SCOM Reviews

I decided to do a mini-test of System Center Operations Manager 2012 SP1. We are already using Nagios for monitoring but it doesn’t hurt to look at the competitors

Installation

Normally I would test in a virtual environment, but this time I happened to have my trusty old bastard (Fujitsu Siemens Primergy RX200 S2) ready with a plain installation of Windows Server 2012 so I decided to use that one instead.

Nothing special with the installation, just a plain installation of Windows Server 2012 as base and SCOM 2012 SP1 on top of that. I then joined the server to the domain as this is a requirement. After that I started the installation of Operations Manager. The installation program itself has a prerequisite check so every component will be installed perfectly. I chose to install “everything”. There were many components missing at the check and the following was required for me:

· Download and install Microsoft Report Viewer 2010

· Add Application Server Role

· Add a whole bunch of Web Server (IIS) Support role services

· Modify alternative source to installation files (basically mount Windows Server 2012 ISO)

· More strange errors… The ISAPI and CGI Restrictions are disabled or missing: Web Console cannot operate properly because the ISAPI and CI Restrictions in Internet Information Services (IIS) are disabled or missing for ASP.NET 4.0.

Solution:

https://roshamboot.org/main/quick-fix-scom-2012-sp1-installation-challenges/

· Had a look at some guidelines instead of next, next, next

https://blogs.technet.com/b/kevinholman/archive/2013/01/16/opsmgr-2012-sp1-quickstart-deployment-guide.aspx

· Note: SQL_Latin1_General_CP1_CI_AS should be set as collation, otherwise error. The installer will NOT correct this one for you automatically.

· All prerequisites OK, except for SQL.

· Installed SQL Server 2012 SP1 Enterprise. Configured SQL to use max 2GB memory.

· Opened up firewall port for SQL

https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc646023.aspx

· Installed SCOM 2012 with pretty much default settings and with the help of

https://blogs.technet.com/b/kevinholman/archive/2013/01/16/opsmgr-2012-sp1-quickstart-deployment-guide.aspx

· Installed ok!

This was only a small test, as the whole system is a bit over the top (to say the least) for our needs. Anyways, seems to be working just fine. Screenshot below.

Fig 1. System Center Operations Manager 2012 SP1

I’ve tested SCOM 2007 before so I knew what to expect. SCOM 2012 is indeed a very advanced monitoring system with all the bells and whistles. However, Nagios is our main monitoring software and it’s already set up to monitor all Linux servers, printers, switches (and more) at the Department. I’ll put my energy into configuring Nagios instead, as we don’t need all the advanced features of SCOM. We’re not monitoring hundreds of servers either. I’ve now added a script to Nagios which checks for Windows Updates. Of course there’s also standard checks like ping and so on. We don’t need anything fancier than that, at least for now. More about the Nagios script in another post.

Valuable Features:

Room for Improvement:

Valuable Features:

Room for Improvement:

Other Advice: