Working in VMM like Service Provider Foundation and Windows Azure Pack

As we know Service Provider Foundation is the API of VMM. SPF is a web service that can execute tasks against VMM server and WAP just connects to SPF to communicate with VMM so we have the following communication path VMM<->SPF<->WAP. Continue reading “Working in VMM like Service Provider Foundation and Windows Azure Pack”

SCOM APM for Orchestrator, SPF, SMA and WAP

Orchestrator, Service Provider Foundation, Service Management Automation and Windows Azure Pack are all web applications or web services or both. They are all monitored by IIS 8 Management Pack in Operations Manager but that MP can only provide monitoring to certain levels to solve these limitations in SCOM (SP1 and R2 for IIS8) we have Application Performance Monitoring (APM). This blog post does not aim to show you some advanced features in APM but rather to show you how to enable some advanced monitoring for those services. As SMA and WAP are available only in R2 I will use the R2 wave. Let’s start with enabling APM for every service:

Service Provider Foundation

Open SCOM console. Go to Authoring pane. Start Add Monitoring Wizard.

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Select .NET Application Performance Monitoring

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Give a friendly name to the application and create new management pack where the settings for this application will be saved.

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Select Add.

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Click on Search and add the two web service in SPF – VMM and Admin. Click OK.

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It is always a good practice to put Environment.

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Accept the default settings. The idea is to fine tune these settings depending on the performance of the application in your environment. If you have more than one environment (development, test, production and etc.) these settings can be different because some environments will have less resources than other and the application can perform slowly because of that. SPF is only web service and because of that does not have portal so client-side monitoring is not relevant. On summary page click Create and wait until the APM for SPF is created.

And the result is:

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From now on when you have data for a long term period you can fine-tune the APM settings. You can even set exceptions for some methods.

Orchestrator Web Service and Console

Orchestrator has Web Service and Console (Web Application).

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One Web service and Web application (portal) added,

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Orchestrator has web application but do not enable client-side monitoring for now.

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To enable client-side monitoring you need first have to check if the web application could be enabled for this client side monitoring. This is done trough a task Check Client-Side Monitoring Compatibility which is available in Monitoring Pane –> Application Monitoring –> .NET Monitoring –> IIS 8.0 ASP.NET Web Application Inventory View. Select the web application you would like to test and execute the task from the Task pane.

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I’ve enabled the client-side monitoring for the Orchestrator console but even I didn’t received any error in SCOM or on the Orchestrator portal no performance counters were shown from client-side:

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Windows Azure Pack

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You need to add all found Web Applications for Windows Azure Pack:

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I am not using WAP intensively in this environment  so I do not have so much data:

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Because I do not have even database created for WAP you can see the performance exception created for that:

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APM can very useful to public user portal like Tenant Site in WAP:

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Because of that I’ve tried to check if client-side monitoring can be enabled but unfortunately the check returned negative results:

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Service Management Automation

Service Management Automation is part of Orchestrator setup but can be connected to WAP.

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Only one web service is available so no client-side monitoring will be available:

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As a summary I hope this will help you in providing advanced monitoring for these Web Services and Application as they are of the Microsoft Cloud OS and critical for Cloud Providers. What I would like to see in the future instructions or possibility from Microsoft on how to enable client-side monitoring for at least the Tenant Site.

Install All System Center 2012 R2 Preview Components and Windows Azure Pack Preview (Part 5 Service Provider Foundation and Service Reporting)

All Posts:

 

Next on the line is Service Provider Foundation which also part of Orchestrator.

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We have to install some prerequisites:

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We now have the option to generate self-signed certificate trough the installation:

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Usage endpoint now can be installed trough the installer:

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In SPF 2012 R2 there are a lot of more APIs for VMM.

There is another role in the Orchestrator installation media but I hadn’t resources to install it so I will just show you the first installation screens. This new role is Service Reporting which is like a Data Warehouse for hosting providers from which they can get data for billing Tenants. As far as I know it requires Windows Azure Pack to work but there might be a way to use it without it we just have to learn more about this role.

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Small improvements on the installation experience of SPF by adding Usage endpoint installation and generating self-signed certificate.

Update Rollup 1 for System Center 2012 Service Pack 1

Yes it is true. The freshly released Service Pack 1 of System Center 2012 has update rollup. Here are the fixes:

App Controller (KB2790935)

Issue 1
Copying a .vhd file between Windows Azure storage accounts may be unsuccessful, and you receive a "Retrieved data is complete" warning message. This issue occurs if the .vhd file already exists on the destination or if the .vhd file is mapped to an existing virtual machine.
Issue 2
The import of Virtual Machine Manager (VMM) library server certificates may be unsuccessful for VMM library servers that are clustered.

Data Protection Manager (KB2791508)

Issue 1
Client backups fail when there is a case difference between the client computer name on the computer and the client computer name that is stored in Active Directory.

Operations Manager (KB2784734)

Issue 1
Agentless Exception Monitoring (AEM) in Operations Manager may provoke an increase in reporting threads and choke points.
Issue 2
After the Alert Attachment Management Pack (Microsoft.SystemCenter.AlertAttachment.mpb) is imported, you create a dashboard that contains an alert widget. When you click an alert, the Operations Manager console may crash.
Issue 3
When a Windows PowerShell module uses the Monitoringhost.exe process on an x86-based client that is running Windows 8, more than 800 megabytes (MB) of memory may be consumed.
Issue 4
After an application domain is created, adding another application domain may be unsuccessful.

Operations Manager – UNIX and Linux Monitoring (Management Pack Update)

Issue 1
When multiple process monitors are used to target the same computer or group, processes may incorrectly monitor some template instances. Additionally, problems with the monitored processes may not be detected. This issue occurs when each process monitor uses the same name as the process even though different argument filters are used in each process monitor.
Note After the updated Microsoft.Unix.Process.Library.mpb file is imported, all existing Process Template instances must be edited and saved for the fixed behavior to take effect.

Service Provider Foundation (KB2785476)

Issue 1
The OperatingSystemId property on a virtual hard disk (VHD) object is always set to NULL.
Issue 2
Virtual machine usage metrics are not aggregated at hourly intervals and are missing basic usage metrics such as network sent and receive I/O operations per second (IOPS).

Virtual Machine Manager (KB2792925 – Console; KB2792926 – VMM Server)

Issue 1
When a logical unit number (LUN) is unmasked on an iSCSI array, the VMM service may crash.
Issue 2
When a node is put in maintenance mode, virtual machines in the cluster change to a status of "Unsupported Cluster Configuration."
Issue 3
When an add-in that uses multiple DLL files is imported into the VMM console, the add-in is not imported. Additionally, you receive the following error message:

Add-in cannot be installed

Issue 4
When an add-in is imported into the VMM console on a server that is running Windows Server 2008 R2, the add-in is not imported.
Issue 5
When an add-in is imported into the VMM console, the console may crash.

 

Instructions and download find here.

Orchestrator and Service Provider Foundation

If you want to know about the new feature in System Center 2012 SP1 named Service Provider Foundation there is a great article on Technet Wiki. The title of the article is Cloud Resource Management with System Center 2012 Service Pack 1 (SP1) – Orchestrator and Service Provider Foundation.