM command with any command that can be piped
Eg :
Get-Process | gm
Get-Service | gm

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PowerShell-Day5

You Always need to focus on Neat Typing
PowerShell will allow you to use spaces as seen in the command below

Even if the command does not have spaces, it will still give you the same results


What’s important here is the using the spaces between the Parameter and the commands and the spaces between two Parameters,
Hence instead of remembering where to use spaces and where to skip, its better to use spaces to make it look Neat

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Will Cloud take away my JOB

Tech industry experts are predicting that demand for certain tech roles will dramatically decline over the next decade as organizations switch to cloud computing.
By 2020 the majority of organizations will rely on the cloud for more than half of their IT services, according to Gartner's 2011 CIO Agenda Survey
A lot of On-premises Services are slowly moving to the cloud and everything is watching as organizations embrace the cloud
After organizations have switched to the cloud the number of staff needed to manage and provision individual pieces of IT infrastructure - the likes of networks, storage and servers - can be scaled back, as much of the virtualized infrastructure that cloud is built upon can be automated. Because you don’t need to worry about the update of services, provisioning would become much easy, in fact it would offer self service catalogue,
In the new world, business designers and technology innovators will devise IT to support new ways of doing business, information architects and process designers will design and implement collaborative business processes that will allow for increased process automation, while solution integrators, service brokers and demand managers will manage a diverse group of cloud and non-cloud vendors.
The shift towards cloud-based IT services and how it will change tech roles. "There are not going to be fewer people involved in IT, but they will be involved in IT in different ways.If you are a server, storage or network admin, there may be fewer of those dedicated.
So what should today's IT employee do to protect his or her career? "Look for the skills the company is going to need five years from now, not now, and start building them," These include vendor contract management, integration with the cloud, analytics, rich lightweight Internet workforce applications, mobile applications -- these are all skills for the next decade
Try to get work with an infrastructure provider rather than an internal company system, Develop an expertise on a particular high-end technology environment, such as virtualization or storage area networking. Or get some experience managing a SaaS provider,Embrace the cloud, don't fight it
As that happens there is more opportunity for everybody, some people are going to say 'I don't like that new opportunity' and that is going to be a challenge for them, and there are those who want to embrace it, and believe me there are going to be more interesting jobs than there were in the past.
"You've got to take control of your career, it's more about the individual, and the individual's got to take the initiative."

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Microsoft Loves Linux : PowerShell now available on Linux

Microsoft wants to earn customers’ preference as the platform for running all their workloads – Linux as well as Windows. This new thinking empowered the .NET team to port .NET Core to Linux and that in turn, enabled PowerShell to port to Linux as well. PowerShell on Linux is now designed to enable customers to use the same tools, and the same people, to manage everything from anywhere. It is initially available on Ubuntu, Centos, as well as Red Hat, and also runs on Mac OS X.
Now, users across Windows and Linux, current and new PowerShell users, even application developers can experience a rich interactive scripting language as well as a heterogeneous automation and configuration management that works well with your existing tools. Your PowerShell skills are now even more marketable, and your Windows and Linux teams, who may have had to work separately, can now work together more easily.
Read the Original Blog on
https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/powershell-is-open-sourced-and-is-available-on-linux/

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SCOM 2016

A lot of Business Owners like to see how is the core business service running and previously SCOM Admins struggled to monitor and showcase it as  a single component.
now SCOM 2016 can monitor complete business service as one component
An Example of Business Service : Internet Banking
SCOM was well known to monitor Individual components
Eg: Servers (Server1, Server2)
    Web Auth (Login > 5 Seconds)
 
Today SCOM 2016 can monitor

• End User Experience Monitoring
• Application Monitoring
• Infrastructure Monitoring

More enhanced Features on SCOM 2016:-

• Synthetic Transactions
• DevOps Integration
• .Net Monitoring with APM
• Dashboard Framework
• Management Packs
• Cloud Monitoring

So What's New,
Currently SCOM is  in Technical Preview 5
Capacity to access Management Packs

• Proactively identify new technologies or components (i.e workloads) deployed in your IT infrastructure that are not monitored
• Show when not using latest version of a Management Pack
• Feature only works with Management Packs release by Microsoft, 
• Currently  does not support third party management packs

Alert Data Management

• Get Better Visibility of the Alerts being generated in your management group which helps you reduce alerts that you don't consider actionable or relevant
• Identify the number of alert each management pack has generated
• Identify the number of alert generated by a monitor/Rule within each management pack
• Identity different sources(Component) that generated that alert

Network Monitor has been extended

• SCOM 2016 Includes a tool which will allow you to create a custom management pack to 
• monitor generic network devices (non-certified as of SCOM 2007 R2)
• Support of resource utilization matrix such as processor and memory
• Enables you to add monitoring of additional device components
• such as fan, temperature sensor, voltage sensor and power supply
• Tool generates a management pack

Nano Server monitoring

• Discover a Nano Server and push Nano-Compatible agent to the server from the console

UNIX/LINUX Monitoring Improvements

• Full Monitoring of the LAMP Stack
• Ability to run full shell script or python/perl script to identify the health of custom applications
• Credentials for UNIX/Linux machines can be stored as Run as account so that  operations staff can use these to discover servers without having to know the password
• you can now monitor up to 2x the number of Unix/Linux server per management server, against the previously supported scale
• Operations manager now uses by default the new Async
• Windows management Infrastructure (MI) APIs instead of WSMAN sync APIs
• Apache MP relies on an Apache module that is installed automatically if the 
• Linux agent discovers that apache is installed it monitors the apache server itself, virtual hosts and SSL Certificates
• you can optionally create probe rules and monitors for availability and response time  information
• of immediate value is the 21-day warning and 7-day error alerts on SSL certificate expiry
• Microsoft is also looking to provide monitoring for MongoDB, Cassandra  and Redis

Maintenance Schedule

• You can schedule maintenance mode using SCOM 2016
• View All Maintenance mode schedules from a single console
• Certified partner solution in console (Ops Logic, Squared up)

Under Management Packs View on the console, you now can see the below options

• Installed Management Packs
• Tune Management Packs
• Updates and Recommendation

you can have extended Dashboard using Visio Connection to SCOM 2016
Get Ready for the Hybrid World
SCOM + OMS
Take your investment forward.
OMS Supports lots of technologies like

• Azure, 
• Private Clouds (Azure Stack, Hyper-V, VMware, OpenStack)
• Amazon Web Services

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Whats New in System Center 2016

Whats New in System Center 2016

What  is Nano Server, 
Smaller Footprint of Windows Server


Nano Server is a remotely administered server operating system optimized for private clouds and datacenters. It is similar to Windows Server in Server Core mode, but significantly smaller, has no local logon capability, and only supports 64-bit applications, tools, and agents. It takes up far less disk space, sets up significantly faster, and requires far fewer updates and restarts than Windows Server. When it does restart, it restarts much faster. The Nano Server installation option is available for Standard and Datacenter editions of Windows Server 2016.

Shielded VM?
Something that allows someone in the IT Department to allow access the VHD File not the operator of the fabric

Once the VM is created (Shielded VM )
you  can try and mount the Shielded VM to another  VM, and it won't allow
It is bitlocked Encrypted, it will say Access is denied
This is managed by the Host guardian services

Whats new in VMM 2016?

• Muti-Machine Deployment
• Software Define Network, reduce Phyical Network Dependency
• Update windwos without Downtime on  cluster
• Hyper Converge Cluster Architecture

what is Hyper Converge Cluster?
puts All Disk(SSD,HDD)  into once storage group

Once you create the Hyper Converge Cluster you can see the Job Status to check what all it has done


Monitoring Data Center, Whats New?
Microsoft  has Added Capabilities to SCOM 2016

• Discovery Management Packs and Updating them
• Alert Optimization

on SCOM 2016 Console

Updates and recommendation Appears on the SCOM 2016 Admin Console
it will tell if the MP is not installed or partically installed

it will also show updates available for Management pack
this can be done by using Get MP option on the console


Tune Management Packs
Identify the MP that you need to tune
It give all MP and Alert that meet the criteria
you can override or disable the alert

what will the users get?
Alert Optimization, reduce the number of alerts

What is OMS?
OMS is a cloud based suite
Integration between OMS and SCOM
it allows SCOM Alerts to be piped to the cloud for Analytics

What is the future?
Microsoft is looking to  extend System Center via OMS

Read More »

Is OMS replacing SCOM?

Is OMS Replacing SCOM?
Do i need to be scared, 

These are the two FAQ's by SCOM Admins these days, I felt it was necessary to add this post to clear the doubts.

So, the good news is that is NO,  SCOM isn't replacing OMS.

There is a lot  of work to be done my Microsoft, 
OMS is not more, its just not monitoring but also analytics

OMS can be an alternate to SCOM, you don't need to get rid of SCOM
you don't need to be scared, it's a new thing, just embrace it

Should i use SCOM or OMS
The Answer is SCOM AND OMS at the same time

OMS is growing fast, there are solutions every week, sometimes every day

There are previews and Features which you can test on your workspace


OMS is a playground,

• Solutions are created everyday
• i think they offer around 500 MB a day with a retention of 7 days 
• For Preview, on Microsoft  Connect, Fill in the surveys, to contribute to the product
• Microsoft says around 300 a day are carried out only on OMS

System Center Operations Manager

• we can connect our Management Group to the OMS
• we can use the Linux ones as well
• we can use OMS To monitor DMZ, sometimes it is challenging to monitor DMZ via SCOM Gateway

Once the data is on OMS, Data all in there, What do we get ?

• Solutions 
• Search Queries

Solution Categories

• Log Analytics : Collect, Correlate and act on Log Data
• IT Automation : Orchestrate complex and repetitive operations
• Security and compliance : Identify, Assess and mitigate security risks ( Ms best Practices Analyzer)
• Back up and recovery : Protect and extend your Data center

Implementing Solutions 
Do I need to do something Special ?
NO, you need to simple move the data into OMS

Solutions are provided out of the Box, you are not charged for the solutions, but your data usage takes a hit
Installation is straight from the OMS website

Do I need Solutions?
You can use OMS without Solutions, however you will loose added value

Combine everything

• SCOM and OMS data
• 1 Pane ( This  is what the  bosses want)
• SquaredUp OMS Plugin ( :) i knew this was coming)

If you want to play with OMS, open  a workspace 
you don't need to connect SCOM right away or you can use some azure machine, all you need is some data for OMS to give you solutions


There is a e-book for OMS, its free, do download your copy
E-book for OMS


Search Query
Start with the solutions and then later you can go to search query


Is it very hard to Master ?
Its just common sense, there is no special Language
Auto fill in the  tool, it saves history
based on your insights
save the popular ones

you can have an Agent report to OMS or Management Group


Create your own insights by using the values on your workspace
Completely step away from component Monitoring and monitor Business Services

you can see updates missing on  machines on OMS
it can tell you the time required for patching your machines

I will be sharing more information, 

Happy Learning !

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PowerShell-Day4

Now that we have tried some PowerShell commands, Learned  how to pipe them with another command,

Learned how to export it to the file (XML and  Html)

Lets see what all PowerShell can help us on,

Now for this, you need to understand the downside of windows, you need to understand how windows works, what is a registry, what is an event viewer, different Log files, 

Building a PowerShell Syntax /Command,  won't be difficult,

In today's session, I want to explore the different Modules available in Powershell,

The below command will show you the modules available, I ran this command on a windows 2008 R2 machine with is a Domain Controller

Now we need to import the Active Directory  Module to check all the commands

Once the Import is done, we can see all the commands available in the module

Remember, you Don' t need to learn these commands, you can always use the Get-Help Get-Command -Examples

Using the Example 2, I am able to fetch the details of win7 machine

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Microsoft: a Gartner cloud computing leader across IaaS, PaaS, and SaaS

This Article has surprised me,  but I am happy to share this :)

CIOs no longer ask whether they should use cloud, but rather how. According to IDC, seventy percent of CIOs will embrace a cloud-first strategy in 2016. By partnering closely with customers around the world, we see the natural path to enterprise cloud adoption -- starting with software services like email and collaboration, then moving to infrastructure for storage, compute and networking and finally embracing platform services to transform business agility and customer engagements. In this journey to adopt the cloud, customers are looking for a vendor who understands and leads in meeting the broad spectrum of their cloud needs.

Today, Gartner has named Microsoft Azure as a leader in its Magic Quadrant for Cloud Infrastructure as a Service for the third year in a row based on completeness of our vision and ability to execute. We are honored by this continued recognition as we are relentless about our commitment and rapid pace of innovation for infrastructure services. With the G series, Azure led with the largest VMs in the cloud and we continue to deliver market leading performance with our recent announcement supporting SAP HANA workloads up to 32 TB. And while Azure is a world class cloud platform for Windows, it’s also recognized for industry-leading support for Linux and other open source technologies. Today, nearly one in three VMs deployed on Azure are Linux. Strong momentum for Linux and open source is driven by customers using Azure for business applications and modern application architectures, including containers and big data solutions. With over sixty percent of the 3,800 solutions in Azure Marketplace built on Linux, including popular open source images by Ubuntu, CoreOS, Bitnami, Oracle, DataStax, Red Hat and others, it’s exciting that many open source vendors considered Microsoft one of the best cloud partners.

While we are proud of our continued leadership in cloud infrastructure, we are committed to delivering the breadth and depth of cloud solutions to support our customers’ natural path to cloud adoption. Microsoft is the only vendor recognized as a leader across Gartner’s Magic Quadrants for IaaS, PaaS and SaaS solutions for enterprise cloud workloads. We are in a unique position with our extensive portfolio of cloud offerings designed for the needs of enterprises, including Software as a Service (SaaS) offerings like Office 365, CRM Online and Power BI and Azure Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) and Platform as a Service (PaaS). And Microsoft’s cloud vision is a unified story that we’re executing on with the same datacenter regions, compliance commitments, operational model, billing, support and more. The ability to deploy and use applications close to data with consistent identity and a shared ecosystem, means greater efficiency, less complexity, and cost savings.

Many of our customers embrace Identity as a first step in moving to the cloud. Office 365 and Azure share the same identity system with Azure Active Directory therefore providing a simple, friction free experience for our customers. And with Office 365 commercial customers surpassing 70 million monthly active users, Azure adoption is quickly following suit. Once in Azure, customers tend to start with IaaS and then quickly extend to using both IaaS and PaaS models to optimize productivity and embrace new opportunities for business differentiation. Today fifty-five percent of Azure IaaS customers are also deploying PaaS.

The following table summarizes vendors in the leader quadrant across Gartner MQs for IaaS, PaaS and SaaS solutions for key enterprise cloud workloads.

The true power of Azure is enabling our customers and partners on their cloud journey to realize their unique business goals. Customers and partners like Fruit of the Loom and Boomerang demonstrate this common need and cloud adoption path from Software as a Service (SaaS) to Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) to Platform as a Service (PaaS).

• Fruit of the Loom: Office 365 was their “runway” to Azure. Success with Office 365 deployment has led to use of Azure infrastructure and its platform services as they moved their consumer-facing website fruit.com to Azure. To gain insight into how they should market and package their products, Fruit of the Loom is also leveraging platform services such as Azure Machine Learning.
• Boomerang: An Office 365 ISV takes advantage of Azure to create productivity solutions within Outlook. A key feature for Boomerang is its ability to generate real-time calendar images that are shareable with people outside of the user’s organization. Boomerang relies on Azure’s enterprise-proven infrastructure to support this computationally demanding workload. Their experience with Office 365 led them to look more closely at Azure, and they have started to migrate services from AWS to Azure to leverage Azure’s platform services and Machine Learning capabilities.

We look forward to delivering more on this vision across our portfolio of cloud offerings to our customers and partners. If you’d like to read the full report, “Gartner: Magic Quadrant for Infrastructure as a Service,” you can request it here.

Gartner does not endorse any vendor, product or service depicted in its research publications, and does not advise technology users to select only those vendors with the highest ratings or other designation. Gartner research publications consist of the opinions of Gartner's research organization and should not be construed as statements of fact. Gartner disclaims all warranties, expressed or implied, with respect to this research, including any warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose.

Credit : Microsoft Azure Blog

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PowerShell-Day3

How Use Powershell to Export results as CSV and HTML?

Lets Try some Export Commands, IT professionals are required to run several reports and then data is required for analysis, Hence one should use these cmdlets to make live easier

These can also be scheduled for periodic check

Eg: 
An Exchange Admin wants to check the Mailbox Queue and export it to an html page

Windows Admin needs to check the services running and needs to publish  an html page to L1 team

Believe me, This is Simple,  all you need to do is practice

The output file looks like this

now lets try a to create a webpage (HTML )

This shows all the services with multiple properties of the services

Lets narrow down, we only need to see the names of the services and their status

Outlook in  a webpage looks like this

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