A Quick Guide to Installing the Cross Platform Monitoring BETA

This is a quick guide to installing the X Platform Monitoring that was released this week. You can download it from the connect site (connect.microsoft.com). I will update it this blogpost with screenshots when i have them.

1. Run the SetupSCX.msi setup file
2. A "System Center Operations Manager Cross Platform Extensions" folder will be created
   Launch the Operations console
3. Import the non-Windows Management Packs from the System Center Management Packs folder
4. Close the Operations Console
5. In the System Center Operations Manager Cross Platform Extensions folder, run the ImportXSLT.cmd file
6. Then run the TransformImporter.exe file
7. Launch the Operations Console
8. To create the appropriate RunAs Accounts, perform the following:
9. Go to the Administration Space and right click Run As Accounts
10. Select the Create RunAs Account
11. Click Next on the Opening page
12. On the General Page, enter Privileged User in the Display name box, then click Next
13. In the Account page, enter root as the username and the password for the root account
14. Follow the same steps to create the Non-Privilege User account
15. To associate the appropriate Run As Profiles, perform the following:
16. Select the RunAs Profiles, locate and double-click the Unix Privileged Account profile
17. Select the Run As Accounts tab and click on the New button
18. Select the Privilege User account you created earlier, then click OK
19. Locate and double-click the Unix Action Account profile
20. Select the Run As Accounts tab and click on the New button
21. Select the Non-privileged User account you created earlier, then click OK
22. To discover systems perform the following:
23. Go to the Monitoring space and locate the Cross Platform Servers node
24. Click on Overview and on the details pane, click on the Discover available Unix and Linux computers link
25. At the Welcome Screen, click Next
26. At the Discovery Method screen, click the Add button
27. Type in either the IP address, DNS name or address range of the computers
28. Then enter the credentials used to SSH into the system for discovery purposes.
29. Leave the SSH port at 22 (ensure that the SSH is configured on the non-Windows Servers), click Next
30. Click Add for additional machines
31. Once done, click on the Discover button
32. Once the machines have been discovered (or not), you will be able to see a list of discovered machines
33. Select the machines you want to install agents on (manage) and click next
34. The screen will display the Discovery progress
35. Click Done once .. Done

You should now be able to see the Health status of your machines. Happy monitoring :)

Cross Platform Monitoring with Operations Manager

A follow up to Interop Connectors is the Cross Platform Monitoring. Finally.. I can blog about it. Being under NDA sometimes is so frustrating :)

At the Keynote on the first day it was announced and you can read about it on MVP Maarten Goet's blog (http://www.techlog.org/archive/2008/04/29/opsmgr_cross_platform__first_s)

Ultimately the plan is to be able to support Linux and Unix platform monitoring out of the box. Support for MAC Server is in the plan.

Some of the features planned for V1:

• Discovering non-Windows System using IP range
• Deploy Agent as part of Discovery Wizard
• WS-Man based Agent channel
• Caching Events in a case of network failure
• Ability to manually install agents
• Discover entities on non-Windows System post Agent deploy
• Unit, aggregate and dependency monitors with Knowledge Articles
• Collect and Monitor Performance counters
• Collect and Moniror Event from non-Windows Systems and store in Live DB and DatawarehouseDB
• Diagnostic and recoveries
• Tasks that execute simple commands and return output to UI
• Support for customized UI pages
• Support for non-Windows entities in Distributed Application Designer
• Reports for data
• Templates for custom monitoring rules and MPs
• Agent Uninstall and Upgrade

The plan.. RTM at MMS 2009 with a dependency on Ops Manager 2007 SP2.

The install will be a single one which would then add the necessary components.. Copying SSH modules, Copy the Transforms, and Copy the Management Pack

A "System Center Operations Manager 2007 Cross Platform Extensions" folder will be created in the root drive. The Agents are located in this folder

To get it functional with the BETA, the following has to be done:

1. Import Management Packs

1. Create Run As Accounts
2. Associated Run As Accounts with Run As Profiles (Within the Management Pack is the Run As Profiles of Unix Action Account and Unix Privilege Account. The Management Pack will automatically select which profile to use in different scenarios)
3. Import XSL Transforms (must be done after Management Pack as it addresses certain components in the Management Pack)

Right now, configuring will be done through the Monitoring space due to limitations of Ops Manager SP1. Upon SP2, it will be back to normal in the Administration space



The Discovery and Agent Deployment Process

1. First it will discover using the scope (IP, DNS, IP Range)
2. It will then discover whether there is already an agent installed.
3. If its not install, SSH will be used to discover what UNIX or Linux platform, distribution and version the non-Windows system is
4. Once the platform is noted as supported, the package is then deployed
5. Once the Agent is installed, data about the non-Windows system will be inserted into the DB

I was typically impressed with how diagnostics are automatically configured to run and this is all part of the Management Pack

The following are the log files that are monitored:

• SU command execution
• Toor login failures
• Critical authentication errors
• Breakin attempts
• SSH authentication failures
• Custom templates to be used

Here are somemore screenshots on the Health Explorer and Performance Dashboard

I will be doing up a step by step configuration guide to get the BETA working. I'll post it once its done.